The system of English phonemes. The articulatory classification of the English consonants and vowels.
In all languages speech sounds are traditionally divided into two main types – vowels and consonants.
From the articulatory point of view the main principles of the division are as follows: 1. the presence or absence of obstruction; 2. the distribution of muscular tension; 3. the force of the stream of air coming from the lungs. Vowels are speech sounds based on voice which is modified in the supralaringeal cavities. There is no obstruction in their articulation. The muscular tension is spread evenly throughout the speech organs. The force of the stream of air is rather weak. Consonants are speech sounds in the articulation of which there is an obstruction, the removal of which causes noise, plosion or friction. The muscular tension is concentrated at the place of obstruction. The stream of air is strong. The articulatory boundary between vowels and consonants is not well- marked. There exist speech sounds that occupy an intermediate position between vowels and consonants. These are sonorants [m,n,n,l,w,r,]. The wide passage for the stream of air in the articulation of sonorants means that the oral and nasal cavities are active.
The classification of English consonants
In the English consonant system there are 24 consonants. The quality of the consonants depends on several aspects: 1. the work of the vocal cords; 2. what cavity is used as a resonator; 3. the force of the articulation and some other factors. There are four principles of consonant classification: 1. the type of obstruction and the manner of production of noise. We distinguish 2 classes of consonants: a) occlusive c., in the production of which a complete obstruction is formed [t, b,g]; b) constrictive c., in the production of which an incomplete obstruction is formed.[s,z,Ʒ] Each of the two classes is subdivided into noise consonants and sonorants. Noise consonants are divided into plosives (or stops) and affricates and constrictive sounds. Sonorants are divided into occlusive and constrictive sounds. Constrictive sonorants may be medial [n] and lateral [l]. 2.Another principle is the place of articulation. Consonants are classed into 1) labial, 2) lingual, 3) glottal. The first class is subdivided into a) bilabial [p]; b) labio- dental [v]; the second class is subdivided into: a) fore lingual or apical, articulated with the tip of the tongue [l, t, n, d], b) mediolingual [j], c)back lingual [k, g,], d) pharingal [h]. 3.The next principle is the presence or absence of voice which depends on the work of the vocal cords. All voiced consonants are weak (lenis) and all voiceless c. are strong (fortis). 4. The next principle is the position of the soft palate. According to this, E. consonants can be oral and nasal.(m,n,n).
The classification of English vowels
In the E. vowel system there are 12 vowel monophthongs and 8 or 9 diphthongs. The quality of a vowel depends, first of all, on its stability, on the tongue position, lip position, character of the vowel end, length, tenseness. 1. According to this principle E. vowels are subdivided into monophthongs, b) diphthongs, c) diphthongoids.[ i: ], [ u: ]. According to the position of the tongue vowels are classed from vertical and horizontal planes. From the horizontal plane vowels are divided into : 1. front; 2. front-retracted ; 3.central ; 4. back ; 5. back-advanced. From the vertical plane E. vowels are divided into: 1. close; 2. mid; 3. open. Each class has wide and narrow variations. According to the lip rounding vowels have 3 positions: spread, neutral, rounded. The next point is checkness. All E. short vowels are checked when stressed. The degree of checkness depends on the following consonant. All long vowels are free. According to the length E. vowels are traditionally divided into short and long vowels, it is a historical phenomenon. Besides, there exists the positional length of vowels, depending on the position of a vowel in a word. From the point of view of tenseness all historically long vowels are tense, while short vowels are lax.
English Phonetics
Every speech-sound belongs to one or other of the two main classes known as Vowels and Consonants. A vowel ( in normal speech ) is defined as a voiced sound in forming which the air issues in a continuous stream through the pharynx and mouth, there being no obstruction and no narrowing such as would cause audible friction. All other sounds ( in normal speech ) are called consonants. Consonants therefore include (i) all sounds which are not voiced (e.g. p,s, t), (ii) all sounds in the production of which the air has an impeded passage through the mouth ( e.g. b, l, rolled r ), (iii) all sounds in the production of which the air does not pass through the mouth (e.g. m), (iv) all sounds in which there is audible friction (e.g. f, v, s, z, h).
The following table shows all the English phonemes:
Differences in the system of sounds in English and in Russian languages
Wе can now make an attempt at comparing the sound systems of two languages, English and Russian. The contrastive method will help us reveal systemic, distributional and realizational characteristics of each particular sound system, their common features and their distinguishing features.
Systemic differences will reveal which sounds are contrastive in either language or dialect and what features these contrasts are based on, which contrasts are more powerful than the others. Thus we will learn the relations between the elements of the system; an important point is the number of contrastive elements, phonemes, in the inventory and the ways they maybe modified in various phonetic contexts. The vowel system of RP, for example, consists of 20 phonemes, while in American English and Scottish Standard English there are only 15-16 vowel phonemes. American English lacks /d/ as in stop, box and a few diphthongs. Scottish English does not distinguish /u:/ and /u/ in fool, full and /ae/ and /a:/ in bat, bath and also lacks centering diphthongs on account of/r/ preservation as in here, beer which are pronounced as /hir/, /bir/.
Distributional differences will show how certain sounds are distributed over the lexicon (lexical distribution)and which of them are allowed at the beginning or at the end of a word or a syllable (structural distribution).For example, American English and British English have both /ae/ and /a:/ phonemes but in American English /ae/ is used not only in the words like cat, badbut also in words like ask, dance in which British English has /a:/ phoneme. The sounds, therefore, have different lexical distribution. Structural difference may be illustrated by the use of/r/ sound: in British English r can be found only before a vowel like in rye, bread but not after a vowel where it is vocalized as in beer, car. In American English r is not vocalized, or vocalized only partially, and we can hear [bir], [kar] with [r] at the end of a word or a syllable.
Realizational differences are differences in phonetic detail which demonstrate how similar sounds in two languages or dialects may share one feature but differ in the other(s). In the pronunciation of American [r] the tongue is curled back, it is retroflex, while in Scottish English it is trilled, like in Russian [P]. Practise the word right, try in two ways and you will feel the difference.
Consonants: systemic differences
Let us start by looking at the phonemic inventories of English and Russian:
The first observation we can make will be concerned with the number of phonemes in the two systems: English appears to belong to the vocalic type with a highly elaborate system of vowel phonemes, while Russian can be referred to the consonantal type of language because it has a large number of contrasts in the system of consonants.
However, when we start comparing the inventories of consonants of English and Russian we discover a number of consonants which can be found only in English. They are: one (bi) labial /w/, two (inter)dental fricatives, one voiceless and one voiced, /0/ and /3/, one nasal velar /g/ and one glottal voiceless fricative /h/. In Russian there is only one sound, a velar voiceless fricative /x/ which is not to be found in English.
Which sounds, then, constitute the exceeding number of the Russian consonant inventory? These are palatalized counterparts of all Russian non-palatalized consonants. It shows that palatalization is phonemic in Russian, it is a distinguishing feature of Russian as compared with English. Compare: сел, съел — [s'el], [sjel] with the English sell [sel].
In English, as we have already seen, palatalized consonants may occur in onsets of syllables before front vowels, such as a clear [1], for example, but they do not create a phonemic contrast with any non-palatalized allophones. A "clear", palatalized [1] and a "dark", non-palatalized [i] are in complementary distribution: the former appears before front vowels and the latter in all the other positions. For example, in the words little, label, lull the first [1] is palatalized and the second is non-palatalized: [lift], [leiM], [Ы]. If you pronounce a clear [1] at the end of the words, it may give you a French accent or an Irish accent but the meaning of words will not be changed.
In Russian palatalized and non-palatalized sounds are different phonemes because they distinguish words; both palatalized and non-palatalized phonemes may occur at the beginning and at the end of words: был — бил, пыл — пил, ныл — Нил, мыл — мил, пол — Поль, мол — моль, гол — голь. Thus palatalization is phonemic in Russian and allophonic (non-phonemic) in English.