In the previous three sections, we learned three ways of categorizing consonants: place (where in the mouth consonants are produced), manner (how consonants are produced), and voice (whether the vocal cords vibrate). To recap, regarding the place of articulation, English consonants are classified as follows: bilabials, labio-dentals, dentals, alveolars, palatals, velars, and glottals. Bilabials are consonants produced at the lips. Labio-dentals are consonants produced at the bottom lip and top teeth. Dentals are consonants produced at the teeth. Alveolars are consonants produced at the alveolar ridge. Palatals are consonants produced at the hard palate. Velars are consonants produced at the soft palate. And glottals are consonants produced at the glottis.
These are types of English consonants based on the manners of articulation: plosives, fricatives, affricates, nasals, liquids, and glides. Plosives are made by popping the blocked air. Fricatives are made by letting the air escape through partially-blocked narrow space continuously. Affricates are made by letting blocked air escape slowly. Nasals are made by forcing the air to escape through the nose. Liquids are made by redirecting the airstream with the tongue. And glides are made by letting the air glide over quickly through unblocked narrow space.
To study individual consonants, in this book, we use the manner of articulation as the primary categorization scheme, and use the place of articulation as the secondary categorization scheme. We begin with plosives.
There are 7 plosives in English, which are /p/, /b/, /t/, /d/, /k/, /g/ and /ʔ/ (glottal stop). Plosives are produced by blocking the air and then popping the air. The blocking of the air can be made by such instruments in the mouth as the lips, tongue and glottis. In particular, lips block the air for /p, b/. The tip of the tongue blocks the air for /t, d/. The back of the tongue blocks the air for /k, g/. The glottis stops the air for the glottal stop ([ʔ]). In English, the glottal stop is not a phoneme, but occurs only allophonically in t-glottalization. To indicate this fact, brackets are normally used for ‘ʔ’: [ʔ].
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| Pronunciation: plosives (stops) |
Plosives also differ in where the stop happens. For the /p, b/ pair, the stop happens at the lips. For the /t, d/ pair, the stop happens at the alveolar ridge. For the /k, g/ pair, the stop happens at the velum. And for the glottal stop, the stop happens at the glottis. Within the pairs, /p, t, k/ are voiceless, and /b, d, g/ are voiced.
As mentioned, plosives are produced by blocking the air and then popping the air. Blocking the air is the reason that they are called stops, and popping the air is the reason that they are called plosives. To make the sounds, there is a momentary stop. But when we speak, we want to connect sounds together, which is called connected speech. To avoid frequent stopping with plosives, plosives have several different modified sounds. That is, when they are pronounced in speech, plosives often sound different from their phoneme sounds. These different sounds of the same phoneme are called allophones. Several English phonemes have allophones such as the dark-L or the Schwa variants. But allophones are found the most commonly in plosives as plosives make connected speech difficult. So, before we learn individual plosives, in this section, we learn the allophones of plosives
Phonemes vs allophones
In linguistics, the different sounds (or phonetic realization) of the same phoneme are called allophones. ‘Allo’ means different or variant. The variants within a phoneme category are called allophones. Slashes ‘/’ are used to indicate phonemes, and brackets ‘[‘ are used to indicate allophones. To distinguish phonemes and allophones, let’s define phonemes more clearly. Phonemes are the smallest units of sound that serve to distinguish meaning between words. When we change the phonemes in a word, we change the meaning of the word, that is, we are pronouncing different words. So if there is a problem with phonemes, people will misunderstand us. For example,
I like the kit.
If I accidentally pronounced ‘d’ instead of ‘t’, so if I said,
I like the kid
then I am saying something entirely different from the statement, ‘I like the kit.’ Unlike the phoneme changes, when we use different allophones, we don’t change words. We just say the same word differently. In the following, we explain why people might say the same word differently using the examples of two allophones of /t/, which are the glottal stop and the alveolar flap.
Glottal stopping for /t/, [ʔ]
Now, native speakers might pronounce the same word differently, yet are understood, to express aspects that are beyond the scope of linguistics: e.g., status, class, elegance, or modernity. This phenomenon happens in any language. For example, young people speak differently from old people. There are many means to speak differently (like uptalk or vocal fry), and saying words differently is one way. For instance, presently in the US and England, some people seem to believe that using a glottal stop, [ʔ], instead of the full pronunciation of /t/ in certain phonetic environments, is a way to show modernity and urbanness. So, for instance, instead of pronouncing the ‘T’ in “mountain” and “titan,” they will use [ʔ]: “mountain” and “titan”. This [ʔ] is an allophone of /t/ since it is a different way of realizing the /t/ sound.
Alveolar flapping for /t/, [ɾ]
While substituting [ʔ] for /t/ can be viewed as a frivolous linguistic fashion statement, some allophones are so entrenched in the language that it is obligatory for us non-native speakers to know. For example,
Can I have water?
If someone said ‘water’ in its canonical phoneme form, that is, with an aspirated voiceless ‘t’, ‘Can I have water’, then the person will be understood, but will not sound right to the American ear. To sound right to American ear, we need to use an allophone of t, called flap T, where voiceless /t/ is pronounced as a voiced alveolar flap [ɾ]. The flap T is so prevalent in American English that people call the allophone of /t/ the “American T.”
Allophones of plosives
Aspirated
Voiceless plosives /p. t, k/ can be either aspirated or unaspirated depending on their phonetic environments. When /p/, /t/, and /k/ come at the beginning of a word or at the beginning of a stressed syllable, they are aspirated. That is, they are pronounced with a small puff of air. These are examples where /p, t, k/ are aspirated:
/p/ pan, price, appear, computer
/t/ top, table, potato, attend, attach,
/k/ can, kettle, accuse, Haiku
The IPA symbol for aspiration is a superscript [h]. In ‘potato,’ the p is aspirated because it is at the beginning of the word and the ‘t’ is aspirated because it's at the beginning of a stressed syllable: /pʰəˈtʰeɪ.toʊ/.
Unaspirated
When voiceless plosives come in the middle or at the end of a word and when they do not begin a stressed syllable, they are not aspirated. Also, when /p/, /t/, and /k/ are in a consonant cluster after /s/, they are unaspirated. There is no puff of air when we say them.
/p/ span, spécial, spring
/t/ stop, stáple, string
/k/ scan, scátter, screen
Compare the pronunciation of the following words with and without aspiration:
pill [pʰɪl] spill [spɪl]
till [tʰɪl] still [stɪl]
kill [kʰɪl] skill [skɪl]
Held (unreleased)
When a plosive comes at the end of a word, it is often unreleased. It is optional whether we release the sound or not. To hold the sound, we start to say the sound by blocking off the air flow where the stop normally happens, but we don’t release the air. In the International Phonetic Alphabet, unreleased consonants are denoted with an upper-right corner symbol, ̚ (e.g., [p̚]). The final plosives in these words can be pronounced in two ways: released (audible) or unreleased (inaudible)
released [p]: stop, hope, devélop
unreleased [p̚]: stop, hope, devélop
released [t]: coat, late, basket
unreleased [t̚]: coat, late, basket
released [k]: back, lake, stomach
unreleased [k̚]: back, lake, stomach
For example, in the sentence “This is my cat,” ‘cat’ can be pronounced either [kæt] or [kæt ̚].
Plosives are also unreleased when they are followed by another plosive or an affricate. For example,
stacked, stopped, handbag
hot tea, black cat, best part, big girl
cold juice, lake church, that chair
Devoicing of voiced plosives
Devoicing of voiced plosives means that voiced plosives become voiceless.
When a pause follows after voiced plosives (/b, d, g/), they can sound like their voiceless counterparts, (/p, t, k/). For example, “This is my lab, my bed, and my bag” can sound like “This is my lap, my bet, and my back.” The way to distinguish between these two sentences is through the vowel length, since the vowel lengths are unaffected by the devoicing. So, the vowel length of words with originally voiced consonants is noticeably longer even though their final voiced consonants are devoiced. So “This is my lab, my bed, and my bag” will sound like “This is my la-ap, my be-et, and my ba-ack. This means that words ending in "voiced" and "voiceless" obstruents are still distinct, but they are not distinguished by voicing.
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