2.4.2. Consonants: realizational and distributional differences

There are realizational features which are quite essential for creating the articulatory bases of English and Russian. As is well known, both English and Russian have coronal consonants: /t, d, n, s, z, 1/ and /т, д, н, с, з, л/.

The English coronal phonemes are alveolar, and they are also the most frequently used English consonants which create the most powerful contrasts such as: /n -1/ in name — tame (nasal, lenis — oral, fortis), /t - d/ as in ten — den (fortis — lenis), /d - s/ day — say (plosive, lenis — fricative, fortis). The most frequent English consonants are listed below:

Table 5 English Consonants: 10 most frequent

n - 7.58	d - 5.14	1 - 3.66	r - 3.22	к - 3.22
t - 6.42	s - 4.81	9 - 3.55	m - 3.22	w - 2.81

Concerning the Russian consonants which are similar to the English most frequently occurring consonants /n, t, d, s, 1/ we can state that the Russian coronal consonants are all dental (not alveolar): /т, д, н, л, с, з/. It is very important for creating the specific colouring of Russian speech: the tongue moves to the front, the front and the middle parts of the tongue are raised, most consonants are palatalized.

Another important feature of consonants is that English voiceless consonants are fortis, while English voiced consonants are lenis. The characteristics of the Russian consonants are similar but in comparison with their English counterparts Russian voiceless consonants are much weaker and shorter in duration, and are never pronounced with aspiration. Compare: time, тайм — [t^haim], [тайм].

Compare the relative amount of time occupied by English and Russian consonants (Table 6). English voiceless consonants are leading:

Table 6 Comparing English and Russian consonants

Consonants	English	Russian
Voiceless	0.26	0.18
Voiced	0.14	0.11-0.13

(after V.D. Arakin)

The Russian voiced consonants, unlike the English ones, are fully voiced in the word-initial position but that feature is completely neutralized in the word-final position (structural distribution, from the point of view of the position in the word): дуб, бил - [дул], [б'ил], зуб, вяз - [зуп], [в'ас].

Neutralization of the voiced-voiceless contrast in the word-final position is a distinguishing feature of the Russian language.

In English, voiced consonants are devoiced at the beginning of words and partially devoiced at the end of words. In the word bet, for instance, the initial /b/ is weak and devoiced, but it is not confused with /p/ because in pet the initial sound is aspirated while in bet it is not: [p^het] — [pet]. In the word-final position /t/ is not confused with partially devoiced /d/ in bed due to the length of the preceding vowel: it is longer before a voiced consonant. We can represent it like this: bed [be:t] — bet [bet]. Thus in English there are other phonetic clues taken by the listener to recognize the word: presence or absence of aspi­ration or the length of the preceding vowel. For the English ear a voiceless but weak and unaspirated consonant at the beginning of a word sounds like an English "voiced" consonant which is also weak and unaspirated: Таганка was pronounced by the English teacher in Moscow as [йэ'длпкэ].

In comparing English and Russian it is important to note to what extent the process which is common for the two sound systems affects the allophones. In Russian the opposition voiced/voiceless is completely neutralized in the word-final position. In English consonants are partially devoiced at the beginning and at the end of words but the degree of devoicing is incomparable to Russian complete devoicing at the end of words. Compare: обед, столб — bed, lab.

Similarly, Russian voiceless consonants are stronger than Russian voiced ones but in English the contrast is so much greater that many linguists claim that only English voiceless consonants are really strong and may be termed fortis. One of the phonetic cues is their length and the length of the preceding vowel: English voiceless consonants are strong and long.

Of special interest is the phenomenon of aspiration which is structur­ally constrained: its varying degree in voiceless plosives depends on the position in the syllable and the phonetic context. Aspiration is the strongest in onsets before a stressed vowel, it is weaker in codas and in the unstressed syllables, it disappears in a position after the sound /s/. Compare the three degrees of /p/ aspiration in: party, reaper, spa. Actually only in the first word /p/ is aspirated: ['p^ha.ti].

In English there are a few consonants which are structurally constrained:

• the velar nasal /rj/ may be found only in codas, i.e. syllable-finally: sing, reading;

• in RP /r/, together with /w/ and /h/, is not to be found in codas; they occur only before a vowel: write, white, height;

• the sound /3/ never appears at the beginning of a word or a syllable except for words of French origin: Jean, measure.

In Russian all consonants may appear at the beginning (initial position, onset) and at the end (final position, coda) of the syllable.