1 Introduction to phonetics

1.1 What is phonetics?

Language is one of the distinctive characteristics of human beings. With-
out formal instruction, we learn from infanthood the skills that we need
to be successful users of a language. For most of us, this will be spoken
language, though for some it will be a signed language. In acquiring
language, we learn words, and how to put them together; we learn to link
words and sentences to meaning; we learn how to use these structures
to get what we want, to say how we feel, and to form social bonds with
others; and we also learn how to sound like members of the community
around us – or perhaps choose to sound different from them.
Linguistics is the formal study of language. Its main sub-disciplines
are: syntax, the study of sentence structure; semantics, the study of
meaning; pragmatics, the study of meaning in context; morphology, the
study of word structure; sociolinguistics, the study of language in its
social context; phonology, the study of sound systems; and phonetics,
the study of the sounds of speech. In this book, we will be mindful that
linguistically significant aspects of the sounds of a language have to do
with meaning on some level, whether it is to distinguish words from each
other, to join together words of particular kinds, to mark (or do) some-
thing social, such as where the speaker comes from, or to handle the flow
of talk in a conversation.
Language and speech are often distinguished in linguistics. For many,
linguistics constitutes a set of claims about human beings’ universal
cognitive or biological capacities. Most of the constructs of linguistics
are attempts at explaining commonalities between members of com-
munities which use language, and they are abstract.
Phonetics on the other hand is the systematic study of the sounds of
speech, which is physical and directly observable. Phonetics is some-
times seen as not properly linguistic, because it is the outward, physical
manifestation of the main object of linguistic research, which is language
(not speech): and language is abstract.
1
2 AN INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH PHONETICS

On the other hand, setting aside Deaf signing communities, speech is

the commonest and primary form of language. Most of our interactions,
with family members, colleagues, people we buy things from or whom
we ask for help, are done through the medium of speech. There is a
primacy about the spoken form of language which means that for us to
understand questions like “what is the possible form of a word?”, “how
do you ask questions in this language?”, “why does this speaker use that
particular pronunciation, and not some other?”, we need to have an
understanding of phonetics.
Speech is produced by the controlled movement of air through the
throat, mouth and nose (more technically known as the vocal tract). It
can be studied in a number of different ways:

• articulatory phonetics (how speech sounds are made in the body)

• acoustic phonetics (the physical properties of the sounds that are
made)
• perception (what happens to the speech signal once the sound wave
reaches the listener’s ear).

The linguistic phonetic study of a language involves working out how

the sounds of language (the ‘phonetic’ part) are used to make meaning
(which is what makes it ‘linguistic’, and not just the study of the sounds
we can make with our bodies): how words are shaped, how they are put
together, how similar (but different) strings of sounds can be dis-
tinguished (such as ‘I scream’ and ‘ice cream’), how particular shades
of meaning are conveyed, and how the details of speech relate system-
atically to its inherently social context.
One of the central paradoxes of phonetics is that we make obser-
vations of individuals in order to understand something about the
way groups of people behave. This is good in the sense that we can use
ourselves and the people around us as representatives of groups; it is
bad in that we cannot always be sure how representative someone is,
and there is always the possibility that what we observe is just an idio-
syncratic habit. In this book, we will mostly skirt round this issue: there
are (surprisingly) still many things that are not known about English
phonetics, so in this book, we will make observations of English-
speaking communities and individuals in order to show how the
phonetic potential of the vocal tract is used by speakers of English, in
various settings.
 INTRODUCTION TO PHONETICS 3

1.2 What this book covers

Because the English-speaking world contains so many diverse com-
munities, scattered over a wide geographical area with different histori-
cal and cultural backgrounds, our basic stance is that it is not really
possible to describe the phonetics of ‘English’ as such. Even in the British
Isles, there is huge variability in the way that English sounds. Tradition-
ally, British textbooks on English phonetics concentrate on Received
Pronunciation (RP), a variety of English which traditionally has had
high social status, but is spoken nowadays by few people. So in this book
we explore the phonetic potential of the vocal tract, and illustrate it
from English; but also you, the reader, are encouraged to reflect on what
is true for you and your community. Despite its being one of the most
written-about languages, there are still many discoveries to make about
English, and perhaps you will make one of them.
In making our observations, we will look at the way that sounds are
articulated, and think about how the articulations are co-ordinated with
one another in time. We will look at how the sounds of English can be
represented using the Phonetic Alphabet of the International Phonetic
Association. We will look a little at acoustic representations so that we
can see speech in a different way; and we will look at speech in a number
of different settings, including carefully produced tokens of words and
conversational speech.

1.3 Ways to talk about sounds

Talking about sounds is something that most native English-speaking
children do from a very young age. One reason for this is our writing
system, which is based, however loosely, on a system where a set of
twenty-six symbols is used to represent the forty-five or so sounds of
English. So we learn, for example, that the letter <m> stands for the
sound [m], and the letter <c> can usually stand for either a [k] or a
[s] sound. Learning this way gives priority to letters over sounds. For
example, if we want to describe how to say a word like ‘knight’, we have
to say something like ‘the “k” is silent’. The problems do not end there:
<igh> stands for what is often called ‘a long “i”-sound’, which in
phonetic transcription is often represented as [ai]. These ways of talking
also cause us problems. What does it mean to say that the word ‘knight’
‘has a “k”’, when we never pronounce it? It is temptingly easy to talk
about words in terms of the letters we write them with rather than their
linguistic structure.
We will discuss ways of representing sounds in Chapter 3. For now, we
4 AN INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH PHONETICS

just observe that for English, there is no one-to-one mapping of letter to

sound, or of sound to letter (which is what is meant when people say
English is not ‘spelt phonetically’).
In this book, we will use the word ‘sounds’ as a semi-technical term.
Phonetics and phonology have a well-developed vocabulary for talking
about sounds in technical ways, and many of the terms used are very
specific to particular theories.

1.3.1 The phoneme

Many theories of phonology use the concept of the phoneme. The
phoneme is the smallest unit of sound which can differentiate one word
from another: in other words, phonemes make lexical distinctions. So if
we take a word like ‘cat’, [kat], and swap the [k] sound for a [p] sound, we
get ‘pat’ instead of ‘cat’. This is enough to establish that [k] and [p] are
linguistically meaningful units of sound, i.e. phonemes. Phonemes are
written between slashes, so the phonemes corresponding to the sounds
[p] and [k] are represented as /p/ and /k/ respectively. Phonemes are
phonological (not phonetic) units, because they relate to linguistic struc-
ture and organisation; so they are abstract units. On the other hand,
[p] and [k] are sounds of speech, which have a physical dimension and
can be described in acoustic, auditory or articulatory terms; what is
more, there are many different ways to pronounce /p/ and /k/, and
transcribing them as [p] and [k] captures only some of the phonetic
details we can observe about these sounds.
Phoneme theory originated in the early twentieth century, and was
influential in many theories of phonology; however, in recent decades,
many phonologists and phoneticians have seen phonemes as little more
than a convenient fiction. One reason for this is that phonemic represen-
tations imply that speech consists of units strung together like beads on
a string. This is a very unsatisfactory model of speech, because at any one
point in time, we can usually hear cues for two or more speech sounds.
For example, if you say the words ‘cat’, ‘kit’, ‘coot’ and isolate the [k]
sounds, you will notice that they are different from one another. The
tongue makes contact with the roof of the mouth at slightly different
places (further forward for ‘kit’, further back for ‘coot’ and somewhere in
between for ‘cat’), and the lips also have different shapes. These things
make the [k] sounds sound different from one another. Now, we have the
feeling, as native speakers of English, that these sounds are at some level
‘the same’; and this is what phoneme theory attempts to explain. These
different sounds are allophones of the phoneme /k/: they have some
things in common, and the differences between them arise from the
 INTRODUCTION TO PHONETICS 5

context they are in. The differences are not seen as linguistically im-
portant, because they are predictable.
Another way to look at this is to think of the consonant as telling us
something about the vowel that is coming: if you hear the kind of [k]
which goes in the word ‘kit’, then before you even hear the vowel sound
for real, you can tell what kind of vowel sound is coming. So in a way, the
consonant and the vowel are being produced at the same time.
The question for us as phoneticians is what we make of this, and how
we explain it. In this book, we will use the word ‘sound’ as an essentially
neutral word which does not take one stance or another towards what we
hear. It is a term chosen so as to allow us to be as descriptively rich as we
would like, without committing us one way or another to whether the
best account is a phonemic one or something else.
Sounds will be written enclosed in square brackets, such as [k], [a], [t]
or [kat]. Phonemes, where we refer to them, will be enclosed in slash
brackets such as /k/, /a/, /t/. And letters will from now on be enclosed
between angled brackets like this: <c> <a> <t>; but when referring to
words, the convention will be: ‘cat’. We will use English spelling quite a
lot, and this might seem counterintuitive in a book on English phonetics.
But remember that speakers of English do not all pronounce the same
words with the same phonemes, let alone the same sounds; and the only
neutral way to write English is in fact its orthography: this is one reason
why English spelling has been so resistant to change over the years.

1.4 An overview of the book

The book begins by taking an overview of the mouth, nose and throat,
where we cover the main details of the production of speech. We intro-
duce a lot of essential terminology there, and get a broad picture of the
sounds of English. Next, we take a look at ways of representing sound on
paper: a difficult problem, since the material for our study is grounded
in time, ephemeral and short-lived, whereas the printed word is static
and long-lasting. We cover aspects of phonetic transcription and take
a simplified look at acoustic representations. After this, we look at the
larynx and matters of breathing, pitch and voice quality.
Next comes a series of chapters on the main kinds of sound in
English, beginning with vowels. We start with vowels because they are a
fundamental building block of speech, and in English many consonants
take on properties of their adjacent vowels. After vowels, we move
through the main consonant types in English: approximants, plosives,
fricatives and nasals. Finally, we look at some less common sounds where
6 AN INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH PHONETICS

the air is moved into or out of the vocal tract by some other mechanism
than the lungs.
Each chapter ends with some exercises and suggestions for further
reading. Discussion of the exercises can be found at the end of the book,
though for many of the exercises there are no clear-cut answers. When
terms appear in bold, this is a first mention, and a glossary containing
these terms is provided at the end of the book.
By the end of this book, you should have some understanding of ways
to represent spoken English. You should understand something about
the way sounds are made in the vocal tract, and something of the
complexity and detail of spoken English. Most importantly of all, by the
end of the book you should have some skills for making some phonetic
observations of your own.

Further reading
Many books on linguistics provide an overview of the place of phonetics
and phonology within linguistics, and the relations between them, e.g.
Fromkin et al. (2007), which also discusses the phoneme.
English phonetics is discussed from a phonemic point of view in e.g.
Jones (1975) and Cruttenden (2001).
2 Overview of the human
speech mechanism

2.1 The complexity of speech sounds

Human speech is complex, and lay people are not used to describing it
in technical ways. On the other hand, many people have some inkling of
how to describe music. We could describe the rhythm (where are the
beats? what is the tempo?), the melodic structure (what key is it in? what
scale does it use? are there recurrent themes?), instrumentation, and
so forth. All of these are different aspects of music, and all of them
contribute to the totality of what we hear.
Describing speech is a similarly complex task. Speech involves the
careful co-ordination of the lips, tongue, vocal folds, breathing and so on.
The signal that we perceive as successive sounds arises from skills that
we learn over years of our lives, even as our bodies grow and age. In
producing even the simplest of speech sounds, we are co-ordinating
a large number things. Phonetics involves something like unpicking the
sounds of speech and working out how all the components work
together, what they do, and when. It is a bit like hearing a piece of music
and working out how the score is constructed.
One problem we face is exactly the interconnectivity of the parts: in
a way, we need to know something about everything all of the time.
The purpose of this chapter is to give you an overview of the speech
mechanism. The terms and concepts that are introduced here will be
developed in more detail in later chapters, but understanding even the
simplest things about speech is easiest if we have an overview of the
whole system: so this chapter introduces a lot of basic terminology of
phonetics.

2.2 Breathing
Speech sounds are made by manipulating the way air moves out of (or
sometimes into) the vocal tract. There are a number of ways of doing
this, as we will see in Chapter 10, but universally across languages sounds
7
8 AN INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH PHONETICS

of speech are produced on an out-breath. This kind of airflow is called

pulmonic (because the movement of air is initiated by the lungs; the
Latin word for lung is ‘pulmo’) and egressive (because the air comes out
of the vocal tract; ‘e-’, ‘out’, ‘-gress-’, ‘move forwards’): all spoken
languages have pulmonic egressive sounds.
Try an experiment. Take a lung full of air and then hum or say ‘aaah’
until you have to stop. Time yourself; it should take you quite a long time
before you run out of air. Now repeat this, but breathe out first. This
time, you will see that you cannot sustain the same sound for anything
like as long. This is enough to show you that a simple sound like ‘aaah’
([ɑ]) or ‘mmm’ ([m] – [] is the diacritic for long) requires an out-
breath with a reasonable amount of air in the lungs.
Now try breathing in while you say ‘aah’ or ‘mmm’. You probably will
find that this is quite hard, and you will probably get a more ‘croaky’
voice quality. If you try saying your name while breathing in, you will
notice that it feels both unpleasant and difficult; and it doesn’t sound
very good either. This is because the vocal tract works best for speech
when breathing out, i.e. on an egressive airflow.
The lungs are large spongy organs in the thoracic cavity (chest). They
are connected to the outside world via the trachea, or windpipe. The
lungs are surrounded at the front by ribs, and at the bottom by the
diaphragm. The ribs are attached to one another by intercostal muscles.
In breathing in, the diaphragm lowers and the intercostal muscles make
the rib cage move upwards and outwards. This increases the size of the
thoracic cavity, and so it lowers the air pressure. As a result, air flows into
the lungs, and they expand and fill up with air. Once inhalation stops, the
diaphragm and the intercostal muscles relax, and exert a gentle pressure
on the lungs. Air is forced out of the lungs, generating a pulmonic
egressive airflow.

2.2.1 In-breaths to project talk

In beginning to speak, people often make audible in-breaths. In-breaths
are one way to communicate: “I am about to say something.”
Fragment (1) shows a question–answer pair, where the answer is given
in overlap with the question. (Where two speakers speak at once, this
is marked with ‘[’ and ‘]’, with the respective talk lined up. The codes
before data fragments are an index to the original sources.)
(1) (Voc9/02.01.04;0342 acid)
1 P Marguerite you need a little bit of acid
2 in there to get a s[et as
 OVERVIEW OF THE HUMAN SPEECH MECHANISM 9

3 M → [h↓
4 P [well is that right]
5 M [you wouldn’t] with redcurrants
P and M are talking about making jam. In line 1, P asks M whether some
acid is needed to make it set. In line 3, M marks that she is about to speak,
by producing an audible in-breath (transcribed [h] with [↓] to indicate
that the air is coming into the body, not out) and then gives her answer
while P1 in line 2 produces the end of his question. Audible in-breaths
like this are one way for a speaker to display “I have something (more) to
say.” Here, the “something to say” is an answer, and M produces her
in-breath at a point relative to P’s talk where it is clear what kind of
answer is relevant in the context. Producing audible in-breaths is a
common device that allows speakers to co-ordinate turn-taking in
conversation.

2.3 The larynx and voicing

The larynx (Figure 2.1) is a structure built of cartilage. Its main purpose
is as a kind of valve to stop things going down into the lungs. We will look
at the larynx in more detail in Chapter 4.
You should be able to locate your larynx quite easily. You probably
know it as your ‘Adam’s apple’ or voice box. It is often visible as a notch
at the front of the neck.
The larynx contains the vocal folds (also known as the vocal cords,
but this suggests that they are like strings on a stringed instrument, which
they are not). When we breathe, they are kept wide apart, which allows
air to pass freely across the glottis, the space between the folds; but
during speaking, the vocal folds play an important role because they can
be made to vibrate. This vibration is called voicing. Sounds which are
accompanied by voicing are called voiced sounds, while those which are
not are called voiceless sounds.
You can sense voicing by a simple experiment. Say the sound [m] but
put your hands over your ears. You will hear quite a loud buzzing which
is conducted through your bones to your ears. Now repeat this saying
a [s] sound, and you will notice that the buzzing stops. Instead, you will
hear a (much quieter) hissing sound, which is due to the turbulent
airflow near the back of the teeth. If you now say a [z] sound, you will
notice that everything is the same as for [s], except that there is the
buzzing sound because [z] is voiced. Voicing is caused by the very rapid
vibration of the vocal folds. Voicing is one of the most important features
of speech sounds, and we will look at it in more detail in Chapter 4.
10 AN INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH PHONETICS

nassal cavities
nasal
alveolar
ridge

upper hard palate

p
lip

velum
(soft palate)
bla
ade
blade front
teeth tip
uvula
backk
tongue
body
lower pharynx
lip tonguue
tongue
roo
roott
epiglottis

hyoid bone

thyroid cartilage

larynx
laryn
nx

cricoid cartilage

Figure 2.1 Cross-section of the vocal tract.

2.4 Airflow
Air passes out of the vocal tract through the mouth or the nose. The way
that it comes out affects the sound generated, so we need a framework to
describe this aspect of speech.

2.4.1 Central and lateral airflow

Central airflow is when the air flows down the middle of the vocal tract.
If you say the sound [s], hold the articulation and then suck air in, you
should feel that it goes cold and dry down the middle of your tongue and
 OVERVIEW OF THE HUMAN SPEECH MECHANISM 11

the middle of the roof of your mouth. The cold and dry patches will be
more or less symmetrical on each side of your mouth. All languages have
sounds with central airflow.
Lateral airflow is when the air flows down one or both sides of the
vocal tract. If you say the sound [l], hold the articulation and then suck
air in, you should feel this time that it goes cold and dry down one or
both sides of the mouth, but not down the middle. The sides of the
tongue are lowered, and the air passes out between the back teeth.
In theory, lateral airflow can be produced at the lips too: to do this,
keep the sides of the lips together and try saying something like ‘Pepé
bought a pencil’. It will both sound and look strange. It is probably not a
surprise that no language has lateral airflow caused by constricting the
lips at one side, and this combination is blocked out in the chart of the
International Phonetic Association.

2.4.2 Oral and nasal airflow

Air can exit the vocal tract through the nose or the mouth. This is
controlled by the position of the velum. The velum is a sort of valve that
controls airflow through the nose. If the velum is raised, then the nasal
cavities are blocked off. Consequently, air cannot pass through them, and
it must exit the vocal tract through the mouth. Sounds with airflow exit-
ing through the mouth only are said to have oral airflow. If the velum is
lowered, air flows through the nasal cavities, and out through the nostrils.
If the air flows through the nose, the airflow is nasal.
If you say a [s] sound and pinch your nose, you will notice that you
can easily continue the [s] sound. This is because [s] is oral: the velum is
raised and makes a tight seal, preventing escape of air through the nose.
On the other hand, if you say a [m] sound and pinch your nose, you will
notice that you can only continue the [m] sound for a very short time.
This is because the lips are closed, making oral escape impossible, but
the velum is lowered, so that the airflow is nasal. By pinching your nose,
you effectively seal off the only remaining means of escape for the air.
A third possibility exists, where air escapes through the nose and the
mouth. For these sounds, the velum is lowered, but there is no complete
closure in the oral tract, as we had for [m] (where the complete closure
is at the lips). A good example would be a nasalised vowel, as in the
French word ‘pain’, [pã], ‘bread’. You might try making a nasalised [s]
sound, [s̃], but you will notice that it is much quieter and less hissy than
it should be, with as much noise caused by air coming through the
nostrils as through the mouth.
12 AN INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH PHONETICS

2.5 Place of articulation

The vocal tract contains some discrete physical landmarks which are
used primarily in producing and describing consonants. In describing
the place of articulation, we are describing where in the vocal tract a
sound is made.
Articulators are the parts of the oral tract that are used in producing
speech sounds. They are often grouped into two kinds, active and
passive. Active articulators are ones that move: the tongue tip is an active
articulator in sounds like [s t n], since it moves up to behind the teeth.
Passive articulators are articulators that cannot move, but are the target
for active articulators. In the case of sounds like [s t n], the passive
articulator is the bony ridge behind the upper teeth, known as the
alveolar ridge.
Most places of articulation are described by reference to the passive
articulator. We start our description of them with the lips, working our
way down the vocal tract.

2.5.1 Bilabial
Bilabial sounds are sounds made at the lips. ‘Bi-’ means ‘two’, and ‘labial’
is an adjective based on the Latin word for ‘lips’. In English, the sounds
[p b m] are bilabial. If you say [apa aba ama] and look in the mirror, you
will see that they look identical. If you say the sounds silently to your-
self and concentrate on your lips, you will feel that the two lips touch one
another for a short period, and the action is basically the same for all
three sounds.

2.5.2 Labiodental
Labiodental sounds are made with the upper teeth (‘dental’) against the
lower lip (‘labio’). In English the labiodental sounds [f v] occur. Logically
speaking, labiodental sounds could involve the lower teeth and the upper
lip, but this is difficult for most people to do: it involves protruding the
jaw, and most people have upper teeth that sit in front of the lower teeth.
Labiodental sounds can be made with the teeth against either the
inside surface of the lip (endolabial) or the outside edge of the lip
(exolabial).

2.5.3 Dental
Dental sounds involve an articulation made against the back of the upper
 OVERVIEW OF THE HUMAN SPEECH MECHANISM 13

teeth. [θ ð] in English (as in the initial sounds of ‘think’ and ‘then’) are
often dental; they can also be interdental, that is, produced with the
tongue between (‘inter’ in Latin) the teeth, especially in North America.
Dental forms of [l] and [n] are used in words like ‘health’ and ‘tenth’,
where they are followed by a dental; and dental forms of [t] and [d] are
regularly used in many varieties of English (e.g. some forms of Irish or
New York English, and in Nigeria) as forms of [θ ð].

2.5.4 Alveolar
Alveolar sounds are made at the alveolar ridge. This is a bony ridge
behind the upper teeth. If you rest your tongue on the upper teeth then
gradually move it backwards, you will feel a change in texture from the
smooth enamel to the bumpier gum. Just behind the teeth you should be
able to feel the alveolar ridge. This sticks out a bit just behind the teeth.
People’s alveolar ridges are very variable: some are very prominent,
others hardly noticeable. Alternatively, try isolating the consonant
sounds in the word ‘dent’, and you should feel that the tongue tip is
making contact with the alveolar ridge. Sounds with an alveolar place of
articulation in most varieties of English are [t d n l r s z].

2.5.5 Postalveolar
Postalveolar sounds are made just behind (‘post’) the alveolar ridge.
There are four of these in English, [ʃ] and [], the sounds spelt <sh> in
‘ship’, [ʃip], and <si> in ‘invasion’, [iveiən], and the sounds [tʃ d] as
in ‘church’ and ‘judge’. It can be hard to feel the difference in place
of articulation between alveolar and postalveolar sounds, but if you
produce a [s] sound, then a [ʃ] sound, and suck air in immediately after
each sound, you should feel that part of the roof of the mouth which goes
cold and dry is further back for [ʃ] than for [s].
Special symbols for dentals and postalveolars only exist for the frica-
tives. If dental or postalveolar articulations need to be distinguished, this
can be done using diacritics – characters which modify the basic value
of letters, and are placed over or under simple letters. For [t], we use
[t
t t] respectively, where [
] marks ‘dental’, and [] marks ‘retracted’ (i.e.
further back), i.e. postalveolar.
Postalveolars are reported occasionally in dialects which are on their
way to losing distinct [r] sounds. Hedevind (1967) reports a contrast
between dentals/alveolars and postalveolars (transcribed [n , z , t] in
pairs such as those below in a dialect from Dent (Cumbria, Northern
England).
14 AN INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH PHONETICS

(2) own [an

] brain (‘harn’) [an ]
mows [maz] mars [maz]
shot [ʃɔt
] short [ʃɔt]
If you slowly move your tongue away from the alveolar ridge and slide it
back along the roof of your mouth, you will feel a change in texture (it
will get smooth and hard) as well as a distinct change in shape (it will feel
domed). This domed part is known as the hard palate. (You may be able
to curl your tongue even further back, when you will feel a change in
texture again – it will feel soft – and it might feel a bit uncomfortable;
this is the velum, or soft palate.)

2.5.6 Retroflex
Retroflex sounds are made with the tongue curled (‘flex’) back (‘retro’)
to the hard palate. (This is one case where the ‘place of articulation’
refers to the active articulator.) The symbols for retroflex sounds are
easy to remember: they all have a rightward-facing hook on the bottom:
[      ].
Retroflex [  ] are frequently used in Indian varieties of English
instead of alveolars for the sounds [t d n]. (Many Indian languages have
dental and retroflex or postalveolar sounds, but not alveolar.) The
retroflex fricative sound [] also occurs in some varieties of English,
notably some Scottish and North American varieties, as a combination
of [r] + [s], as in ‘of course’, [əv kɔ]. And many varieties of American
English use [] for the r-sound; this is also known as ‘curled-r’.

2.5.7 ‘Coronal’
On the IPA chart, sounds are described according to where in the mouth
they are made; but it is equally important to think about which part
of the tongue is used to make them. Dental, alveolar, postalveolar and
retroflex sounds are all made with the front part of the tongue, the tip
(the very frontmost part of the tongue) or the blade (the part just behind
the tip). There is a lot of variability among English speakers as to which
part of the tongue they use to articulate dental, alveolar and postalveo-
lar sounds, so usually this factor is ignored, since it seems to play no
linguistic role for English. In the phonology literature, sounds made with
the front part of the tongue are often called coronal, a term which does
not appear on the IPA chart. (The Latin word ‘corona’ means ‘crown’;
this is the term used to refer to the front part of the tongue.)
 OVERVIEW OF THE HUMAN SPEECH MECHANISM 15

2.5.8 Palatal
Palatal sounds are made with the tongue body, the massive part of the
middle of the tongue, raised up to the hard palate, or the roof of the
mouth. Palatal sounds aren’t common in English, except for the sound
[j], which is usually spelt <y>, as in ‘yes’, ‘yacht’, ‘yawn’; or as part of the
sequence [ju] represented by the letter <u> in words like ‘usual’,
‘computer’.

2.5.9 Velar
Velar sounds are made with the tongue back (or dorsum) raised towards
the soft palate. The soft palate is at the back of the roof of the mouth, and
is also known as the velum. The sounds [k ] are velars, as is the sound
[ŋ], represented by <ng> in words like ‘king’, ‘wrong’, ‘hang’; but as we
will see in Chapter 7, there are in fact many variations in the precise
place of articulation in English.
The velum also acts as a kind of valve, because it can be raised and
lowered. When it is lowered, air can pass into the nasal cavities and
escape through the nose. When it is raised, the nasal cavities are sealed
off, and air can only escape through the mouth.

2.5.10 Uvular
Uvular sounds are made with the uvula (which is Latin for ‘little egg’, the
shape of the uvula). The uvula is the little fleshy appendage that hangs
down in the middle of your mouth at the back. If you gargle, the uvula
vibrates. French, German, Dutch and Danish all use uvular articulations
for orthographic <r>; and in fact, one variety of English (around the
north east of England) has, in its more archaic forms, a uvular sound too
in this position.

2.5.11 Pharyngeal
The pharynx is the cavity behind the tongue root and just above the
larynx. Pharyngeal sounds are made by constricting the muscles of the
neck and contracting the pharynx; this kind of articulation occurs rarely
in English.

2.5.12 Glottal
Glottal sounds are made at the glottis, the space between the vocal folds,
16 AN INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH PHONETICS

which are located at the larynx. English uses a number of such sounds:
[h] as in ‘head’ and its voiced equivalent between two vowels, [], as in
‘ahead’; and the glottal stop [ʔ], which is often used alongside or in place
of [t] (as in many Anglo-English – that is, the English of England –
pronunciations of words like ‘water’, [wɔtə, wɔʔə]), and in words that
begin with vowels (as in many American and Australian pronunciations
of phrases like ‘the [ʔ]apple’).

2.6 Manner of articulation

As well as knowing where a sound is made, we need to know how it is
made. Consonants involve at least two articulators. When the articu-
lators are brought closer together, the flow of air between them changes:
for instance, it can be stopped or made turbulent. The channels between
any two articulators govern the pressure and flow of air through the
vocal tract, and in turn this affects the kinds of sound that come out. The
way a sound is made (rather than where it is made) is called manner of
articulation. Most manners of articulation are combinable with most
places of articulation.

2.6.1 Stop articulations

Stop articulations are those sounds where a complete closure is made
in the oral tract between two articulators; this stops the air moving out
of the oral tract. Stop articulations include a whole range of sound types,
which vary according to the kind of airflow (oral vs. nasal) and whether
the closure can be maintained for a long time or not.
Plosives are made with a complete closure in the oral tract, and with
the velum raised, which prevents air escaping through the nose. English
plosives include the sounds [p t k b d ]. Plosives are ‘maintainable’ stops
because they can be held for a long time, and the closure portion arises
from a deliberate articulation. The term ‘plosive’ relates to the way the
stop is released – with what is sometimes called an ‘explosion’. We look
at the release of plosives in more detail in Chapter 7. It is worth pointing
out that many phoneticians use the word ‘stop’ to mean ‘plosive’. We are
using the word ‘stop’ in Catford’s (2001) sense.
Nasals are made with a complete closure in the oral tract, but with
the velum lowered so that air escapes through the nose. For English there
are three main nasal sounds, [m n ŋ], bilabial, alveolar and velar respec-
tively. Nasals are usually voiced in English.
The other kinds of stopped articulations are trills and taps. In these
sounds, a closure is made only for a very short time, and the closure
 OVERVIEW OF THE HUMAN SPEECH MECHANISM 17

arises because of aerodynamics or the movement of articulators from

one position to another.
Trills are rare in English, but they are one form of ‘rolled r’: they
involve the tongue tip striking the alveolar ridge repeatedly (usually
three to four times). They have a very restricted occurrence in English,
primarily among a very particular kind of theatrical performer, though
they are often thought of as typically Scottish.
Taps on the other hand are quite common in English. These consist
of just one short percussive movement of the tongue tip against the
alveolar ridge. They occur in many varieties of English, but are
especially well known as kinds of [t] or [d] sound in many North
American varieties in words like ‘bu[ɾ]er’, ‘wri[ɾ]er’, ‘a[ɾ]om’.

2.6.2 Fricative articulations

Fricative articulations are the result of two articulators being in close
approximation with each other. This is a degree of stricture whereby
the articulators are held close enough together for air to pass between
them, but because the gap between them is small, the airflow becomes
turbulent and creates friction noise. (In lay terms, we might talk about a
‘hissing’ sound.) Fricatives in English include [f v θ ð s z ʃ ], the sounds
represented orthographically by the underlined portion: fish, vow, think,
then, loose, lose, wish, vision. Notice that there are not very consistent
representations particularly for the sounds [ʃ ] in English spelling.
Fricative articulations can be held for as long as there is sufficient air
to expel. The amount of friction generated depends on the amount of air
being forced through the stricture and on the degree of stricture. If you
produce a [s] sound and then push more air out, you will notice an
increase in the loudness (intensity) of the friction. If you do this and at
the same time make the tongue tenser, the intensity of the friction will
increase and the friction will sound ‘sharper’. On the other hand, if you
relax the articulators in producing a [s] sound, you will notice that the
friction gets quieter and that it changes quality, becoming ‘flatter’.
Affricates are plosives which are released into fricatives. English has
two of these: [tʃ d], both postalveolar, as in ‘church’ and ‘judge’.
The sounds [h ] as in ‘heart’ and ‘ahead’ are voiceless and voiced
glottal fricatives respectively. These sounds are produced with friction at
the glottis.
Tongue shape plays a determining role in the overall sound of frica-
tives. We will return to this in Chapter 8.
18 AN INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH PHONETICS

2.6.3 Resonant articulations

If articulators are held so as not to generate friction, but to allow air
to pass between them smoothly, then we get articulations known as
resonant. The degree of stricture is known as open approximation, and
consonant sounds generated this way are called approximants. Vowels
are another kind of resonant articulation.
Approximants in English include the sounds [j w l r]. (Note: [j] stands
for the sound usually written <y> in English, as in ‘yes’. The phonetic
symbol [y] stands for a vowel.) [j w] are often called glides, because they
are closely related in phonetic terms to the vowels [i] and [u], and can be
thought of as non-syllabic versions of these vowels. [l r] are often called
liquids, and they have certain similarities in the places where they occur
in consonant clusters. We will use the symbol [r] for now to represent
any kind of [r]-sound, though for the majority of English varieties, a
more accurate symbol would be [ɹ].
The English approximants [w j r] are central and [l] is lateral.
Approximants are among the phonetically most complex of sounds in
English because they typically involve more than one articulation; so we
shall leave further discussion of English approximants to a later chapter.

Summary
There are three main aspects of the production of speech sounds in
English: voicing, place of articulation and manner of articulation. We
have introduced much terminology for describing speech sounds. In
later chapters, we will look at place, manner and voicing in much more
detail. We will focus on those aspects of the sound of English which
relate to meaning in its broadest sense: word meaning, utterance mean-
ing and social meaning. To do this, we will make extensive use of the
categories of the International Phonetic Alphabet.

Exercises
1. What is the place and manner of articulation of the consonants in the
following words? Remember to refer to the sounds you make in pronun-
ciation, which do not always straightforwardly correspond with the
letters in the spelling!
a. club f. Dutch k. psychology
b. heavy g. contact l. hearing
c. deaf h. community m. perform
d. kiss i. industry n. translate
e. raised j. night
 OVERVIEW OF THE HUMAN SPEECH MECHANISM 19

2. Divide each of the following groups of symbols into two sets of three,
each of which has something in common phonetically. The first one is
done for you.
Symbols Set 1 Set 2
a. pmtnkŋ p t k (oral plosives) m n ŋ (nasals)
b. slpmvʃ
c. fjwlzθ
d. svhðθ
e. rknlw
f. tmbs
g. ʃ  t
θ ð t
h. hzlʔs
i. napkjw
j. jwbdr

Further reading
Overviews of the production of speech and discussion on the classifi-
cation of speech sounds can be found in Abercrombie (1967), Catford
(2001) and Ladefoged (2005, 2006). Ball (1993) is aimed at clinicians, but
is very approachable. More advanced readings include Laver (1994) and
Pike (1943). For discussion relating to English more specifically, Jones
(1975) and Gimson’s work (Cruttenden 2001) are classics.