Topic 4. The system of English phonemes: consonants

1. There are two major classes of sounds traditionally distinguished by phoneticians in any language. They are termed consonants and vowels. Consonants are known to have voice and noise combined, while vowels are sounds consisting of voice only

1. Consonants

Each sound is known to have three aspects: acoustic, articulatory and auditory and therefore can be studied on these three levels.

As to the classification of English consonants there are few ways of seeing the situation.

According to V.A.Vassilyev (79) primary importance should be given to the type of obstruction and the manner of production of noise. On this ground he distinguishes two large classes of consonants:

a) occlusive, in the production of which a complete obstruction is formed;

b) constrictive, in the production of which an incomplete obstruction is formed.

Each of the two classes is subdivided into noise consonants and sonorants. Another point of view is shared by a group of Russian phoneticians. They suggest that the first and basic principle of classification should be the degree of noise. Such consideration leads to dividing English consonants into two general kinds:

A — noise consonants

B — sonorants

Our next point should be made in connection, with another sound property, that is voiced — voiceless characteristic which depends on the work of the vocal cords. We should note that it has long been believed that from the articulatory point of view the distinction between such pairs of consonants as [p, b], [t, d], [k, g), [s, z], [f, v], [S,Z], [C,G] is based on the absence or presence of vibrations of the vocal cords, or on the absence or presence of voice or tone component. However, a considerable body of experimental work on physiological and acoustic aspects of these sounds showed that this is not the only difference between them. It is obvious now that there is also energy difference. All voiced consonants are weak (lenis) and all voiceless consonants are strong (fortis).

There are, however, other problems of a phonological character. In the English consonantal system it is the problem of affricates, that is their phonological status and their number.

The second question is with the English [C-G] sounds. We can’t be the witnesses of the existence of the morphemic junction inside these speech units. There is one more criterion which is not strictly linguistical, but we can take it into consideration. [t] and [S] , [d] and [Z] are never combined in one syllable.

Summarizing what have been described we could state that with the majority of Russian specialists in English phonetics we consider relevant the following articulatory features:

1) type of obstruction,

2) place of obstruction and the active organ of speech,

3) force of articulation.

3. Modifications of Consonants in Connected Speech

The adaptive modification of a consonant by a neighbouring consonant in the speech chain is known as assimilation. Types of assimilation can be distinguished according to (1) direction, (2) degree of completeness, (3) degree of stability. (1) The influence of the neighbouring sounds in English can act in a progressive, regressive or reciprocal (double) direction. (2) According to its degree, assimilation can be complete and incomplete. (3) Many assimilotary phenomena of older stages have become obligatory in MnE. Such changes are called historical. Besides there are a lot of non-obligatory cases of assimilation which can be traced mainly at word boundaries.

The term accommodation is often used by linguists to denote the interchanges of "vowel + consonant type" or "consonant + vowel type", for instance, some slight degree of nasalization of vowels preceded or followed by nasal sonorants: never, men; or labialization of consonants preceding the vowels [o] and [y] in Russian.

Elision or complete loss of sounds, both vowels and consonants, is often observed in English.

The reduction of some consonant clusters was established long ago (write, know, listen, Wednesday, lamb). In other cases of recent formation the elided forms are typical only of rapid colloquial speech.