Vowels and Consonants
Vowels and Consonants
Vowels and Consonants
Fricatives are produced when the two articulators do not perform a complete closure letting the air escapes through a small passage making a hissing sound. Affricates begin as plosives and end as fricatives. Try to pronounce the following words: A. Church /t:t/ B. Tip /tIp/ C. Ship / Ip/
Notes 1. As it is obvious affricates compose of a plosive+ a fricative as in (t+ ). 2. Not all plosives followed by fricatives result in affricates; say the following word: breakfast The /k/ sound is plosive and the /f/ sound is fricative but we dont have an affricative sound /kf/ why?
Because
The /k/ and /f/ are not produced by the same articulators; the /k/ is velar and the /f/ is dental; in other words they are no homorganic. Now compare between:
K+ f
t+
d+
Voicing Voiceless
Postalveolar
Glottal
Voiced
Notes..
1. /f/ and /v/ as in fan/van, safer/saver, and half/halve are called labiodental fricatives; the /f/ is voiceless (fortis) and the /v/ is voiced (lenis). 2. // and // as in thumb/thus, ether/father, and breath/ breather are called dentals; the // is voiceless and // is voiced. 3. /s/ and /z/ as in facing/ phasing, rice/rise are alveolars; the /s/ is voiceless and the /z/ is voiced. 4. / / and // as in ship/ (initial // very rare in English), Russia/ measure, Irish/garage are called post-alveolars.
5. The last fricative sound is /h/ as in head/ahead/ playhouse and is called glottal. 6. The voiceless fricatives have the effect of shorting a preceding vowels similar to .. . Compare: ice: /ais/ and eyes /aiz/. 7. We dont have voiced and voiceless glottal. 8. The post-alveolar fricatives / / and // can be taken to mean that the tongue is in contact with an area slightly further back than that for /s/ and /z/.
9. All the fricatives mentioned can be found in word initial, medial, and final positions. In the case of // the distribution is very limited in case of word initial position. 10. The friction produced when we pronounce /h/ is between the vocal cords (folds). 11. /t/ and /d/ are the only affricate phonemes in English; /t/ voiceless and /d/ voiced. 12. The place of articulation is similar to // and // the postalveolar.
Distribution of Nasals
1. The distribution of /m/ and /n/ are similar to that of plosives; however // is a different matter. 2. // sound gives considerable problem to foreign learners since it is usually followed by a non-pronounced /k/ or /g/. First: In initial position we find /m/ and /n/ occurring freely, but // never occurs initially similar to ? Second: In medial position // occurs frequently. When it is followed by /k/, it is always pronounced. However, some words with /ng/ in the middle will have a pronunciation containing /g/ and others will have // without g. Why?
Why?
The important difference is the way the words are constructed; their morphology. The words in -B- can be divided into two morphemes sing and er, hang and -er.
This is the rule: Within a word containing the letters ng in the spelling // occurring without a following /g/ if it occurs at the end of a morpheme; if it occurs in the middle of a morpheme it has a following /g/
Third: All the words ended with ng morphologically are pronounced as with // never followed by /g/. Examples: Sing: /s /, Hang: /h/, Song: /s/, Bang: /b/, Long: /l/ Fourth: - sound never occurs after a diphthong or long vowel; there are only five vowels are found preceding this consonant: , e, , and
Rules:
1. Word initial position: (Light or clear) Lamp/ lord/ lip/ lack/ laundry/ learning/love 2. Word final position: (Dark) Fail/ jail/ call/ nil/ fill/ ball/ wall/ battle/ hotel/ 3. Before vowels: (Light or clear)/ After vowels (Dark) Study how the following laterals change from dark to light:
Dark
Fill Natural
Light
Filler Naturalization
Global
Boil Kill Cool
Globalization
Boiler Killer Cooler