English consonants

MOA

• So far all of the consonants we have looked at have involved a complete closure of the vocal tract, blocking air from passing out. But this is not the only way to make consonants. In fact we need a new dimension for the various possibilities (really a whole cluster of dimensions); this is called manner of articulation. One crucial variable within manner of articulation is the distance between the articulators. For stops, the closure is complete, but there are two further possibilities. One, discussed in this subsection, involves a narrow, but not complete, closure that allows air to pass through the aperture but with accompanying noise. The other, discussed in the next subsection, involves an opening that is wide enough for the air to pass through unimpeded. Stops and fricatives are different manners of articulation. Consider what happens when you bite your lower lip with your upper teeth and then blow air out. Unless you're biting too hard, some of the air can pass between your teeth and lip, creating a sound like that at the beginning and end of the word fife. A phone made like this, with an incomplete or approximate closure that permits air to pass through and produces a noisy sound due to the resulting turbulence, is called a fricative. The fricative at the beginning and end of the word fife is voiceless because the fricative sound is not accompanied by voicing. That is, the voicing starts after the vocal tract is opened up for the vowel and stops just before the closure made again at the end of the word.