1.2. Articulation: how sounds are made and classified

In this part we will look at the way sounds are made and at their features which are determined by the way they are made.

Most of the sounds are produced as we breathe out (pulmonic, egres-sive sounds), though there are languages which employ in-taking motion too (ingressive sounds). The main source of the sound is the airstream which is pushed out of the lungs, up the windpipe (the trachea) and into the larynx, at which point it must pass between two small muscular folds called vocal folds (also called vocal cords). If we close them so that they can touch each other lightly, the air passing between them causes them to vibrate, and the sound is voiced. By re-adjusting the vocal folds we can change the pitch of the voice, i.e. make the voice go up or down. By mov­ing the vocal folds wide open we can stop the vibration, and make the sound voiceless. The space between the vocal folds is called the glottis, and the sounds which are made there are called glottal; in English there are two of them: one is a voiceless fricative like a sigh before a stressed vowel, or a devoiced vowel, [h] in high, and the other is a glottal stop, a plosive made at the glottis by the vocal folds when they are pressed tightly together, as in [Ъл?эп] button.

The vocal tract above the larynx starts with a passageway called pharynx, the role of which in speech production is small. Then the vocal tract divides: one passageway goes up into the nasal cavity, and the other into the mouth cavity. We can close off the access to the nasal cavity by raising the soft palate (also called velum), and then the air will go through the mouth, and the sound will be oral (most of the sounds in English and Russian), or we can lower the soft palate and allow the air to go into the nasal cavity, in which case the sound will be nasal /m, n, rj/. The extreme end of the velum is a small piece of tissue called the uvula which plays a part in the pronunciation of some languages: French for instance, has a uvular sound [R].

Figure 2 presents speech production as four processes: initiation process, phonation process, articulation process, oro-nasal process.

Articulation process is described best of all and reflected in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) as a system of symbols where each symbol corresponds to a sound with a particular articulatory feature. It is also called transcription system. IPA was devised for phoneticians of the world to understand each other when describing any world language. Dictionaries and manuals use transcription to represent the pronunciation of words.

Inside the mouth there are many parts called articulators which are used in speaking. The tongue, the lower jaw and the lips can move and make contact with the immobile palate (the roof of the mouth), the alveolar ridge and the teeth. The principal parts of the tongue are the tip, blade, front, centre, back and root (Figure 3).

1.2.1. Consonants

The fundamental distinction between consonants and vowels is that consonants make some obstruction to the flow of air, while vowels make relatively little obstruction.

The primary articulators that can cause an obstruction are the lips, the tongue tip and blade, and the back of the tongue (Figure 4). Speech gestures using the lips are called labial articulations; those using the tip and blade of the tongue are called coronal articulations; and those using the middle part and the back of the tongue are called dorsal articulations.

There are several basic ways in which articulation can be accomplished. The articulators may close off the oral tract for an instant or a relatively long period for a stop; they may narrow the space considerably and cause turbulent noise for a fricative; or they may simply modify the shape of the tract by approaching each other for an approximant.

To sum up:

Consonants are classified in terms of the following factors:

• state of the vocal folds (voiced or voiceless)

• position of the soft palate (nasal or oral)

• place of articulation (labial, coronal, dorsal, glottal)

• manner of the production of noise (stops, fricatives, approximants). We can specify the place features for the English language in more detail:

Table 1

Place	labial	bilabial: b, p, m, w labiodental: f, v
	coronal	dental: 9,3 alveolar: t, d, n, 1, s, z palato-alveolar: j, 3, tj, d3 retrofiex: r
	dorsal	palatal: j velar: k, g, rj
	glottal	glottal: h, ?

The term coronal is a cover term for a few features relevant for English/Russian distinction: sounds made with the tip of the tongue are called apical, and those made with the blade are called luminal. It is also essential to specify the difference between the alveolar (at the alveolar ridge) and dental (at the upper teeth) articulations of coronal consonants in the two languages. The coronal feature can, therefore, be further specified to make a distinction between apical alveolar English /t, d, n, 1, s, z/ and laminal dental Russian /т, д, н, л, с, з/ consonants, which is relevant for English/ Russian contrastive analysis of coronal consonants (Figure 5).

For British/American distinction it is necessary to distinguish between American interdental [9,3] and British dental [0,3], as well as British apical post-alveolar [r] and American sub-apical palatal=retroflex [r] (Table 2).

Table 2

coronal	laminal	interdental	Amer. 0,3
		laminal dental	Russ. т, д, н, л, с, з
		laminal alveolar	individual t, d, n, 1, s, z
		laminal post-alveoIar= palato-alveolar	t/, d3, J, 3
	apical	apical dental	Brit. 9, a
		apical alveolar	t, d, n, 1, s, z
		apical post-alveolar	Brit, r
	sub-apical	sub-apical palatal= retroflex	Amer. r

There maybe more than one place of obstruction in consonants. Secondary articulations are:

• labialization (lip rounding) in [s], [J], [3];

• velarization (raising the back part of the tongue towards the velum) in [w], in word-final British [1] and most of the American [1];

• palatalization (the centre of the tongue raised towards the palate) in British [1] before front vowels and in half of the Russian consonants (the so-called 'soft' Russian consonants);

• (pre)-glottalization is used as a reinforcement of an oral stop, as in [strip].

The manner of articulation may change within a sound articulation: /t J/ and /d3/ start as plosive stops and finish off as fricatives; they are called affricates.

A more detailed specification of manners of articulation might also serve to compare English and Russian consonants. Russian [P], for instance, as well as Scottish [r] are trills: the tip of the tongue is vibrating and beating against the alveolar ridge.

The American [t] in the intervocalic position, as in better, is just a flap: it flickers swiftly and touches the alveolar ridge just once; it gives the impression of a sound like a short [d] or [r].

In central consonants the air goes along the groove in the centre of the tongue, as in /w/, /J/, /3/; in the lateral approximant /1/ the air moves along the sides of the tongue.

Approximates are English /w, j, 1, r, h/, used to be called "semi-vowels", also termed as "liquids" /1, r/ and "glides" /w, j/ in American phonetics, in the articulation of which one articulator is close to another, the vocal tract is narrowed but not to such an extent that a turbulent air stream is produced. They are more like vowels in the quality of the sound but phonologically approximants behave like consonants: they cannot be syllabic as they do not appear in the centre of the syllable (called "nucleus"), most of the time being marginal in the syllable (they occur either in the initial position called "onset" or in the final position called "coda"). Cf. /w/ and /h/ appear only in the initial position before a vowel, as in water, hay; /r/ has been vocalised in the final position after a vowel in southern British English, as in car, father, and /1/ is also being vocalised in tell, belt in present-day Southern British English. However, there is one position which makes it possible for /1, r/ to become syllabic and central in the syllable: after a consonant, like in table, little, where /1/ forms a syllable.

Table 3 Place of obstruction in English and Russian

nasal stop	m,n, rj	M, H
oral stop	p,b,t, d,k, g	п, б, т, д, к, г
fricative	f, v, s, z, 9Д J, з, h	ф, в, с, з, ш, ж, х
approximant	w.j.l.r	й, л
trill		Russ. P, Scott, r
flap		Amer. t in better
lateral		1
central	s, r, w

By finding a consonant in a corresponding slot we can define it. The sound /w/, for instance, is a bilabial (Table 1) central approximant (Table 3). It does not show, however, the secondary dorsal articulation (velarization) of/w/ which for some authors is primary. So the definition may depend on the general framework of the phonetic theory.

The definition of voiceless sounds as fortis (strong) and voiced consonants as lenis (weak) is another example of phoneticians' differences. Fortis is a term used in phonetic classification of consonant sounds on the basis of their manner of articulation: it refers to a sound made with a relatively strong degree of muscular effort and breath force, compared with some other sound, known as lenis. In English, it is the voiceless consonants /p, t, k, f, s, I, 9, etc./ which are believed to be produced with fortis articulation (their voiced counterparts being relatively weak), and often, when voicing distinction is reduced, it is only the degree of articulatory strength which maintains a contrast between sounds (Crystal 1985:151). But the fact is, no one has yet proved that voiceless consonants are stronger, and until the evidence has been found, the phoneticians will still be using the terms voiceless and voiced (Laver 1995:344).