What’s a consonant? A speech sound produced with air stream impeded, constricted, diverted, or obstructed

1. CONSONANTS Next major topic: Consonant articulation. What’s a vowel? A speech sound produced with a (relatively) unimpeded air stream. What’s a consonant? A speech sound produced with air stream impeded, constricted, diverted, or obstructed. As before: Vowels are open-ish , consonants are closed-ish. Classification system for vowels: tongue height, frontness, and lip rounding Classification system for consonants: place, manner, and voicing

2. A. Place (also called place of articulation ) : Where is the breath stream impeded, constricted, diverted, or obstructed? For example: lips, teeth, alveolar ridge, palate, velum, … These are the articulatory landmarks that we reviewed earlier. More on place later. B. Manner: How is the breath stream impeded, constricted, diverted, or obstructed? For example: 1. stop or plosive: complete obstruction of air stream   (glottal stop, as in “ uh-oh ”) 2. fricative: air passed thru a narrow channel, creating turbulence.  (as in “ shoe” ),  ( as in “ theory” ) [h],  (as in “Zsa Zsa ” ),  ( as in “ this” ). 3. nasal: air stream redirected (diverted) through the nasal cavity.  (as in “si ng ”)

3. Manner categories continued 4. affricate complete obstruction of air stream followed by fricative release. [t  (as in “ choke” ),  (as in “ joke ”) 5. approximants: consonants that are almost like vowels [r  (as in “yellow”) These are the “open-est” of the closed-ish sounds – breath stream is fairly unimpeded. But, these sounds “pattern” like consonants; i.e., speakers treat them like consonants not vowels. a rat or an rat ? a lake or an lake ? a walk or an walk ? a yak or an yak ? So, these are consonants and that’s that, even if we can’t supply a neat definition separating vowels from consonants.

4. Manner categories continued Two Types of Approximants Liquids Glides (also called semivowels) [r  Why are [r  called liquids and  called glides? Easy: They just are. If there’s a good reason for this I don’t know it, But, you’ll have to learn it same as everyone else. 6. flap: Like a stop, but closure is very brief [  (as in “ kitty, ” “butter,” “Betty,” “later” ) There are other manner classes, but the 6 I listed are the ones needed for English.

5. C. Voicing Are the vocal folds vibrating? Yes No Voiced Unvoiced/Voiceless English has many pairs of consonants that are identical in all other ways except for voicing. Some examples:  -  ,  -  ,  -  ,  -  ,  -  -   -  These are called voiced-voiceless cognates .

9. d. Aspiration Voiced stops are never aspirated. Voiceless stops are sometimes aspirated and sometimes not. These voiceless stops will be aspirated : a. Word-initial, regardless of stress: tap, cat, Topeka (stop precedes an unstressed vowel) , command (ditto)          b. Intervocalic (between 2 vowels) but only when preceding a stressed vowel. me t iculous, re p air, re c alcitrant, re t urn

10. These voiceless stops will be unaspirated: a. Following /s/ stop, skate, stick, stare, spike b. Intervocalic, preceding an unstressed vowel napping, camper, sicken, supper (Note: Sometimes these are unaspirated, sometimes they are lightly aspirated.) See Table 5-2 (p. 96) of MacKay for a nice summary with examples.

11. Voice Onset Time (VOT) VOT = Interval between articulatory release and onset of voicing. voicing onset release     voicing onset and release ~ simultaneous VOT ~0 msec VOT ~85 msec

12. Voice Onset Time (VOT) voicing onset release     Very short delay between release and voicing onset (~10 ms) VOT ~10 msec VOT ~85 msec

13.  (unaspirated [p]) With [s] edited out

14. pack    capping     (aspirated [p])  (lightly aspirated [p]) /p/ precedes stressed vowel (aspirated) /p/ precedes unstressed vowel (unaspirated or lightly aspirated)

15. 2. Fricatives Mechanism of sound production is simple: Air is passed through a narrow channel, creating turbulence. Turbulence = noise . When you look at white water on a river or stream you are looking at turbulence. (You can also hear this turbulence; this is the noise you hear when white water passes between boulders and whatnot.) All fricatives involve this turbulence-generating mechanism. English fricatives: Voiceless:  ( “ theory” )  (“ shoe” ) [h] Voiced:  ( “ this” )  (“Zsa Zsa ” ) All English fricatives except (maybe) [h] form voiced-voiceless cognates:  -  -  -  -  For each pair: Same place, same manner, different voicing.

17.  -  : Place = Labiodental (lips-teeth) Flat constriction (slit fricatives); flat (rather than round or grooved) constrictions produce a weak noise. No resonator in front of the constriction; spectrum has a pretty flat shape (no well-defined resonant peaks)  :  : spectrum during [f] noise (flat) spectrum during [v] noise (flat, but with periodic buzz)

23. hoy  ahoy  spectrum during  – no harmonics spectrum during    – note the harmonics  

25. NOTE: Spelling convention: ng =  , but there is no  in sing, singer, song, hanger, stirring, bang, banger, etc. A  may follow the  , though: strangle   Bangor   languid   mangle   jungle   following  is also common: sinker  lanky  blank  clunker   

26. 4. Affricates There are only 2 on these in English:  and  (also  ) church  (or  )  judge  (or  ) The mechanism of sound production combines stop and fricative: the vocal tract is completely occluded (with the velum up); the stop-like occlusion is released into a short-ish fricative:  or  . Place: Alveopalatal/Palatoalveolar/Prepalatal; the same as  -  , not the same as  -  . Place, in my opinion, is not alveolar , as indicated in the text.

27. 5. Approximants Two Types of Approximants Liquids Glides (also called semivowels) [r  red  led  wed  yet  These sounds are vowel-ish consonants , though they are definitely consonants . For  (i.e., all but  ), there is a vowel with the same quality:  ->    ->  ->   is the consonant version of     is the consonant version of   is the consonant version of 

28. 5. Approximants Two Types of Approximants Liquids Glides (also called semivowels) [r  red  led  wed  yet  Another Way to Classify Approximants Approximants Central Lateral [r  Typical flow through the center of the vocal tract. Flow around the sides of the tongue.

29.  is called a lateral : the tongue is on the alveolar ridge, and acoustic energy flows along the two sides (lateral margins) of the tongue. This is how  gets the name lateral. It’s all by itself; i.e.,  is the only lateral consonant in English . The remainder of the sounds in this category (  ) are called central approximants .  : these are produced in the same way as     : retroflexed or bunched, somewhat rounded (like    )  : high, back, rounded (like  )  : high, front, spread (like  ) Notice that these are features of vowel articulation, not features of consonant articulation . But since these really are consonants, somehow we have to force these onto a consonant articulation chart using features such as alveolar, palatal, alveopalatal, etc. It’s cumbersome and a bit forced, but it’s done.  = alveolar (sometimes palatal) ;  = bilabial and velar;  = palatal Classifications are somewhat arbitrary, but you still have to learn them.

30. Last point on approximants The symbol we’ve been using in here for consonant R is  . In the IPA,  is used for a trilled R, as in Spanish (and many other languages). The official, legitimate IPA symbol for the rhotic R that occurs in English is  (lower case R rotated 180 0 counter-clockwise)  This is a headache to write, and since English does not have a trilled R, it’s convenient to just borrow the  symbol.

31. 6. Flap Alveolar place ; like a [d], but with very brief contact with the alveolar ridge. Occurs as an allophone of /t/ and /d/ between vowels and preceding unstressed vowels:  ladder   latter  homophones  plotter   plodder  homophones  kitty   butter   bladder   seedy   ready   better 