2 - Towards a sound system for English: consonant phonemes

Summary

Phonetics and phonology, or how many speech sounds does English have?

Consider a casual pronunciation of the word tenth and of the phrase on fire. In chapter 1, we came across three nasal stops in English: a bilabial one (as in my), an alveolar one (nigh) and a velar one (hang) – here, we are faced with two more. The nasal in tenth is, on closer inspection, not alveolar as in ten but dental, and the one in on fire is often pronounced at a labiodental place of articulation. This means, then, that nasals can be pronounced with at least five different places of articulation; and there may well be more.

Among oral stops, we have similarly noted bilabial, alveolar and velar places of articulation (as in pool – tool – cool respectively) – but again, if we observe more carefully we find that more than these three places of articulation may be involved. Before a front vowel – in keel, for example – the stop is not as far back as it is in cool; for most speakers the former may not be velar at all but, rather, palatal. Moreover, in width the stop is not usually alveolar, as one would expect (why?) but dental. Note that in all these cases – tenth, on fire, keel, width – the consonant that we are looking at is clearly influenced by the following sound, anticipating its place of articulation.