The consonants of English

We have seen various types of consonants. Some of these occur in English, others do not. In fact, there are different senses of “occur”. The palatal stops, c, ɟ, and ɲ, for example, do not occur in the speech of speakers of English. The alveolar affricate, ʦ, is also a sound that is not listed in consonant inventories of English. This may seem surprising since many English words appear to contain this sound: eg cats, prints, Watson, etc. We have also seen that English has an alveolar lateral approximant, l. Some varieties of English — standard British English among them — have two versions of this sound, “plain” l (aka clear or light L) and velarized ɫ (aka dark L). Here again, although speakers pronounce two types of l, we find only one l in the consonant inventory of English. Why is there this discrepancy?

Contrast

Sounds may differ from each other infinitely. Nevertheless, many of these differences between sounds have no linguistic relevance. Imagine two speakers of a language: their sounds will be different, this is why we can tell someone we know just by listening to their voice. We still identify many of their sounds as the “same.”

Let’s take two sounds that are quite similar to each other, like k and g. These two sounds can produce a contrast between two words: eg the difference between cap kap and gap gap or anchor aŋkə and anger aŋgə. These pairs are called minimal pairs. They show that the difference between k and g is linguistically relevant, this difference is what distinguishes these and many other pairs of words.

There are sounds that may occur in some contexts, but not in others. For example, h can occur before a vowel, but not before a consonant or at the end of the word. Clear L, like h, only occurs before a vowel.In fact, both h and clear L occur before j too, and for some h occurs before w eg what huge value hwɔt hjʉwʤ valjʉw, but we gloss over this detail here. Dark L, on the other hand, does not occur before a vowel. (Check here for more details.) The two types of l are in complementary distribution, ie one type occurs where the other one does not, and vice versa. A very important consequence of complementary distribution is the impossibility of contrast. Two sounds can only contrast (=cause a difference between words) if they occur in exactly the same environment, ie if they are not in complementary, but in overlapping distribution. Because clear L only occurs before vowels, while dark L does not occur there, it is impossible to have two words that only differ in the clearness and darkness of their l. The difference of two sounds that never contrast has no linguistic function.It does have nonlinguistic function in informing the listener about the speakers identity, geographical, social, educational background, etc.

The wording “English has one l” means that any differences l-type sounds may have are not contrastive in English. Clear and dark L occur in mutually exclusive environments. In any given situation it is predictable whether an l will be clear or dark. The two types are allophones of an l phoneme. Inventories are phoneme inventories, ie the items of such a list are all contrastive with each other.

Free variation

Two sounds may be each other’s allophones even if they are not in complementary distribution. We have seen that the consonant transcribed as r is pronouned by some speakers as ɹ (an alveolar approximant) and by others as ɻ (a retroflex approximant) or even ɾ (a flap). In fact, the same speaker may vary in their pronunciation. Thus these three rhotics occur in the same environment, they are not in complementary distribution. Nevertheless, they do not distinguish words, hence their difference does not carry any linguistic relevance. They are in free variation.

Occasionally even phonemes are in free variation in language. In English either is pronouced as ɑjðə or ɪjðə, apricot is aprəkɔt or ejprəkɔt: these pairs of vowels are in free variation. They are still considered separate phonemes, because in most other cases they are contrastive: eg ɑjz (eyes) vs ɪjz (ease), man (man) vs mɛjn (main).

The velar nasal

The relationship of the alveolar nasal, n, and the velar nasal, ŋ, provides a textbook example of what makes a contrast. The velar nasal occurs before the other two velar stops, k and g in all varieties of English, eg in ankle aŋkəl or angle aŋgəl. In most varieties of English, however, the velar nasal also occurs word finally, eg in bang baŋ, bring brɪŋ, or tongue təŋ.

This situation resulted from the loss of word-final g when it followed a nasal (of course, ŋ was the only nasal possible before a word-final g). In some varieties (the area of Manchester is an example), the loss of word-final g did not happen, that is, we have bang baŋg, bring brɪŋg, tongue təŋg. So while in Manchester English n and ŋ are in complementary distribution, ie ŋ and n are allophones, in most other varieties of English n and ŋ contrast, if only word finally. Pairs like ban and bang baŋ, sin and sing sɪŋ, or ton tən and tongue təŋ are minimally different and the two nasals are responsible for their difference. Manchester English thus has two nasals, m and n, other varieties have three, the previous two and also ŋ. Again: this does not mean that speakers of the two-nasals variety do not pronounce ŋ — we have just seen that they do — but only before g and k, thus in their phoneme inventory it is not distinct from n.

The inventory

Actually the consonant inventories of different English accents are quite similar, at least as compared to their vowel inventories, but of course differences do occur. We will mention some of these too.

In the chart below each column stands for a place of articulation, and each line for a manner of articulation. The basic dichotomy of consonants is the split into obstruents and sonorants. Obstruents are “strong” consonants, while sonorants are less consonantal and accordingly more vowel-like consonants. Sonorants are vowel-like, for example, in that they may function as the head of syllables, a function typically taken by vowels. Such a sonorant is called a syllabic consonant (eg little lɪtəl or lɪtḷ, in the second transcription, the second syllable, tḷ, contains a syllabic l).

Obstruents in English — like in many other languages — form two series, usually referred to as voiceless and voiced. The situation is more complex, but it holds that all and only obstruents show this two-way contrast. The chart below contains two symbols in the cells of the first three lines, which contain the obstruents, a voiceless and a voiced obstruent.Some consider h a fricative, hence an obstruent. Note though that it has no voiced counterpart, and, more importantly, we will see that its behaviour groups it with glides.

The chart above is rather holey, many possibilities are not taken by any segment. This is because it gives the phonetic properties of segments, details with great precision, so it includes many categories. We will see below that for our phonological purposes, like phonotactic constraints and natural classes, such precision is unnecessary.

We may notice that bilabial, labiodental, and labiovelar consonants are in complementary distribution with respect to their manners of articulation: only the fricatives are labiodental, only the approximant is labiovelar, the plosives and the nasal stop are bilabial. This allows us to merge these three columns: we can tell the precise place of articulation from the manner of articulation in the case of labial consonants. The same can be done with the velar consonants and the glottal h, too. In the case of the coronal consonants no such merger is possible, since we find fricatives and approximants at three different places of articulation (fricatives are dental, alveolar, and postalveolar, glides are alveolar, postalveolar, and palatal). Nevertheless, the behaviour of these segments suggests that postalveolars and palatals should be merged, leaving us with two segments, r and j in the same cell (although they are not a voiceless–voiced pair as in all the other cells, which contain obstruents). The two affricates (ʧ ʤ) are in fact sometimes considered plosives, in any case, in English they can easily be merged with that category. Liquids and glides may likewise be merged, yielding the following, much more compact chart.

In this categorization labial and alveolar consonants occur at each of the four broad manner categories (plosive, fricative, nasal, approximant). There is no palatal nasal in English. Of dentals we only have fricatives and of back consonants we only lack fricatives. Although merging dentals and back consonants would leave us with an almost perfectly saturated chart, this is undesirable for both phonetic (these places of articulation are phonetically dissimilar, far from each other) and phonological reason (their behaviour does not justify putting them in the same set, ie they are not a natural class).

Actually, a phenomenon called th-fronting is deleting dentals from the system. In the speech of many British speakers, θ turns into f and ð into d at the beginning of words and v elsewhere (eg either of the thumbs ɑjðər əv ðə θəmz becomes ɑjvər əv də fəmz). This change simplifies the consonant inventory by pruning a whole column.

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