Introduction to
Phonetics & Phonology
Ježek Session 3
Mgr. Miroslav Ježek, Ph.D.
Brno, 23rd March
2020

Vocal folds
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C:\Users\Monika\Desktop\vocal folds.jpg

Articulatory level
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•Throat (pharyngeal cavity)
•Mouth (oral cavity)
•Nose (nasal cavity)
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•Place of articulation (e.g. lips, teeth, alveolar ridge)
•Manner of articulation (e.g. plosive, fricative)
•Energy of articulation (fortis/lenis)
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Articulatory system
C:\Users\Monika\Desktop\Diagram-human-vocal-organs-location-places-speech.jpg


Consonants
•Sounds produced by obstruction of the airflow somewhere in the vocal tract (i.e. in nasal, oral or
pharyngeal cavity).
•The crucial criteria for the description of consonants are:
•place of articulation (where the obstruction takes place);
•manner of articulation (what type of obstruction it is);
•energy of articulation (voiced v. voiceless; also devoiced).
•Phonologically, consonants are non-syllabic, i.e. they appear at the beginning and the end of
syllables (bit).
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Consonants
C:\Users\Monika\Desktop\Ipa-consonants.png


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•ENGLISH CONSONANTS

Place of articulation
•bilabial (upper and lower lip): /p/ and /b/;
•labio-dental (lower lip and upper teeth): /f/ and /v/;
•dental (upper teeth and tongue tip): /ð/ and /θ/;
•alveolar (alveolar ridge and tongue tip): /t/ and /d/, /s/ and /z/;
•post-alveolar, palato-alveolar (behind alveolar ridge and tongue): /r/, /tʃ/ and /dʒ/, /ʃ/ and
/ʒ/;
•palatal (hard palate and tongue): /j/;
•velar (soft palate (velum) and tongue): /ɳ/, /k/ and /g/;
•glottal (glottis): /h/ and [ʔ].

Manner of articulation
•plosives (stops): complete obstruction in oral cavity; closing, compression, release stages; /p/
and /b/, /t/ and /d/, /k/ and /g/ + /ʔ/;
•nasals: complete closure in mouth so air escapes through nasal cavity; they are frictionless
continuants /m/, /n/, and /ɳ/;
•affricates: release stage is prolonged so friction occurs at the place where plosives are
articulated; /tʃ/ and /dʒ/;
•fricatives: two articulators held sufficiently close so escaping air causes friction; /f/ and /v/,
/ð/ and /θ/, /s/ and /z/ + /h/;
•approximants: articulators narrowly close but not enough to cause friction; between fricatives and
vowels; /r/, /j/, /l/, /w/;
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Manner of articulation
•taps (flaps): single contraction where one articulator is thrown against another; US [ɾ];
•trills: vibrations between active and passive articulators; Scottish or Czech [r];
•laterals: consonants (affricates, fricatives, approximants, taps) where airflow is blocked in the
centre of the tongue and the air escapes through the sides of the tongue; lateral approximant /l/.
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•PLUS SOME MORE TERMS OFTEN MENTIONED IN ACADEMIC LITERATURE:
•obstruents: a single term covering plosives, fricatives and affricates.
•sonorants: continuous non-turbulent airflow; term covering nasals, approximants, flaps, some
trills + vowels.
•continuants: no complete closure in oral cavity; term covering fricatives, approximants + vowels

Energy of articulation
•Voiced consonants (e.g. /b/, /d/, /g/, /v/…); lenis articulation; vocal cords vibrating.
•Voiceless consonants (e.g. /p/, /t/, /k/, /f/…); fortis articulation; vocal cords open.
•Devoiced consonants (e.g. cod in pre-pausal environments)
•Cf. Eat the cot. v. Eat the cod. v. Eat the cod on the table.

Description of consonants
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•Combines the three modes of articulation (energy + place + manner), thus:
•/b/ is a voiced bilabial plosive;
•/f/ is a voiceless labio-dental fricative, etc.

Secondary articulation
•labialisation: lip-rounding; e.g. swan; rude
•palatalisation: centre of tongue closer to hard palate; e.g. tune, Czech ťukat
•nasalisation: part of airflow escapes through nasal cavity; e.g. morning; French bon
•velarisation: back of tongue closer to soft palate; e.g. dark [ɫ] pill
•uvularisation: back of tongue close to uvula; sounds in Arabic, Semitic languages
•pharyngealisation: pharynx (epiglottis) is constricted; some Danish consonants
•glottalisation: addition of the glottal stop; e.g. put (see below)
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•SELECTED CONSONANTAL PHENOMENA

Glottalisation
•Insertion of the glottal stop [ʔ] before voiceless plosives (p, t, k) - pre-glottalisation (also
glottal reinforcement); e.g. pot [pɒʔt].
•Insertion of the glottal stop in place of voiceless plosives (p, t, k) - glottalisation (also
glottal replacement), e.g. pot [pɒʔ].
•Though not present in any transcription model of RP, glottal replacement is a very frequent
feature (even in RP) especially before obstruents (quite good, quite cheap, quite strong) and
approximants (quite well, quite light)
•RP speakers avoid glottal replacement especially before syllabic nasals and syllabic /l/ (button,
bottom, little), and in intervocalic positions (butter, water, matter)

/g/-dropping
•alveolar [n] instead of velar [ɳ] in –ing endings; e.g. doin’
•Dropped /g/ stigmatised because of strong relation to orthography (but, curiously, [ɳg] forms
stigmatised as well; e.g. West Midlands and Liverpool).
•upper class the same as lower working class: [n]
•Why? No social pressure; i.e. no danger for members of the upper-class of being mistaken for lower
classes.

/th/-fronting
•Dental fricatives replaced by labio-dental ones; thus /ð/ and /θ/ are replaced by /f/ and /v/
respectively.
•nothing, brother, southern, etc.
•possible age-grading feature?
•Age-grading refers to features that occur in younger speakers but later disappear. This, however,
does not signal linguistic change taking place as it reoccurs with every generation.
•Typically associated with London / Estuary English, but first spotted in Yorkshire in 1876 (Upton
2012: 395).
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/h/-dropping
•Refers to the omission of /h/ in word-initial positions.
•Stigmatised due to influence of spelling.
•Found in many regional dialects in England.
•/h/ has always been subject to great variation (e.g. historical, hotel in today’s English.
•hypercorrection (hour, honest as well as horange)
•In some words /h/ was added where there was none in the original source (e.g. Latin eremita, ModE
hermit).
•Differences between GB v. US (e.g. herb)

/h/-dropping
•Subject to heavy stigmatisation: ‘so important indeed is the question of the use of h’s in England
… that no marriage should take place between persons whose ideas on this subject do not agree’
(Hill 1902: 13, qtd. in Beal 2008: 27)
•Many anecdotes, e.g.:
•Doctor: I can tell you what you are suffering from, my good fellow. You’re suffering from acne!’
•Patient: ‘Ackney??! I only wish I’d never been near the place!
• (Mr Punch’s Cockney Humour, 1841)

/h/-dropping
C:\Users\Monika\Desktop\Untitled.jpg
(Poor Letter H, 1866)

/l/-vocalisation
•Dark /l/ [ɫ] is not released laterally (sides of tongue) and becomes a rounded vowel.
•The vowel is somewhere between [o] and [ʊ], sometimes this symbol is chosen [ɤ].
•Spreading rapidly, but not accepted in RP yet.
•If it becomes an RP feature, then new diphthongs silk /ɪʊ/ and help /ɛʊ/ appear.
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/r/-dropping
•Started in the 18th C, that’s why US English is (predominantly) rhotic (exceptions e.g. New York
working-class English).
•In the past, stigmatised for the lack of accordance with spelling.
•rhymes such as morn / dawn considered vulgar
•Dropped /r/ created new diphthongs, namely /ɪə/, /ɛə/, /ɔə/, and /ʊə/
•Interestingly, in modern RP there is no /ɛə/ and /ɔə/ and the status of /ʊə/ is increasingly less
certain.

labio-dental /r/
•/r/ is replaced by a labio-dental approximant [ʋ].
•No phonemic contrast between ring v. wing.
•Considered a speech defect (imperfect children’s pronunciation maintained into adulthood) by some,
for others it is a modern variant of the phoneme.

labio-dental /r/
C:\Users\Monika\Desktop\hqdefault.jpg
Roy Hodgson- former England football manager. Notowiously known for labiodental /r/.

Intrusive /r/
•Linking /r/ supported by spelling (e.g. here is).
•Intrusive /r/ not supported by spelling but inserted to avoid a vocalic hiatus across word
boundaries (e.g. I saw him, law and order) as well as word-internally (e.g. drawing).
•Used after /ɑ:/, /ɔ:/ and, in particular /ə/.
•Extremely frequent in RP, even non-native learners encouraged to adopt it (e.g. Trudgill 2002).

yod-dropping
•Yod refers to the /j/ sound present in some words of the GOOSE and CURE sets (boom v. mute ; poor
v. pure).
•In the past, yod was far more common: (e.g. chew, juice, rude, crew, blue, flew, etc.; now in RP
these words are /j/-less).
•Yod now dropped in tune, student, duke, reduce, new, numerous, suit, solution; in RP all of them
/j/-full apart from the last two; in US English all of them /j/-less.
•Yod-dropping frequent in Cockney, East Anglia (GB) and US English

yod-coalescence
•Alternatively, yod can coalesce (merge) with the preceding plosives and fricatives to produce
palatalised consonants:
•within one word: tune, duke, issue ;
•across word boundaries: could you, don’t you, this year.
•historically, yod-coalescence was stigmatised in many words where it is common today: e.g. sugar
only [sju:gə] in the 18thC.
•In modern RP common in unaccented syllables (perpetual, graduate), not so in accented ones
(Tuesday, dew)
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whale-wale merger
•In the past, two different phonemes /hw/ v. /w/ (phonetically [ʍ] v. [w].
•Educated speakers retained /hw/ well into the 20th C.
•Now rare in RP, but the standard form in Scottish English.

Pronouncing dictionaries: ODP (2003), LPD (2008), CEPD (2011) - consonants
•/t/-glottalisation: being an allophone, [ʔ] is absent from the transcriptions, but commented on in
glossaries (extra information boxes)
•Intrusive /r/:
•In ODP present in e.g. Clara /klɑ:rə(r)/, drawing /drɔ:(r)ɪɳ/;
•In LPD present in drawing / drɔ:rɪɳ/;
•In CEPD not present, only explained in Glossary.
•Yod-coalescence:
•ODP gives tune both as /tju:n/ and /tʃu:n/- no variant preferred.
•LPD gives tune both as /tju:n/ and /tʃu:n/- first variant preferred.
•CEPD also gives both /tʃu:n/ and /tju:n/ for tune, but in the reversed order compared to LPD.
•the dictionaries comment on coalesced yod across word boundaries (e.g. could you), agreeing it
belongs to RP.

References
•BEAL, Joan. 2008a. ‘Shamed by Your English?’. In Joan Beal, Carmela Nocera and Massimo Sturiale
(eds) Perspectives on Prescriptivism. Bern: Peter Lang, pp. 21-40.
•HAMMERTON, J. A. 1841. Mr. Punch’s Cockney Humour. London.
•H. HON. HENRY. 1866. Poor Letter H: Its Use and Abuse. London.
•TRUDGILL, Peter. 2002. Sociolinguistic Variation and Change. Washington: Georgetown University
Press.
•UPTON, Clive. 2012. ‘Modern Regional English in the British Isles’. In Lynda Mugglestone (ed.) The
Oxford History of English. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 379-414.
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References- dictionaries
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•ROACH, Peter, Jane Setter, and John Esling (eds.) [Daniel Jones]. 2011. Cambridge English
Pronouncing Dictionary, 18th ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
•UPTON, Clive, William A. Kretzschmar Jr and Rafal Konopka. 2003. The Oxford Dictionary of
Pronunciation for Current English. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
•WELLS, J. C. 2008. Longman Pronunciation Dictionary, 3rd ed. London: Pearson Longman.
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