English consonants

ENGLISH CONSONANTS

• We have seen how the vowels of languages can be described in terms of values on a small number of dimensions, or equivalently, features. In this section we will see that the same holds true for consonants. Languages vary a great deal with respect to how many vowel and consonant phonemes they have, but all languages seem to have more consonants than vowel phonemes. Not surprisingly, more consonant dimensions than vowel dimensions are contrastive for languages.

POA

• Some cons. are produced with a complete closure of the vocal tract, blocking the passage of air. Consonants made by completely closing the vocal tract are called stops. As we discussed informally, different consonants can be produced by varying the place where the closure occurs. This consonant dimension is known as place of articulation; we will see later that the place of articulation is also relevant when there isn't a complete closure of the vocal tract. In one sense place of articulation has six different dimensions because it involves independent movement of six separate parts of the vocal tract. Each of these structures is called an articulator. The articulators relevant for place of articulation are the lips, the tongue tip, the tongue body, the tongue root, the pharynx (the region behind and below the oral cavity), and the glottis (the gap between the vocal cords). Each language makes use of several places of articulation, usually between three and six, to distinguish its consonant phonemes. In this section, we'll only consider those places that are relevant for English.