THE CONSONANTS OF ENGLISH
A. INTRODUCTION
the pronunciation of consonants that have different places of articulation. The stops [ p, t, k ] are illustrated in the nonsense utterances [ hƏpa, hƏta, hƏka ]. These stops are said to be bilabial, alveolar, and velar. But it is not just the different places on the roof of the mouth that distinguish these sounds. They are equally characterized by the movements of the lips and different parts of the tongue. different manners of articulation, illustrating the consonants [ d, n, s ] in the nonsense words [ hƏd”, hƏn”, hƏs” ]. You can use the right arrow key, which is usually at the bottom right of the keyboard, to step through one frame at a time. In [ hƏd” ], note how, at the left of the picture, the soft palate rises to form a velic closure in the first few frames, even before the tip of the tongue moves up to form a closure on the alveolar ridge.
B. STOP CONSONANTS
Consider the difference between the words in the first column in Table 2.1 and the corresponding words in the second column. This opposition may be said to be between the set of voiceless stop consonants and the set of voiced stop consonants. But the difference is really not just one of voicing during the consonant closure, as you can see by saying these words yourself. Most people have very little voicing going on while the lips are closed during either pie or buy.
Both stop consonants are essentially voiceless. But in pie, after the release of the lip closure, there is a moment of aspiration, a period of voicelessness after the stop articulation and before the start of the voicing for the vowel. If you put your hand in front of your lips while saying pie, you can feel the burst of air that comes out during the period of voicelessness after the release of the stop. One of the main objects of this book is to teach you to become a phonetician by learning to listen very carefully. You should be able to hear these differences, but you can also see them in acoustic waveforms. Figure 2.1 is a record of the words tie and die. It is quite easy to see the different segments in the sound wave. In the first word, tie, there is a spike indicating the burst of noise that occurs when the stop closure is released, followed by a period of very small semi-random variations during the aspiration, and then a regular, repeating wave as the vocal folds begin to vibrate for the vowel. In die, the noise burst is smaller, and there is very little gap between the burst and the start of the wave for the vowel. As you can see, the major difference between tie and die is the increase in time between the release of the stop and the start of the vowel.
There is no opposition in English between words beginning with / sp / and / sb /, or / st / and / sd /, or / sk / and / sg /. English spelling has words beginning with sp, st, sc, or sk, and none that begin with sb, sd, or sg, but the stops that occur after / s / are really somewhere between initial / p / and / b /, / t / and / d /, / k / and / g /, and usually more like the so-called voiced stops / b, d, g / in that they are completely unaspirated. What about the differences between the words in the fifth and sixth columns? The consonants at the end of nap, mat, knack are certainly voiceless. But if you listen carefully to the sounds at the end of the words nab, mad, nag, you may find that the so-called voiced consonants / b, d, g / have very little voicing and might also be called voiceless. Try saying these words separately. You can, of course, say each of them with the final consonant released with a noise burst and a short vowel-like sound afterward. But it would be more normal to say each of them without releasing the final consonants, or at least without anything like a vowel. You could even say cab and not open your lips for a considerable period of time if it were the last word of an utterance. In such circumstances, it is quite clear that the final consonants are not fully voiced throughout the closure. There is, however, a clear distinction between the words in the fifth and sixth columns. Say these words in pairs—nap, nab; mat, mad; knack, nag—and try to decide which has the longer vowel. In these pairs, and in all similar pairs—such as cap, cab; cat, cad; back, bag—the vowel is much shorter before the voiceless consonants / p, t, k / than it is before the voiced consonants / b, d, g /.
The major difference between such pairs of words is in the vowel length, not in the voicing of the final consonants. For many speakers, including most Americans, the consonant between the vowels in words such as city, better, writer is not really a stop but a quick tap in which the tongue tip is thrown against the alveolar ridge. This sound is written in the IPA with the symbol [ ſ ] so that city can be transcribed as [ 'sIſi ]. Many Americans also make this kind of tap when / d / occurs after a stressed vowel and before an unstressed vowel. As a result, they do not distinguish between pairs of words such as latter and ladder. But some maintain a distinction by having a shorter vowel in words such as latter that have a voiceless consonant in their underlying form. It is as if the statement that vowels are shorter before voiceless consonants had applied first, and then a later rule was applied changing [ t ] into [ | ] when it occurred between a stressed and an unstressed syllable. Some dialects of North American English, particularly from central Canada, also distinguish between word pairs like writer and rider which are both said with a tap [ | ] with an additional vowel quality difference that is redundant with the vowel length difference found in other dialects.
Both stop consonants are essentially voiceless. But in pie, after the release of the lip closure, there is a moment of aspiration, a period of voicelessness after the stop articulation and before the start of the voicing for the vowel. If you put your hand in front of your lips while saying pie, you can feel the burst of air that comes out during the period of voicelessness after the release of the stop. One of the main objects of this book is to teach you to become a phonetician by learning to listen very carefully. You should be able to hear these differences, but you can also see them in acoustic waveforms. Figure 2.1 is a record of the words tie and die. It is quite easy to see the different segments in the sound wave. In the first word, tie, there is a spike indicating the burst of noise that occurs when the stop closure is released, followed by a period of very small semi-random variations during the aspiration, and then a regular, repeating wave as the vocal folds begin to vibrate for the vowel. In die, the noise burst is smaller, and there is very little gap between the burst and the start of the wave for the vowel. As you can see, the major difference between tie and die is the increase in time between the release of the stop and the start of the vowel.
There is no opposition in English between words beginning with / sp / and / sb /, or / st / and / sd /, or / sk / and / sg /. English spelling has words beginning with sp, st, sc, or sk, and none that begin with sb, sd, or sg, but the stops that occur after / s / are really somewhere between initial / p / and / b /, / t / and / d /, / k / and / g /, and usually more like the so-called voiced stops / b, d, g / in that they are completely unaspirated. What about the differences between the words in the fifth and sixth columns? The consonants at the end of nap, mat, knack are certainly voiceless. But if you listen carefully to the sounds at the end of the words nab, mad, nag, you may find that the so-called voiced consonants / b, d, g / have very little voicing and might also be called voiceless. Try saying these words separately. You can, of course, say each of them with the final consonant released with a noise burst and a short vowel-like sound afterward. But it would be more normal to say each of them without releasing the final consonants, or at least without anything like a vowel. You could even say cab and not open your lips for a considerable period of time if it were the last word of an utterance. In such circumstances, it is quite clear that the final consonants are not fully voiced throughout the closure. There is, however, a clear distinction between the words in the fifth and sixth columns. Say these words in pairs—nap, nab; mat, mad; knack, nag—and try to decide which has the longer vowel. In these pairs, and in all similar pairs—such as cap, cab; cat, cad; back, bag—the vowel is much shorter before the voiceless consonants / p, t, k / than it is before the voiced consonants / b, d, g /.
The major difference between such pairs of words is in the vowel length, not in the voicing of the final consonants. For many speakers, including most Americans, the consonant between the vowels in words such as city, better, writer is not really a stop but a quick tap in which the tongue tip is thrown against the alveolar ridge. This sound is written in the IPA with the symbol [ ſ ] so that city can be transcribed as [ 'sIſi ]. Many Americans also make this kind of tap when / d / occurs after a stressed vowel and before an unstressed vowel. As a result, they do not distinguish between pairs of words such as latter and ladder. But some maintain a distinction by having a shorter vowel in words such as latter that have a voiceless consonant in their underlying form. It is as if the statement that vowels are shorter before voiceless consonants had applied first, and then a later rule was applied changing [ t ] into [ | ] when it occurred between a stressed and an unstressed syllable. Some dialects of North American English, particularly from central Canada, also distinguish between word pairs like writer and rider which are both said with a tap [ | ] with an additional vowel quality difference that is redundant with the vowel length difference found in other dialects.
So, where a Midwesterner in the U.S. would say [ raIſɚ] and [ ra:Iſɚ ], with a length difference in the diphthong, in Canadian vowel “raising” we hear [ rƏIſɚ] and [ra:Iſɚ ] with a short “schwa.” We can summarize the discussion of stop consonants by thinking of the possibilities there are in the form of a branching diagram, as shown in Figure 2.2. The first question to consider is whether the gesture for the stop is released (exploded) or not. If it is released, then is it oral plosion, or is the release due to the lowering of the velum, with air escaping through the nose, making it nasal plosion? If it is oral plosion, then is the closure in the mouth entirely removed, or is the articulation in the midline retained and one or both sides of the tongue lowered so that air escapes laterally? You should be able to produce words illustrating all these possibilities. For coronal stops, there is an additional point not shown in Figure 2.2; namely, is the [ t ] or [ d ] sound produced as a tap [ ſ ] ?
C. FRICATIVES
The fricatives of English vary less than the stop consonants, yet the major allophonic variations that do occur are in many ways similar to those of the stops. Earlier we saw that when a vowel occurs before one of the voiceless stops / p, t, k /, it is shorter than it would be before one of the voiced stops / b, d, g /. The same kind of difference in vowel length occurs before voiceless and voiced fricatives. The vowel is shorter in the first word of each of the pairs strife, strive [-straIf, straIv-]; teeth, teethe [ ti, tið ]; rice, rise [ raIs, raIz ]; mission, vision [ "mIʃn`, "vIʒn ]. Stops and fricatives are the only English consonants that can be either voiced or voiceless. Consequently, we can revise our statement that vowels are shorter before voiceless stops than before voiced stops. Instead, we can say that vowels are shorter before all voiceless consonants than before all voiced consonants. In this way, we can capture a linguistically significant generalization that would have been missed if our statements about English had included two separate statements, one dealing with stops and the other dealing with fricatives.
Fricatives are like stops in three ways. First, stops and fricatives influence vowel length in similar ways—vowels before voiceless stops or fricatives are shorter than before voiced stops or fricatives. Second, final voiceless stops and fricatives are longer than final voiced stops and fricatives. Third, the final stops and fricatives classified as voiced are not actually voiced throughout the articulation unless the adjacent sounds are also voiced. In addition, both these types of articulation involve an obstruction of the airstream. Because they have an articulatory feature in common and because they act together in phonological statements, we refer to fricatives and stops together as a natural class of sounds called obstruents. The primary articulatory gesture in these fricatives is the close approximation of two articulators so that friction can be heard. The lip rounding is a lesser articulation in that the two articulators (the lower lip and the upper lip) approach one another but not sufficiently to cause friction. A lesser degree of closure by two articulators not involved in the primary articulation is called a secondary articulation. This particular one, in which the action of the lips is added to another articulation, is called labialization. The English fricatives / ʃ, ʒ / are strongly labialized, and the fricatives / s, z / are slightly labialized.
Fricatives are like stops in three ways. First, stops and fricatives influence vowel length in similar ways—vowels before voiceless stops or fricatives are shorter than before voiced stops or fricatives. Second, final voiceless stops and fricatives are longer than final voiced stops and fricatives. Third, the final stops and fricatives classified as voiced are not actually voiced throughout the articulation unless the adjacent sounds are also voiced. In addition, both these types of articulation involve an obstruction of the airstream. Because they have an articulatory feature in common and because they act together in phonological statements, we refer to fricatives and stops together as a natural class of sounds called obstruents. The primary articulatory gesture in these fricatives is the close approximation of two articulators so that friction can be heard. The lip rounding is a lesser articulation in that the two articulators (the lower lip and the upper lip) approach one another but not sufficiently to cause friction. A lesser degree of closure by two articulators not involved in the primary articulation is called a secondary articulation. This particular one, in which the action of the lips is added to another articulation, is called labialization. The English fricatives / ʃ, ʒ / are strongly labialized, and the fricatives / s, z / are slightly labialized.
D. AFFRICATES
This is a convenient place to review the status of affricates in English. An affricate is simply a sequence of a stop followed by a homorganic fricative. Some such sequences, They have been regarded just as consonant clusters comparable with those at the end of lapse and sacks (which are not affricates, as the stops and the fricatives are not homorganic). But, as we noted in the discussion of symbols for transcribing English, it is appropriate to regard the sequences [ tʃ ] and [ dʒ ] as different from other sequences of consonants. They are the only affricates in English that can occur at both the beginning and the end of words.
E. NASALS
The nasal consonants of English vary even less than the fricatives. Nasals, together with [ r, l ], can be syllabic when they occur at the end of words. As we have seen, the mark [ ͅ ] under a consonant indicates that it is syllabic Syllabic consonants can also occur in phrases such as Jack and Kate [ 'dʒӕk ᵑ 'keIt ]. One way to consider the different status of [ ᵑ ] is that in the history of English, it was derived from a sequence of the phonemes / n / and / g /. Looking at it this way, sing was at an earlier time in history / sIng /, and sink was / sInk /. There was then a sound change in which / n / became the new phoneme / ᵑ / in those words where it occurred before / g / and / k /, turning / sIng / into / sInᵍ / and / sInk / into / sIᵑk /. Another change resulted in the deletion of / g / (but not of / k /) whenever it occurred after / ᵑ / at the end of either a word (as in sing) or a stem followed by a suffix such as -er or -ing. In this way, the / g / would be dropped in singer, which contains a suffix -er, but is retained in finger, in which the -er is not a suffix. The second change has been undone in the case of some speakers from the New York area who make singer rhyme with finger.
F. APPROXIMANTS
The voiced approximants are / w, r, j, l / as in whack, rack, yak, lack. The first three of these sounds are central approximants, and the last is a lateral approximant. The articulation of each of them varies slightly depending on the articulation of the following vowel. You can feel that the tongue is in a different position in the first sounds of we and water. in most forms of British English, there is a considerable difference in the articulation of / l / before a vowel or between vowels, as in leaf or feeling, as compared with / l / before a consonant or at the end of a word, as in field or feel. In most forms of American English, there is less distinction between these two kinds of / l /. in both British and American English, the center of the tongue is pulled down and the back is arched upward as in a back vowel. If there is contact on the alveolar ridge, it is the primary articulation. The arching upward of the back of the tongue forms a secondary articulation, which we will call velarization.
G. OVERLAPPING GESTURES
All the sounds we have been considering involve movements of the articulators. They are often described in terms of the articulatory positions that characterize these movements. But, rather than thinking in terms of static positions, we should really consider each sound as a movement. This makes it easier to understand the overlapping of consonant and vowel gestures in words such as bib, did, gig. The same kind of thing happens with respect to gestures of the lips. Lip rounding is an essential part of / w /. Because there is a tendency for gestures to overlap with those for adjacent sounds, stops are slightly rounded when they occur in clusters in which / w / is the second element, as in twice, dwindle, quick [-tẉaIs-, "dẉIndl, kẉIk ]. This kind of gestural overlapping, in which a second gesture starts during the first gesture, is sometimes called anticipatory coarticulation. The gesture for the approximant is anticipated during the gesture for the stop. In many people’s speech, / r / also has some degree of lip rounding. A phoneme is an abstract unit that may be realized in several different ways. Sometimes, the differences between the different allophones of a phoneme can be explained in terms of targets and overlapping gestures. gestural targets are units that can be used in descriptions of how a speaker produces utterances. Phonemes are more abstract units that can be used in descriptions of languages to show how words contrast with one another. Virtually all the gestures for neighboring sounds overlap. Differences in the timing of one gesture with respect to another account for a wide range of the phenomena that we observe in speech. The next section provides a number of additional examples.
H. RULES FOR ENGLISH CONSONANT ALLOPHONE
These rules are simply descriptions of language behavior. phonetics is part of an exact scientific discipline,and that means we should be able to formalize descriptions of speech in terms of a set of precise statements.
I. DIACRITICS
This part talks about how the transcription of English can be made more detailed by the use of diacritics, small marks added to a symbol to narrow its meaning. The six diacritics we have introduced so far are shown in Table 2.3. that the nasalization diacritic is a small wavy line above a symbol (the “tilde” symbol), and the velarization diacritic is a tilde through the middle of a symbol. Nasalization is more common among vowels.
PULMONIC CONSONANT
A pulmonic consonant is a consonant produced by air pressure from lungs, as opposed to adjective, implosive and click consonants.
1. Ajective consonants
In phonetics, ejective consonants are usually voiceless consonants that are pronounced with a glottalic egressive airstream. In the phonology of a particular language, ejectives may contrast with aspirated, voiced, and tenuis consonants. Some languages have glottalized sonorants with creaky voice that pattern with ejectives phonologically, and other languages have ejectives that pattern with implosives, which has led to phonologists positing a phonological class of glottalic consonants, which includes ejectives.
2. Implosive consonants
Implosive consonants are stops (and possibly affricates) with a mixed glottalic ingressive and pulmonic egressive airstream mechanism.[1] That is, the airstream is controlled by moving the glottis downward in addition to expelling air from the lungs. Therefore, unlike the purely glottalic ejective consonants, implosives can be modified by phonation. Contrastive implosives are found in approximately 13%[2] of the world's languages.
In the International Phonetic Alphabet, implosives are indicated by modifying the top of a letter (voiced stop) with a downward-facing hook: ⟨ɓ ɗ ʄ ɠ ʛ ⟩.
3. Click consonants
Clicks are speech sounds that occur as consonants in many languages of Southern Africa and in three languages of East Africa. Examples familiar to English-speakers are the tsk! tsk! (American spelling) or tut-tut (British spelling) used to express disapproval or pity, the tchick! used to spur on a horse, and the clip-clop! sound children make with their tongue to imitate a horse trotting.
Technically, clicks are obstruents articulated with two closures (points of contact) in the mouth, one forward and one at the back. The enclosed pocket of air is rarefied by a sucking action of the tongue (in technical terminology, clicks have a lingual ingressive airstream mechanism). The forward closure is then released,[note 1] producing what may be the loudest consonants in the language, but in some languages such as Hadza and Sandawe, clicks can be more subtle and may even be mistaken for ejectives.
NON PULMONIC
All English sounds are created by the initiating action of air from the lungs going outward. These are categorized as pulmonic sounds. In contrast, many other languages have sounds which use additional kinds of airstream mechanisms. These are called non-pulmonic sounds.
Non-pulmonic sounds include clicks, ejectives, and implosives. They are all types of stop consonants, but they differ in the source and the direction of their airstreams.
In creating clicks and implosives, the air direction is ingressive – that is, going into the vocal tract. The initiation of the airstream occurs at the velum for clicks, and at the glottis for implosives. Thus, clicks are velaric ingressive sounds, while implosives are glottalic ingressive sounds.
Ejectives are glottalic egressive sounds – that is, the air flows out from the vocal tract. Therefore, ejectives share the direction of the air with pulmonic sounds, and share their airstream mechanism with implosives.
1. Click consonants
/ʘ/ Bilabial click (Bullseye)
Instructions:
Articulator: Lower lip
Point of Articulation: Upper lip
Voice: Voiceless
Manner: Click – 1) Raise the back of tongue to form a closure at the back of the mouth (usually around the velar area). At the same time, make a closure between the active articulator and the point of articulation. 2) While maintaining both closures, move the body of the tongue down. 3) Lower the articulator so that air rushes into the mouth, 4) Release the velar closure.
/ǀ/ Dental click (Pipe)
Instructions:
Articulator: tip of the tongue
Point of Articulation: Back of the front teeth
Voice: Voiceless
Manner: Click – 1) Raise the back of tongue to form a closure at the back of the mouth (usually around the velar area). At the same time, make a closure between the active articulator and the point of articulation. 2) While maintaining both closures, move the body of the tongue down. 3) Lower the articulator so that air rushes into the mouth, 4) Release the velar closure.
/!/ (Post)alveolar click (Exclamation Point)
Instructions:
Articulator: Tip/blade of the tongue
Point of Articulation: alveolar ridge/postalveolar region
Voice: Voiceless
Manner: Click – 1) Raise the back of tongue to form a closure at the back of the mouth (usually around the velar area). At the same time, make a closure between the active articulator and the point of articulation. 2) While maintaining both closures, move the body of the tongue down. 3) Lower the articulator so that air rushes into the mouth, 4) Release the velar closure.
/ǂ/ Palatoalveolar click (Double-barred pipe)
Instructions:
Articulator: Blade/front of the tongue
Point of Articulation: Hard palate and alveolar ridge
Voice: Voiceless
Manner: Click – 1) Raise the back of tongue to form a closure at the back of the mouth (usually around the velar area). At the same time, make a closure between the active articulator and the point of articulation. 2) While maintaining both closures, move the body of the tongue down. 3) Lower the articulator so that air rushes into the mouth, 4) Release the velar closure.
/ǁ/ Alveolar lateral click (Double Pipe)
Instructions:
Articulator: Tip and sides of the tongue
Point of Articulation: Alveolar ridge and insides of the side teeth
Voice: Voiceless
Manner: Click – 1) Raise the back of tongue to form a closure at the back of the mouth (usually around the velar area). At the same time, make a closure between the active articulator and the point of articulation. 2) While maintaining both closures, move the body of tongue down. 3) Lower the articulator so that air rushes into the mouth, 4) Release the velar closure.
/ɓ/ Voiced bilabial implosive (Hooktop B)
Instructions:
Articulator: Lower lip
Point of Articulation: Upper lip
Manner: Implosive – 1) Make a closure between the articulator and the point of articulation. 2) While your glottis is vibrating (i.e., voicing is occurring), move your larynx down. 3) Release the closure made in 1), which will allow air to flow into your mouth.
Voice: Voiced
/ɗ/ Voiced dental/alveolar implosive (Hooktop D)
Instructions:
Articulator: Tip of the tongue
Point of Articulation: Back of the upper front teeth or alveolar ridge
Manner: Implosive – 1) Make a closure between the articulator and the point of articulation. 2) While your glottis is vibrating (i.e., voicing is occurring), move your larynx down. 3) Release the closure made in 1), which will allow air to flow into your mouth.
Voice: Voiced
/ʄ/ Voiced palatal implosive (Hooktop Barred Dotless J)
Instructions:
Articulator: Front or middle of the tongue
Point of Articulation: Hard palate
Manner: Implosive – 1) Make a closure between the articulator and the point of articulation. 2) While your glottis is vibrating (i.e., voicing is occurring), move your larynx down. 3) Release the closure made in 1), which will allow air to flow into your mouth.
Voice: Voiced
/ɠ/ Voiced velar implosive (Hooktop G)
Instructions:
Articulator: Back of the tongue (tongue dorsum)
Point of Articulation: Velum
Manner: Implosive – 1) Make a closure between the articulator and the point of articulation. 2) While your glottis is vibrating (i.e., voicing is occurring), move your larynx down. 3) Release the closure made in 1), which will allow air to flow into your mouth.
Voice: Voiced
/ʛ/ Voiced uvular implosive (Hooktop Small Capital G)
Instructions:
Articulator: Back of the tongue (tongue dorsum)
Point of Articulation: Uvula
Manner: Implosive – 1) Make a closure between the articulator and the point of articulation. 2) While your glottis is vibrating (i.e., voicing is occurring), move your larynx down. 3) Release the closure made in 1), which will allow air to flow into your mouth.
Voice: Voiced
3. Ejective consonants
/pʼ/ Bilabial ejective (Lower-case P with Apostrophe)
Instructions:
Articulator: Lower lip
Point of Articulation: Upper lip
Manner: Ejective – 1) Make a closure between the articulator and the point of articulation. Approximately simultaneously, close the glottis (i.e., make a glottal stop). 2) Raise your larynx. 3) Lower the articulator, which will release air outward. 4) Release the glottal closure.
Voice: Voiceless
/tʼ/ Dental alveolar ejective (Lower-case T with Apostrophe)
Instructions:
Articulator: Tip of the tongue
Point of Articulation: Back of the upper front teeth or alveolar ridge
Manner: Ejective – 1) Make a closure between the articulator and the point of articulation. Approximately simultaneously, close the glottis (i.e., make a glottal stop). 2) Raise your larynx. 3) Lower the articulator, which will release air outward. 4) Release the glottal closure.
Voice: Voiceless
/kʼ/ Velar ejective (Lower-case K with Apostrophe)
Instructions:
Articulator: Back of the tongue (tongue dorsum)
Point of Articulation: Velum
Manner: Ejective – 1) Make a closure between the articulator and the point of articulation. Approximately simultaneously, close the glottis (i.e., make a glottal stop). 2) Raise your larynx. 3) Lower the articulator, which will release air outward. 4) Release the glottal closure.
Voice: Voiceless
/sʼ/ Alveolar fricative ejective (Lower-Case S with Apostrophe)
Instructions:
Articulator: Tip of the tongue
Point of Articulation: Alveolar ridge
Manner: Ejective – 1) Make a closure between the articulator and the point of articulation. Approximately simultaneously, close the glottis (i.e., make a glottal stop). 2) Raise your larynx. 3) Lower the articulator, which will release air outward. 4) Release the glottal closure.
Voice: Voiceless
OVERLAPPING GESTURE
when initial consonant
and final consonant can mute the sound of middle vowel. For examples : bib,
did, and gig.
Rules of English
consonant allophones
1. Consonants are longer
when the end of phrase.
For examples: big ball, bad girl.
2. Voiceless stops p,t,k
are aspirated when they are syllable initial.
For examples: pen and ten.
3. Obstruent stop and
fricatives classified as voiced b,d,g and etc are voiced but their sounds are smaller when they are at the end utterance and before voiceless sound.
For example: add two or big cock.
4. Voiced stops and
affricates b, d, g, are voiceless when syllable initial and preceded by
voiceless sound.
For example: this bag.
5. Voiceless stops p,t,k
are unaspirated after word S.
For example: spoon stone skull.
6. Voiceless obstruent
p,t,k, are longer when they are followed by voiced obstruent b,d,g.
For examples: cab and cap.
7. Approximant
w,r,j,l little bit voiceless after
voiceless stop p,t,k .
For examples: clone and twin.
8. Stops are unexploded
when there are two stops sideline, one stop sound should be decrease.
For examples: apt and rubbed.
9. Voiceless stops in
final syllable are accompanied by glottal stop.
For examples: tip, pit, kick.
10. Sound T is replaced by
glottal stops when it occurs before alveolar nasal.
For instances: beaten,
button, kitten.
11. Nasals are syllabic
when the end of word after obstruent
b/d/g/v.
For
instances: leaden and chasm.
12. Sound “L” is syllabic
when its at the end of word and occur after consonant.
For
instances : castle paddle toddle etc.
13. Sounds “L and R” are
syllabic when they are at the end of the word and comes after consonant.
For
instances : razor writer syllable glottal.
14. Alveolar stop /t/d
become voiced taps when they are between two vowels and the second alveolar stops should be muted.
For
instances : (fatty and attack).
15. Alveolar stops /t/d and
alveolar nasal /n become voiced taps
when they are between two vowels and sequence the second alveolar stops should
be muted.
For
instances : winter and winner.
16. Alveolar consonant
(t,d,n,l) become dental before dental consonant (th).
For
instances : eight, tenth, night and light.
17. Alveolar stops t,d
become omitted when between two consonant.
for
instances : best player and most people, test toefl and etc.
18.The sound of voiceless
stops /p/t/k occur after nasal and before voiceless fricatives /f/th/s followed
by unstressed vowel in the same word.
For instances : youngster and something.
19. Consonants is shortened
when its before other consonant.
For instances : big game and top post.
20. Velar stops (k,g) are
more front before more front vowel (a,i, and e).
For examples : key and kit.
21. The sound of “L” is
velarized ( similar with velar k,g,ng )after vowel and before a consonant at the end of word.
For examples : clock and click.
References: