Introdungcing English language part 13 pdf

Alongside each symbol is an example of a specific word to illustrate the particular sound quality that is being represented.. While the location of particular sounds within individual wo

CONSONANTS AND VOWELS

In all of the B sections, we will offer further discussion and explanation of the areas that we introduced in Section A Rather than providing extra detail on everything that was introduced, we focus in this section on some of the significant aspects of the English language In this unit, for example, we examine the nature of consonants and vowels

in more detail

Consonants

In A1, we introduced the three-part categorisation system for characterising the articu-lation of a consonant: place, manner and voice To develop our knowledge of this process further, it is helpful to view these three different categorical elements in a systematic format, which is most commonly achieved by viewing consonants in a grid formation However, before we do this, it is useful first to present a detailed list of the range of consonant symbols of the English language so that you are familiar with the symbols that belong to the International Phonetic Alphabet for consonant production Many of these symbols will be very familiar as they are the same as traditional English spelling, though there are also some that are quite different Alongside each symbol is an example of a specific word to illustrate the particular sound quality that

is being represented The exact part of the word which is being represented by the phonetic symbol is underlined

m – bu’er (glottal stop)

f – flash

n – leisure

l – loft

tt – church

dn – judge

B1

While the location of particular sounds within individual words is represented here

by underlining, there is a more principled way to characterise this, by referring to word initial, word medial and word final position For example, with /θ/, the example given

above (thigh) is word initial This sound occurs in word medial position in author and word final position in path With /t/ a word initial example is given above with sheep.

It occurs word medially with fishes and in word final position in dish The example

of church above contains /tt/ in word initial and word final position within the

same word Such distinctions are important because sounds often change depending

on where they occur in a word

You may have noticed that some consonants that exist in English spelling are not present in the phonetic consonant symbols: the following letters are not listed above:

c, q, x or y They are not required for phonetic representations in the English lan-guage The letter c is most often represented phonetically by either /k/ or /s/ The

former is referred to as hard c in words such as cat whereas the latter is referred to as soft c in words such as cider Additionally, in words such as cello, c is represented by

/tt/ The letter q is not required as it is articulated as [kw]

The letter x is represented by a combination of consonant sounds, either /ks/ as

in ox or, on rarer occasions and in some accents as /gz/, as in exam However, there

is one exception to this with the letter x In one particular variety, Scottish English, /x / is used as a phonetic symbol to represent the consonant sound in words such as

loch We will come back to this below Finally, the letter y is represented by /j/ as in yet, as we have seen in the above list.

All of the different consonant symbols listed above can be placed upon a consonant grid, which can function as a really useful cross-referencing tool for defining the three-part

classification system Table B1.1 presents an example of such a grid The place of

articula-tion categories introduced in A1 run horizontally and the manner categories run

verti-cally You will notice that there are two sounds in some of the squares Where you have such consonant pairings, the sound on the left is always voiceless, whereas the sound on the right is always voiced If there is only one consonant in the box, remember that you can ascertain whether it is voiced or voiceless by performing the vibration test described

in A1 – place your fingers on your vocal cords and physically test for evidence of vibration Consonant classification tends to take the order of voice, place, and manner Test out the usefulness of the above grid by identifying the IPA symbol for the following consonant descriptions:

voiced velar nasal

voiced velar stop

voiceless dental fricative

voiceless bilabial stop

voiced labio-dental fricative

voiced palatal fricative

voiced alveolar lateral approximant

voiceless labio-dental fricative

Most consonant tables which focus solely on the English language do not tend to include

regional variants, but if we were to add the loch sound from Scottish English to the

grid, the symbol /x / would live in the velar fricative column

You should now test the usefulness of the consonant grid in reverse by coming

up with the three-part description for the following consonant symbols: /m/ /f/ /s/ /tt/ and /n/

Any speech sound can be symbolised using the IPA and described accurately using the classification system as above Even some non-speech sounds can be accounted for in this way: a voiceless bilabial released ingressive stop (ingressive refers to when the air in the airstream is pulled into the vocal tract) is a kiss

Vowels

Before undertaking any formal study of the sound system of the English language, there is a common perception that English has five vowels: a e i o u While this is the case for the Roman alphabet and the traditional orthographic written system of modern English which you are presently reading, there are many more vowel sounds which we make when we engage in spoken communication with one another These are represented through various symbols within the IPA

The vowels of the English language can be categorised as pure vowels (also referred to as monophthongs), or as diphthongs Pure vowels/monophthongs are defined

as such as they have one single sound quality You may also find these sounds referred

to as steady-state vowels, reflecting how the tongue and the lips are held in a steady

position when the vowel sound is articulated In contrast, diphthongs have two sounds and the speaker will make a transition from one sound to another in the pro-duction of the vowel

It is important to note that pure vowels can be split into short or long vowels depending upon their duration – how long a sound takes to produce compared with another sound A long vowel is represented by the diacritic symbol £ which appears directly after the short vowel symbol, to signify the vowel length

For example, the short vowel /a/ as in cat has a corresponding long vowel /a£/ as

in car.

Below is a summary of English language monophthongs and diphthongs As with the consonant list, the IPA symbols appear directly alongside specifically selected words

to illustrate the particular sound quality which is symbolically represented:

Table B1.1 The consonant sounds of the English language

Bilabial Labio- Dental Alveolar Palatal Velar Glottal

dental Stop

Fricative

Affricate

Nasal

Approximant

Lateral

approximant

m

n r l

j

g

w

v

h

short vowels

e – batter

long vowels

Diphthongs

ax – bite

ak – house

ke – cruel

xe – ear

εe – air

In A1 we briefly mentioned vowel trapeziums, the diagrammatic way in which vowel sounds can be graphically represented on the tongue, sometimes referred to as vowel quadrilaterals An example of a vowel trapezium is given below The eight vowels that

appear at specific points on the trapezium in Figure B1.1 are known as cardinal vowels.

i

e

h

a

Close

Close-mid

Open-mid

l

o u

Figure B1.1 Vowel trapezium of cardinal vowels

The cardinal vowel system was devised by phonetician Daniel Jones in the early twentieth century It has been a highly influential model in aiding the description of

vowel sounds and it is still the dominant model used today The term cardinal was

adopted, as the model follows a similar idea to the principle of the cardinal points on

a compass (north, south, east and west) The cardinal vowels are fixed points and the quality of the vowel sounds that are produced by speakers can be identified by refer-ence to these fixed points

The ‘front’, ‘central’ and ‘back’ categories that run along the top of the trapez-ium diagram refer to the positioning of the body of the tongue – basically how far forward or retracted it is when the vowel sound is being made The ‘close’ through to

‘open’ categories that run down the left-hand side refer to the positioning of the tongue

in relation to the roof of the mouth If the top surface of the tongue is close to the roof of the mouth, then these sounds can be identified as close vowels If the tongue

is far away from the roof of the mouth, then the vowel sounds are termed open On some other vowel trapezium diagrams these positions are alternatively characterised by the terms ‘high’ ‘mid’ and ‘low’, or a combination of these, as illustrated in Figure B1.2

i

e

h

q m

a

Close

Close-mid

Open-mid

l

o

u

k o

Figure B1.2 Cardinal and central vowels

As we have already seen above, the IPA for English includes a number of other vowels The trapezium in Figure B1.2 illustrates the positioning of these other import-ant monophthongs

The vowel sound represented by the symbol /e/ is known as schwa, named after

the Hebrew vowel It is sometimes termed a neutral vowel and is the most frequent vowel sound in the English language The /x/, /k/ and /w / vowels, together with schwa,

are known as centralised vowel sounds They are articulated in a central position in

the mouth, as graphically illustrated If you relax your tongue, open your lips slightly,

and make a vowel sound (usually spelled in writing as ‘uh’), that is a schwa.

The shape of the lips is another category which is taken into consideration when characterising vowel sounds In order to incorporate different lip shapes, phoneticians have identified different shapes within which phonetic symbols can be displayed A

square ñ is used to indicate that lips are unrounded, often termed spread, whereas

a circle ï is used to indicate that lips are rounded Rounded lips tend to be used for

back vowels, including /u/ /o/ and /c/ whereas other English language vowels tend to use unrounded lips These shapes can be used on vowel trapeziums to signal lip-shape

in addition to location on the tongue

With diphthongs, some sounds start with rounded lips and end with spread lips,

others start with spread and end with rounded lips For example, /ek/ as in roe starts

with spread lips and ends with rounded The following symbol represents this diph-thong lip shape: ó Other diphdiph-thongs will start off with rounded lips and end up with

spread lips, as in /ke/ for cruel This transition in lip shape is represented by the

following symbol: ò Make these sounds out loud in front of a mirror so that you can physically see the difference with the positioning of your lips

Accent

Knowledge of phonetics and phonology is crucial for research into accent, the study

of pronunciation (see A9) Many phoneticians who work on the English language are interested in describing and cataloguing variations that exist between the accents of groups of English speakers from different regional and social backgrounds In order

to undertake such investigations, a good foundational knowledge of vowel and con-sonant sounds is essential Researchers who conduct investigations of accent variations

are referred to as sociophoneticians or sociolinguists, examples of whose work can

be seen throughout strand 9

In the list of consonants above, there are 24 sounds listed, plus the glottal stop

Received Pronunciation, or RP, the social accent traditionally imbued with the most

prestige in England, has 24 consonant sounds, excluding the glottal stop, which is instead traditionally associated with regional accents Historically, RP has been used as the benchmark reference point for phonetics sounds in many textbooks However, as we

will see in B9, language loyalty to RP is dying out Indeed, some authors have started instead to take what they term Non-Regional Pronunciation as their starting point

for consideration of phonetics and phonology (for example, Collins and Mees 2009) Non-regional pronunciation can involve the use of glottal stops on occasions for the articulation of certain words (see D1, B9 and C9 for further discussion of language loyalty and particular phonetic speech features)

Furthermore, as we have seen already above, if we want to be inclusive of other

varieties then there is a need to include other symbols, such as /x / to denote the loch

consonant sound in Scottish English In C1, we will look in more depth at accent variation by focusing on different examples and texts to enable you to explore this important application of phonetics and phonology further

Consonant classification answers

voiced velar nasal: /f/

voiced velar stop: /g/

voiceless dental fricative /0/

voiceless bilabial stop: /p/

voiced labio-dental fricative: /v/

voiced palatal fricative: /n/

voiced alveolar lateral approximant: /l/

voiceless labio-dental fricative: /f/