CONSONANTS
Book: AN INTRODUCTION TO PHONETICS
Author: Parviz Birjandi
Page: C3-P51
Consonants in English are distinguished from vowels on the basis of the modifications of pulmonary air in the oral cavity. Consonants are distinguished from one another on the basis of their differences in three respects: (a) manner of articulations, (b) place of articulation, and (c) voicing. By way of contrast, vowels are distinguished from one another on the basis of two criteria: (a) relative position of the tongue in the mouth, and (b) lip rounding.
Consonant is the general term that refers to a class of sounds where there is obstruction of some kind (i.e., complete blockage, or constriction) to the flow of pulmonary air. As it was mentioned earlier, there are six different degrees of obstruction. Therefore, consonants can be classified into six different categories on the basis of their manner of articulation:
However, as the table shows, more than one consonants fall within almost all of these categories. Therefore, other criteria are needed to distinguish one consonant from the other. For example, /p/ and /b/ cannot solely be distinguished on the basis of their manner of articulation. Moreover, they are articulated at the same place of articulation. Yet they are different since they assign different meanings to the two English words 'pat' /pæt/ and 'bat' /bæt/.
Consonants that share the same manner of articulation may be different in terms of place of articulation. Consonants are classified into nine different classes according to their place of articulation:
Even those consonant that share the place and manner of articulation may be different in terms of voicing and nasality. According to the level of vibration of the vocal cords, consonants are classified into two groups: voiced, and voiceless:
On the basis of nasality, consonants are divided into two groups: nasal, and non-nasal. As you have already noticed, nasality is identified by a free flow of air through the nose.
These differences in place of articulation, manner of articulation, nasality, and voicing led traditional phoneticians to assign different names to different consonants. The name that was given to any given consonant was based on the air stream mechanism which led to the articulation of that consonant:
Consonant name = Place of articulation + voicing + manner of articulation
For example the consonant /p/ would be identified as bilabial voiceless stop. By way of contrast, the consonant /b/ was defined as bilabial voiced stop. As such /b/ and /p/ were distinguished on the basis of the level of vibration of the vocal cords (i.e., voicing). /m/ was considered to be a bilabial nasal.
In traditional phonetics, consonants were named after their particular characteristics:
Also notice that earlier phoneticians had a tendency to distinguish approximants, glides, and laterals as fricatives. In addition, they also classified /s/, /z/, /ʃ/, /ʒ/, /ʧ/, /ʤ/, /r/, and /l/ as palatals.
A closer look at the names given to consonants reveals that only the minimum number of criteria needed to distinguish one consonant from the rest should be used to name that consonant. These features are called distinctive features. In addition to distinctive features, there are a number of characteristics of phonemes that can be guessed on the basis of their distinctive features. These predictable characteristics are called redundant features. Redundant features should not be mentioned in the naming of phonemes. The phoneme /ŋ/, for example, is voiced. However, the voicing feature has not been used in its name. This is because it is possible to guess that the phoneme /ŋ/ is voiced due to the fact that it is a nasal consonant. In other words, nasality can predict voicing. Therefore, voicing is said to be a redundant feature for nasal consonants, and is not used in their names. A feature which is redundant for one phoneme may be distinctive for another. For example, whereas voicing is considered to be a redundant feature for the phoneme /ŋ/, it is certainly a distinctive feature for the phonemes /g/, and /k/ because voicing is the only difference between them.
Phoneticians usually express redundant features in terms of statements which they call redundancy rules. Thus, the fact that voicing can be predicted by nasality is expressed in the following redundancy rule: whenever a phoneme is nasal, it is deemed to be voiced. Like other scientific fields, phonetics draws on a system of notations to simplify its redundancy rules. Take the following example: [nasal] → [voiced] (where → is read as 'rewrites as'). Redundancy rules will be fully discussed in the following chapters.
