Classification of English Consonants.
They can be classified according to the following principles:
According to the active organ of speech and the place of obstruction.
According to the type of obstruction. It may be complete closure (occlusive: plosive or nasal), incomplete closure (constrictive: fricative or lateral or medial sonorants), the combination of two closures (occlusive-constrictive or affricates).
According to the manner of noise production. (or prevalence of the noise over the musical tone). Noise are plosive and fricative.
Sonorants: are consonants that phoneticians have a lot of arguments about. They are /m, n, ŋ, l, r, w /. They occupy an intermediate position between vowels and consonants. In the articulation of sonorants as in the production of consonants there is an obstruction and the muscular tension is concentrated at the place of obstruction. Like vowels sonorants are based on voice, the air stream in their production is wide and the force of the air is weak as in the case of vowels. Because of their strong vocalic characteristics sonorants / l, r, w / are often referred to semi-vowels by British phoneticians (Jons, Glison). According to the Russian phoneticians sonorants are considered to be consonants from articulatory, acoustic, phonological point of view. Due to their great sonority some sonorants can be syllabic in some positions. But generally they don’t perform the function of syllable formation.
According to the work of the vocal cords and the force of exhalation. They are voiced and voiceless. Force of exhalation in the voiceless consonants and muscular tension are greater – they are called “fortis” (strong, energetic), voiced are called “lenis”(soft, weak).
According to the position of the sift palate. They are subdivided into oral and nasal.
Modifications of speech sounds in English
Phonemes in actual speech are seldom pronounced in isolation. They are joined together, forming a succession of sounds. In every language there exists specific mechanism of joining them:
every sound pronounced separately has 3 stages:
excursion (the on-glide, зближення) – it is a preparation of organs of speech before the pronunciation.
Retention (medial витримка) – organs of speech are kept in this position some time.
Recursion (the off-glide, release, відступ) – the organs come back to the neutral position.
These stages may be represented graphically.
P2
p1 / ¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯ \ p3
The transition from 1 sound to another takes the form of penetration of one stage to another in actual speech.
d2
d1 / ¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯ \ d3
Such type of junction between the phonemes is called merging (злиття). Excursion stage of the following sound begins during the recursion stage of the previous sound. It usually takes place between sounds of different nature “consonant” – “vowel” (c-v).
There are instances when the type of junction is closer. The articulation of the following sound begins earlier.
/twais/
t2
t1 / ¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯ \ t3
This type is called interpenetration. This type is closer type of junction. It takes place between similar groups – cons. + cons. (c+c). This type has a result the process of assimilation (reciprocal).
/tækt/ (when 2 plosives come together the first loose its plosion).
Mutual influence of the articulatory stages of sounds lead to different phonetic changes of the sound. The modifications are observed both within words and word boundaries. There are following types of modification: assimilation, accommodation, reduction, elision and inserting. The adaptive modification of a consonant by a neighbouring consonant in a speech chain is assimilation. Accommodation is used to denote the interchanges of VC or CV types. Reduction is actually qualitative or quantitative weakening of vowels in unstressed positions. Elision is a complete loss of sounds, both vowels and consonants. Inserting is a process of sound addition.