8. SISTEMA FONOLÓGICO DE LA LENGUA INGLESA II: LAS CONSONANTES.

SÍMBOLOS
FONÉTICOS. COMPARACIÓN CON EL SISTEMA FONOLÓGICO DE LA LENGUA O LENGUAS
OFICIALES DE LA COMUNIDAD AUTÓNOMA CORRESPONDIENTE.

It is a fact that the study of the English phonological system is of great importance to master
all aspects of language. Before starting with the description of the English vowels, it is worth
mentioning some key concepts in the study of phonetics and phonology.
Jakobson and Halle, in their book “Fundamentals of English” (1956) see phonetics as the study
of the way that sounds are produced and perceived. In other words, phonetics refers to the
study of the positions and movements of the organs of speech. It deals with the characteristics
of sounds rather than their functions. Phonetics can be further divided into ,
or . The articulatory phonetics deals with the of sounds; the
auditory phonetics deals with their and the acoustic phonetics deals with the
of sounds.

On the other hand, they describe phonology from a mental or linguistic approach. It is the
study of the concrete characteristics within the context of a specific language, which is studied
in relation to its functional behaviour.
To explain the relationship between the two terms, it is worth mentioning Kenneth Pike’s
quote: “Phonetics gathers the raw materials. Phonemics cooks it” (1944). In other words,
phonetics studies speech in general and provides the general material: speech sounds and
suprasegmental information, whereas phonology (phonemics in the quotation) uses the
material to discover patterns, rules and to investigate the principles governing the sound
systems of particular languages.
At a segmental level, a phonetician would study the characteristics of a specific sound while a
phonologist would ask what the function of that specific sound is within a specific language.
For instance: a phonetic study would describe the sound [Ө] as a voiceless, dental fricative,
and a phonologist would specify that this sound does exist in English but it isn’t used in
German or in Catalan.
The depends on three main factors: the origin and direction of the
airflow, the position of the vocal cords and the position of the articulators. If the resultant
sound belongs to a specific language, it is called SPEECH SOUND. They are the product of
human anatomy and physiology.

The production of a sound starts with an energy, produced by the LUNGS in the form of a
stream of air. This is called pulmonic air and it is also done when breathing. To speak, however,
we change our normal pattern of breathing, making the exhalation become much longer than
the inhalation.

The air, coming from the lungs, moves along the TRACHEA into the THROAT. On the way, it
passes the LARYNX. Its function is to modify the airflow to produce an acoustic signal. The air
passes between the VOCAL FOLDS or CORDS. Their most important effect is the production of
audible vibration, known as voice. If they are opened, there is no vibration between them, so
the sounds produced are known as voiceless. In English, only some consonants are voiceless.
An example could be /p/, /t/, /k/ or /h/. If they are closed, there is a vibration and so they
produce voiced sounds. In English, all vowels are voiced and some consonants such as /b/, /d/,
/g/ /m/, too. The opening between the vocal cords is called the GLOTTIS.

Once the air passes through the trachea and the glottis it enters the VOCAL TRACK. It is the
main component where we articulate speech sounds. The airstream is affected by mobile
organs or (Knight, 2002): the lower lip which is involved in rounded
vowels, the tongue which is involved in the production of all vowels and most consonants, the
glottis with which we produce phonation and some specific consonants and the uvula which
is actively involved in some consonants such as the uvular trill.
The active articulators are supported by the . which are involved in the
production of speech sounds but do not move. They are the upper lip, the palate and the
teeth. The palate is the roof of the mouth and it separates the oral and the nasal cavities. it is
divided into three parts: the soft palate, which is used to produce some vowels, the hard
palate and the alveolar ridge.
Now that the main characteristics of phonology have been discussed, let’s focus on the
consonant system of English. The main modifications in the consonant system of English have
been defined by Gimson in 1980. We must take into consideration that before the 18th C,
there was freedom of spelling. That meant that there were many changes specially in
pronunciation and there were more changes in consonants than in vowels. The three main
changes were the loss of sounds, the modification of allophones and the addition of new
sounds, such as /v/, /d/, /z/ or /h/.
To account for the definitions of current English consonants we must first consider that there
exists a wide variety of dialects with different realizations of the same phonemes. To
accurately describe their main characteristics, we are going to focus on RP.
RP ( ) is the variety of English unofficially considered standard. It
th
appeared during the 19 century in the south East of England, i.e. the area of London and its
surroundings. It appeared following an attitude of superiority by which some sounds were
considered more acceptable than others. Thanks to the politics, the commerce and the court,
the pronunciation became a marker of position in society. This is reflected in B. Shaw’s novel
“Pygmalion” (1913). Nowadays, RP is widely known and accepted and it is also known as the
“BBC English”.
The following chart describes the manner and place of articulation all the consonants in RP,
together with their voice:
place BILABIAL LAVIODENTAL DENTAL ALVEOLAR POST- PALATO- PALATAL VELAR GLOTTAL
ALVEOLAR ALVEOLAR
manner
PLOSIVE p/b t/d k/g
FRICATIVE f/v Ө/ð s/z ʃ/Ʒ h/
AFFRICATE tʃ / dƷ
NALAS /m n /ŋ
LATERAL /l-ɬ
APROXIMANT /w / ɹ(r) /j
English vs Catalan and Spanish
When teaching English as a second or foreign language, it is necessary and highly
recommendable to compare the phonological systems of the student’s mother tongue. In our
case, the richness of having two different mother tongues, Catalan and Spanish, helps the
learners acquire a foreign language more easily.
With regards to the consonant system, English is very different from Spanish and Catalan. Not
all consonants are exact counterparts between the 3 languages. For example, the place of
articulation of the sound [d] is dental in Catalan and Spanish but alveolar in English.
It is the term (from Ancient Greek phōnḗ "voice, sound" and tacticós "having
to do with arranging") what deals with restrictions in a language on the permissible
combinations of phonemes. Phonotactics defines permissible syllable structure and
consonant sequences by means of phonotactic constraints, which are highly language specific.
For instance, in English the sounds [ŋ] and [Ʒ] cannot occur at the beginning of a word and /h/
cannot occur at the end. However, in Spanish and in Catalan, the restrictions are different.
4. Conclusion
In conclusion, speech is the most important means or medium of human communication. For
many non-native English speakers, some English consonants sound differently from what we
are used to in Spanish or Catalan – the difference between [v] and [b] or [s] and [z] are
notoriously problematic for foreign learners of the language. Phonetics facilitates the ability
to understand, hear and reproduce different sound qualities. Unfortunately, the
pronunciation aspect of foreign language learning and teaching is very often overlooked,
leaving the students almost deaf to the sounds from their additional, non-native language(s).
5. Bibliography
Carr, P. English Phonetics and Phonology: An Introduction (2012)
Estebas, E. Teach Yourself English Pronunciation (2009)
Gimson, An introduction to the pronunciation of English (1980)
Hogg, R & Denison, D. A history of the English Language. (2008)
Jakobson and Halle, Fundamentals of English (1956)
Ogden, D. An introduction to English phonetics (2009)