Lecture 5.

The Consonant System of English

1. General Principles of Consonant Formation

The distinction between vowels and consonants is a very old one. The
principle of this division, however, is not sufficiently clear up to the present time,
the boundary between them being rather uncertain. The old term, “consonants”
precludes the idea that consonants cannot be pronounced without vowels. Yet we
know that they can and often are; for instance, in the sound that calls for silence:
:.
The fact vowels are usually syllabic, does not mean that consonants are
incapable of forming syllables. On the contrary, they may be syllabic too, and we
find many instances in the English language of syllabic sonorants forming
syllables by themselves.
Acoustically, vowels are musical sounds. Nevertheless, in the formation of
vowels considerable noise-producing narrowings are sometimes created; on the
other hand, some consonants possess musical tone.
According to Prof. D. Jones: “The distinction between vowels and
consonants is not an arbitrary physiological distinction. It is in reality a distinction
based on acoustic considerations, namely on the relative sonority or carrying
power of the various sounds.” In the opinion of D. Jones, vowels are more
sonorous than consonants. This is correct in most cases, but some consonants,
especially sonorants, are very sonorous (for example, l, m, n, ŋ ).
D. Jones gives the following definition: “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”.
I.A. Baudouin de Courtenay has discovered a physiological distinction
between vowels and consonants; according to his theory the main principle of their
articulation is different: in consonant articulation the muscular tension is
concentrated at one point which is the place of articulation in vowel articulation the
muscular tension is spread over all the speech organs. Knowing this, we have no
difficulty in ascertaining whether one or another particular sound is a vowel or a
consonant.
Acoustically, a vowel is a musical sound; it is formed by means of periodic
vibrations of the vocal cords in the larynx.
The resulting sound waves are transmitted to the supra-laryngeal cavities
(the pharynx and the mouth cavity), where vowels receive their characteristic
tamber.
We know from acoustics that the quality of a sound depends on the shape
and the size of the resonance chamber, the material which it is made of and, also,
on the size and shape of the aperture of its outlet. In the case of vowels, the
resonance chamber is always the same – the supra-laryngeal cavities. However, the
shape and size of the chamber can be made to vary, depending upon the different
positions that the tongue occupies in the mouth cavity; and also depending on any
slight alterations in the position of the back wall of the pharynx, the position of the
soft palate and of the lips which form the outlet of the resonance chamber. The lips
may be neutral or rounded, protruded or not protruded, forming a small or a large
aperture, or they may be spread, forming a narrow slit-like opening. When the lips
are protruded, the resonance chamber is lengthened; when the lips are spread or
neutral, the resonance chamber is shortened, its front boundary being formed
practically by the teeth.
It has already been mentioned that in producing vowels, the muscular
tension is spread equally over all the speech organs, yet the tension may be
stronger or weaker. If the muscular tension in the walls of the resonance chambers
is weaker, the vowel has a less distinct quality; it may sometimes be quite obscure.
If the muscular tension is stronger, the vowel has a well defined quality. In the first
case, the vowels are called lax, in the second-tense.
It is difficult, however, if not next to impossible, to classify vowels correctly
from the point of view of tenseness. The degree of tenseness may be ascertained
chiefly by comparison, while the result of comparison depends largely upon the
articulation basis of the mother-tongue of the person who makes the comparison.
To a Russian, for instance, all vowels seem tense, because Russian vowels are lax.
We can now formulate the general principles of vowel articulation.
1. Vowels are based on voice which is modified in the supralaryngeal
cavities.
2. The muscular tension is spread over all the speech organs.
3. The air-stream passes through the supra-laryngeal cavities freely, no
narrowings being expressly formed on its way.
4. The breath force is rather weak for, it is expended when the air stream
passes through the larynx and causes the vocal cords to vibrate.
Thus, vowels have no special place of articulation; - the whole of the speech
apparatus takes part in producing them. The classification of vowels, as well as
the description of their articulation, is therefore based upon the work of all the
speech organs.
2. The articulatory of English Consonants

An indispensable constituent of a consonant is noise. The source of noise is

an obstruction. There are the following types of obstruction in the production of
consonant: 1) complete occlusion (closure), 2) constriction (narrowing) and 3)
occlusion-constriction (closure immediately followed by a constriction).
The noise produced by the removal of a closure is that of a plosion, the noise
resulting from the movement of the air stream in the narrowing is that of friction.
The two effects are combined when closure is followed by a narrowing.
1. According to the type of obstruction and the manner of the production of noise
English consonants are classified in the following way:
 Occlusives Constrictives Occlusive-Constrictives

stops (plosives) nasal sonants fricatives oral sonants (affricates)

/p, b, t, d, k, g/ /m, n, ŋ/ /ʧ, ʤ/

unicentral bicentral medial lateral

/f, v, , s, z / /, ʒ/ /j, r, w / /l/

Obstructions may be formed either by two active speech organs or by one

active speech organ (articulator) and a passive organ of speech (point or place of
articulation).
2. According to the active speech organ English consonants are divide into:

Labial Lingual

bilabial labio-dental forelinfual medio-lingual back lingual

/p, b, m, w / /v, f / /j/ /k, g, ŋ/

apical cacuminal
/t, d, n, s, z, , ð / /r/

pharyngeal
/h/
3. According to the place of obstruction consonants are classified into dental //,
alveolar /t, d, n, l, s, z/, post-alveolar /r/, palatal /j/, palate-alveolar /, ʒ, t, ʤ/,
velar /ŋ/.
4. According to the presence or absence of voice, English consonants are divided
into voiced /b, d, g, v, z, ð, ʒ, ʤ/ and voiceless /p, t, k, f, s, , , t/.
5. According to the force of articulation, English consonants are classified as lenis
and fortis.
In the articulation of English voiced consonants the muscular tension is
weak –lenis articulation. In the articulation of English voiceless consonants the
muscular tension is strong-fortis articulation.
6. According to the position of the soft palate English consonants are divided into
oral /p, b, t, d, k, g, f, v, , s, z, , ʒ, h, t, ʤ, w, l, r, j/ and nasal /m, n, ŋ /.

3. The Acoustic Classification of English Consonants

The acoustic character of a consonant is conditioned by its articulation.

Plosives and affricates (e.g. /t, d, t, ʤ/) differ from fricatives (e.g. /f, v/)
mainly in that part of their spectra which corresponds to the articulatory “stop”. A
plosive is characterized by the absence of noise in part of the spectrum. The
plosion is marked by a burst of noise, i.e. the formant of noise appears.
 Fricatives are characterized by the presence of a noise formant throughout
the spectrum.
Hence plosives and affricates are classed as discontinuous and fricatives as
continuant.
Voiceless consonants (fortis) are characterized acoustically as tense and
voiced (lenis) as lax, since the burst of noise in voiced plosives and the formant of
noise in voiced fricatives are less strong than those in voiceless plosives and
fricatives.
The noise peculiar to alveolar and dental consonants /t, d, s, z, n, l, , ð/ is
contrasted with that of labial and labio-dental ones /p, b, m, f, v/ because it is
sharper in character. This means that in the spectra of /t, d, s, z, n, l, , ð/ high
frequencies are predominant and in the spectra of /p, b, m, f, v / the formant of
noise is lower.
The fricatives (alveolar and dental) /s, z, , ð/ have the highest frequencies of
noise in the spectrum-up to 8000 cps. The frequencies of the noise formant in the
spectrum of /f, v/ are low. Therefore, /t, d, s, z, , ð, n/ are characterized as acute
and /p, b, m, v/, as grave. The consonants /k, g, , ʒ, t, ʤ/ are intermediate in this
contrast.
The spectrum of velar and palatal consonants / k, g, ŋ, , ʒ, t, ʤ/ is compact
while the spectrum of alveolar, labial and dental ones /t, d, n, s, z, m, p, b, f, v, , ð/
is diffuse. Consequently, the former are classified as compact consonants and the
latter as diffuse ones.
The sonants /m, n, ŋ/are opposed to all the other consonants as nasal to oral,
because in their spectrum there is a special nasal formant.
The consonants /s, z/ having a round narrowing are opposed to /, ð/ having
a flat narrowing and the affricates /t, ʤ/ are opposed to the plosives /t, d/ as
strident to mellow. In the spectrum of strident consonants the intensity of noise
formant is greater in the spectrum of mellow consonants.
The first attempt to classify speech sounds on the basis of their acoustic
distinctions was made by a group of phoneticians and linguists Jacobson, Fant and
Halle, in their work “Preliminaries to Speech Analysis”. The authors establish the
acoustic distinctions used in human language. These distinctions form 12 binary
(or dichotomous) distinctive oppositions. The authors claim that their classification
can be applied to all the languages of the world, but not all the 12 oppositions are
to be used to classify the phonemes of a particular language. For the English
language, according to the authors, 9 binary oppositions are sufficient: 1) vocalic –
non-vocalic; 2) consonantal – non-consonantal; 3) compact – diffuse; 4) grave –
acute; 5) flat – plain;6) nasal – oral; 7) tense – tax; 8) discontinuous – continuant;
9) strident – mellow.
Vowels are vocalic and non-consonantal; consonants are consonantal and
non-vocalic. The sonants /l, r/ are vocalic and consonantal /w, j/ are non-vocalic
and non-consonantal.
The traditional vowel /consonant opposition is divided into two oppositions
to define the sounds /r, l, w, j/.
 The acoustic classification of speech sounds worked out by Jacobson, Fant
and Halle is perhaps not absolutely definite. But it is a new classification based on
the discoveries of modern electro-acoustics.
Acoustic definitions and classifications of speech sounds are of great
theoretical importance to linguists. Their practical importance and application is
also undeniable. Acoustic characteristics of speech sounds are indispensable in
technical acoustics for the solution of the problem of speech synthetics and sound
transmission, for the construction of speech recognizers as well as machines
capable of putting out information in spoken words.
As for language teaching the acoustic classification of speech sounds is
practically inapplicable. But the acoustic data of spectrographic analysis are of
great use when related to the articulatory characteristics of speech sounds.

4 Distinctive feature representation of the English consonants.

The theory of distinctive features, which was suggested by Jakobson-Fant-

Halle, is known as the acoustic classification. In fact, this theory represents the act
of communication and shows the steps involved in inducing the hearer to select the
same phonological element the speaker has selected. It may be illustrated as
follows:
Speaker Hearer

Phonological Phonological
element element

Articulation Perception

Acoustic
feature

This theory is based on the results of the spectrographic (acoustic) and X-ray
(articulatory) investigation. Each feature is described in articulatory and acoustic
levels (including perception).
The acoustic representation of a distinctive feature corresponds to more than
one articulatory feature. In many cases it does not take into consideration the
existing allophones, i.e. non-distinctive features of phonemes. In such cases as
distinguishing the dental /n/ as in tenth /ten/ from the alveolar /n/ no acoustic or
perceptual feature can be used. These two allophones of the phoneme /n/ can be
described only in articulatory terms.
The dichotomic (or binary-meaning to choose two elements or a pair of
elements in logic sense) theory has many other shortcomings. Each of the
distinctive features involves a choice between two terms of opposition. The mark
(+) means “yes”, (-) - “no”, (0) - both distinctive features are possible.
 According to this theory 12-15 distinctive features are possible both for
vowels and consonants in all languages. The starting point of this classification
shows that two binary features define four major classes of segments (minimal
segments of sound, which can be distinguished by their contrast within words are
called phonemes).They are:

Consonant (C) Vowel (V) Liquid (L) Glide (G)

+C -C +C -C
-V +V +V -V
/p/ /a/ /l/ /j/
stop all /r/ /w/ .

fricatives vowels intermediate between

affricates the 1st and 2d classes
nasals

The consonant features correlation in acoustic and articulatory terms, their

correspondence and representation can be illustrated in the following table:

№ Binary acoustic features Articulatory correlates

a periodic excitation and
1. Vocalic/ non-vocalic
constriction/non-periodic
excitation and obstruction in oral cavity
Consonantal /non-
2. produced with occlusion of contact /
consonantal
with lesser degrees of narrowing
palatal, velar, guttural /labial/ dental,
3. Compact/diffuse
alveolar consonants opposition
4. Grave/acute labial, velar/dental, alveolar, palatal
5. Flat/plain (non-flat) labial/non-labial
6. Nasal/oral nasal/oral
stops (plosives), affricates/fricatives,
7. Discontinuous/continuant
liquids, glides
8. Voiced /voiceless voiced/voiceless
noisy fricatives (labio-dental, alveolar,
trident/mellow alveo-palatal affricate)/less noisy
9.
fricatives (interdental, palatal, velar),
plosives, glides, liquids
10. Checked/unchecked glottalization/non-glottalization
11. Tense/lax fortis/lenis
12. Sharp/plain (non-sharp) palatalized/non-palatalized (in Russian)

In the table of the distinctive features representation eight pairs of them are
characteristic of English consonant phonemes.

Distinctive Feature Representation of the English Consonants

Distinctive
features l Ŋ  t k ʒ ʤ g m f p v n s  t z ð d h ≠

Vocalic/non-
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
vocalic
Consonantal/non-
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + -
consonantal
Compact/diffuse + + + + + + + - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Grave/acute + + + + + - - - - - - - - -
Nasal/oral + - - - - - - + - - - - + - - - - - - -
Tense/lax + + + - - - + - - - + + + - - - + -
Discontinuous/
+ - - + - - + - + - + + - + + - -
continuant
Strident/mellow + - + - + - + -

As we can notice in the above table /i/,/r/, /w/, /j/, are omitted be cause the
liquids /l, r/ are vocalic and consonantal and the glides /j, w/ are non-vocalic and
non-consonantal. Usually American linguists regard the semivowels /j/, /w/ to be
positional variants of the lax vowels /i/, /u/, respectively. Thus, this binary
classification has restrictions on these four classes. Besides, correlation between
the acoustic and the articulatory classification is not very clear in this theory. In
spite of the fact that the binary classification of the acoustic features has some
shortcomings, it is often used as a universal framework in the description of the
distinctive features of phonemes without any experimental research. It is useful to
use the binary classification of the acoustic distinctive features after instrumental
investigations, as the latter is helpful in making a correct classification. The
articulatory correlates of the twelve pairs of acoustic features may correspond to
more than twenty features, thanks to the division of the consonant classes. This
correlation has its own difficulties which require experimental investigation as
well. The articulatory classification is more useful in language teaching practice
than the acoustic one.
The feature strident-mellow is distinctive for eight consonant phonemes of
English, whereas it is not distinctive for the Uzbek consonants the distinctive
feature strident-mellow is very important in Russian as the consonant phonemes
form one more correlation on the basis of this feature (in Russian it is called
“myagkie-tvyordыe”) besides voiced-voiceless correlation.

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