English Phonology

The Human Vocal Tract (click here for diagram)

Modern English Consonants

• consonants involve stoppage of flow of air in vocal tract
• voiced: involving vibration of the vocal cords
• voiceless: no vibration of the vocal cords
• place of articulation:
  • labial : involving the lips
  • dental: involving the teeth
  • alveolar: involving the area behind the teeth
  • palatal: involving the hard palate
  • velar: involving the velum or soft palate
• manner of articulation
  • stops (plosives): involve the stoppage and sudden release of air
  • fricatives (spirants): involve the constricted flow of air producing a kind of hissing sound
  • affricates: a combination of stop + fricative
  • nasals: flow of air channeled through the nose, always voiced
  • lateral: flow of air channeled through the sides of the tongue, also voiced
  • retroflex: similar to the lateral but involving a backward curving of the tip of the tongue, also voiced

semivowels (glides): similar to vowels in that the stoppage of the flow of air is very minimal

Chart of consonant phonemes in English

Examples: [p]: pat, [b]: bat, [t]: time, [d]: dime, [k]: came, [g]: game, []: chump, []: jump, [f]: fat, [v]: vat, []: thigh [ð]: thy, [s]: sap, [z]: zap, []: glacier/mesher, []: glazier/measure, [h]: ham, [m]: man, [n]: nun, []: sing, [l]: lamp, [r]: ramp, [w]: world, [y]: yore/you; the glottal stop and the flap are not phonemic but are frequently used allophones of [t] in words such as "satin," "rotten," mountain," "cater," "waiter," "later"

Modern English Vowels

• vowels are sounds involving the unrestricted flow of air through the mouth
• vowels sounds are always voiced
• vowels differ depending on the degree of openness of the mouth and height of the tongue (the lower the tongue the more open the mouth) (high, mid, low)
• also important is the position in the mouth of the of the highest part of the tongue (front, central, back)
• diphthongs (ai, au, oi) (e.g. buy, bough, boy)
• unstressed vowels tend to be pronounced as the mid-central vowel

Prosody (stress patterns)

• stress is the relative loudness with which different parts of a word are pronounced
• in English the tendency is to stress the initial syllable of a word
• the stress of a syllable can be classified as primary, secondary, or reduced/unstressed
• in English final syllables tend to be unstressed
• examples:
  • in the word "brother" the first syllable has primary stress and the second syllable is unstressed: "bróth-er"
  • in the word "bookcase" the first syllable receives primary stress and the second secondary stress: "bóok-càse"
  • in the word "constellation" the first syllable receives secondary stress, the second syllable has reduced stress, the third syllable has primary stress, and the fourth syllable has also reduced stress: "còn-stel-lá-tion"

Links:

• Acoustics of speech and hearing
• Frequency, Pitch, and Intervals
• Vowel and Consonant Articulation (pdf format, large file download c.12 MB)
• Voice Production
• Formants
• Sound Structure of Language
• Forming the Vowel Sounds