RESEARCH PAPERS | 23 How Many Consonant Sounds Are There in English? How Many Consonant Sounds Are There in English? by David Deterding, Nationwide Institute of Training, Singapore ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. Most analyses agree that there are 24 consonant sounds in English. Nonetheless, it’s precious to contemplate in some element a couple of points that have an effect on the standing of those consonants.
First, we will take into consideration why the affricates /t? / and /d / are handled as single consonants quite than sequences of two consonants. Second, one may talk about why it’s that /w/ and /j/ are categorised as consonants quite than vowels. Third, there may be the potential of a unvoiced counterpart of /w/ that, for some audio system, differentiates which from witch. And at last, there may be the Question Assignment of whether or not the velar nasal /? / is definitely an allophone of /n/. After contemplating these points, most individuals will nonetheless conclude that there are 24 consonants in English.
Nonetheless, the dialogue can Help us achieve a deeper understanding of English phonology. ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. s Introduction What number of consonant sounds do you assume there are in English? In fact, most of us know that there are 20 consonant letters in our alphabet (or 21 should you embody ‘y’), however right here we’re speaking about sounds, not letters.
And there’s a mismatch between sounds and letters: generally two letters mix to characterize one sound, in order that ‘s’ + ‘h’ mix to characterize the sound /? / and ‘t’ + ‘h’ mix for /? /, and generally one letter is pronounced as a sequence of two sounds, as ‘x’ is normally /ks/. So the variety of consonant letters in our alphabet is irrelevant when contemplating the variety of consonant sounds (phonemes) in English. The essential reply to the unique Question Assignment is that there are 24 consonant sounds in English: q 6 plosives : /p b t d okay / q 9 fricatives : /f v ? ? s z ? / q 2 affricates : /t? d / q three nasals : /m n ? / q 1 lateral-approximant : /l/ q three approximants : /w j r/ Nonetheless, issues are by no means fairly so simple as that within the examine of languages, and there are a variety of points that we would take into account in additional depth: q Why are /t? / and /d / considered single phonemes and never as sequences of two phonemes? q Why are /w/ and /j/ considered consonants and never vowels? q Do these individuals who distinguish which from witch have one further phoneme, / /, a unvoiced equal of /w/? q Ought to /? / actually be considered a separate phoneme?
Or can it’s analysed as an allophone of /n/? s The standing of /t? / and /d / The 2 affricates are every written as a sequence of two symbols, so why will we regard them as single consonants? Why will we not, for instance, analyse cheese /t? i z/ as having two consonants at the beginning, /t/ adopted by /? /? The reply is that /t? / behaves phonologically as a single sound, even when phonetically it’s quite much like a plosive adopted by a fricative. In analysing its behaviour, we’d like to consider the patterns of distribution of /t/ and /? (Laver, 1994:365), so we should always take into account what sequences of sounds can happen collectively, significantly at the beginning of a syllable. English permits fairly advanced syllable onsets, comparable to /str/ in string and /spl/ in splash, but it surely doesn’t usually allow a plosive adopted by a fricative, so */pf okay/, */ts? / and */okay?? p/ aren’t doable phrases of English. (Within the few instances the place the spelling does counsel a plosive adopted by a fricative at the beginning of the phrase, comparable to psychology, the plosive is definitely silent. ) However word that chip /t?? / and verify /t? ek/ are completely good phrases of English. So if we handled /t? / as a sequence of two phonemes, we must make a particular exception to the rule that an English phrase can not start with a plosive adopted by a fricative. Notice that /t? / may also happen on the finish of a phrase, as with catch /okay t? / and wealthy /r? t? /, and there aren’t any different cases the place /? / can happen after a plosive on the finish of a phrase, as */okay okay? / and */r? p? / aren’t doable phrases in English. The state of affairs with /d / offers even stronger proof.
The consonant / / is quite uncommon in English, and other than in some current mortgage phrases comparable to style / ? nr? /, beige /be? /, and rouge /ru / (all of which nonetheless sound quite international), / / can solely happen in the course of a phrase, principally between two vowels, as in pleasure Copyright © 2005 Singapore Tertiary English Lecturers Society1, 2005 STETS Language & Communication Evaluate, Vol. four, No. (STETS) w 24 | David Deterding s The standing of /w/ and /j/ In the event you say /w/ and drag it out, it sounds quite like /u /, and equally /j/ sounds quite like /i / (Roach, 2000:64).
In the event that they sound like vowels, why will we classify /w/ and /j/ as consonants? Typically it’s precious to make a distinction between a contoid and a consonant: contoids are articulated with an obstruction within the vocal tract, however consonants are sounds which might happen on the fringe of a syllable (Laver, 1994:147-Eight). In different phrases, contoid is a phonetic time period which describes the articulation of a sound, whereas consonant is a phonological time period which describes its behaviour inside a syllable.
From the phonetic perspective of articulation, we discover that plosives, fricatives, nasals, and the lateral approximant /l/ are all contoids, as a result of all of them contain a constriction within the vocal tract, however /j/ and /w/ (and perhaps /r/ as properly) aren’t contoids. However now we should always take into account phonological behaviour and thereby decide which sounds must be categorised as consonants. Allow us to take into consideration what can happen earlier than /et/ to create a monosyllabic English phrase. We’ve got phrases comparable to wager /wager/, pet /pet/, set /set/, web /web/, and debt /det/, however not */? t/ or */ et/, so we regard /b p s n d/ as consonants as a result of they happen on the fringe of a syllable, however /? / are vowels. Nonetheless, word that we will even have moist /moist/ and but /jet/. This confirms that /w/ and /j/ are consonants. In a single different facet of behaviour, we will take into account the distribution of the indefinite articles a and an: a happens earlier than consonants, whereas an happens earlier than vowels, and this depends upon the pronunciation and never the spelling, so it’s an hour not *a hour as a result of /a?? / begins with a vowel (the ‘h’ is silent).
However word that now we have a waste and a 12 months, not *an waste and *an 12 months, and spot that when extra that is based mostly on pronunciation and never on spelling, as it’s a college (which begins with /j/) and never *an college. So once more we see that /w/ and /j/ behave as consonants, not as vowels (Roach, 2000:64). s The standing of /? / In commonplace phonemic Assessment, we assume that if the prevalence of a sound could be predicted from the encircling sounds, it’s considered an allophone and never as a phoneme.
So, for instance, we deal with [ ], the darkish /l/ sound that happens on the finish of a phrase comparable to fill, as an allophone of /l/ as a result of we will specify that it solely happens within the coda of a syllable (or as a syllabic consonant in phrases comparable to bottle), not like its clear counterpart which happens earlier than a vowel. So what about /? /? Notice that /? / may also solely seem within the coda of a syllable, and moreover we will predict that /? / quite than /n/ will all the time happen earlier than one other velar sound, comparable to in financial institution /b ? okay/ and anger / ? ?/. So ought to /? / be considered an allophone of /n/ (after which be written as [? rather than /? /)? The crucial test for a phoneme is the existence of a minimal pair: if there are two words which only differ with respect to one sound distinction, then we know that we have two separate phonemes. For example, we know that /f/ and /v/ are different phonemes of English because of the existence of the minimal pair fan /f n/ and van /v n/ where the only difference is in the initial consonant, and similarly the difference in the final sound of back /b k/ and bag /b / establishes /k/ and / / as separate phonemes of English.
On this basis, we can be confident that /n/ and /? / are different phonemes, because we have many minimal pairs such as sin /s? n/ and sing /s?? /, and also ran /r n/ and rang /r ? /. This would seem to be the end of the story, but of course it is not. s The possibility of / / Do you make a distinction between which and witch? For most speakers, these two words are homophones as they are both pronounced as /w? t? /, though many Americans do make a distinction (Wells, 1982:126), and most Copyright © 2005 Singapore Tertiary English Teachers Society (STETS) w w w /ple ? / and measure /me ? /. But notice that jet /d et/ and barge /b? d / are perfectly good words in English. So if we were to regard /d / as a sequence of two separate sounds, we would have to say that / / can only occur near the start or at the end of a word if it is preceded by /d/, which would be rather strange. So the claim that /t? / and /d / are single sounds in English is well-founded, because they behave phonologically like single sounds in the structure of English words.
However, one might note that Ladefoged (2001:27) does treat both these English affricates as sequences of two sounds, partly because his emphasis is rather more on phonetics than on the phonological structure of English. Scottish speakers also do (Wells, 1982:408). Indeed, it was once normal for all speakers of English to make this distinction, but by the end of the eighteenth century even educated southern speakers no longer maintained it (Mugglestone, 2003:132). For speakers who retain this distinction, it might be necessary to include an extra phoneme, with / / representing the voiceless counterpart of /w/, so that which is / ? ? / while witch is /w? t? / However, even here the analysis is not so simple. Historically, this sound was a consonant cluster /hw/, parallel to other clusters beginning with /h/, such as /hr/, /hn/ and /hl/ (Cruttenden, 2001:215). These others have now disappeared, so apart from the possibility of /hw/, the only remaining consonant cluster involving /h/ is /hj/ in words such as huge /hju d / and human /hju m? n/. And even the status of this is doubtful, as one might alternatively regard /ju / as a diphthong (Deterding, 2004).
So, from a historical perspective, / / might be treated as /hw/. But from a synchronic perspective, we should note that the contrast between / / and /w/ is parallel to the contrast between many pairs of consonants in English, such as /t/ and /d/, /s/ and /? /, and /f/ and /v/. The fact that the voiceless/voiced contrast is wellestablished in English lends support to the treatment of / / as a phoneme in its own right. We might therefore conclude that some speakers do have this extra phoneme. w v w v How Many Consonant Sounds Are There in English? | 25 so it’s fun being with them [F9-f:40]
In truth, further velar plosives additionally often get inserted on the finish of phrases comparable to promoting, finding out and younger in comparatively casual Singapore knowledge (Lim & Deterding, 2005), as proven within the following examples additionally from the NIECSSE corpus: promoting um ornamental stuff [iF9-c:83] that I used to be finding out … this [iF9-c:238] after we had been younger … we used to erm [iF10-e:180] If a velar plosive will get inserted often after /? /, perhaps we should always analyse it as current within the underlying illustration of the phrase, after which as a substitute of claiming that it generally will get inserted, we should always state that it generally fails to get deleted.
And if that is so, s Conclusion It’s nonetheless mainly true that there are 24 consonants in English, although it might below some circumstances be doable to treat /t? / and /d / as sequences of two sounds, some audio system might have an additional phoneme / /, and the standing of /? / is questionable. Though we will conclude that there are 24 consonants in English, consideration of among the points relating to the phonological Assessment of English can provide us a deeper understanding of he construction of the sound system of the language. STETS Language & Communication Evaluate, Vol. four, No. 1, 2005 w v v Another risk is to say that phrases like sing have a silent / / on the finish, and this silent / / will get deleted when it happens on the finish of a phrase (Roach, 2000:68). In truth, for some audio system of English, this deletion rule doesn’t apply and sing is pronounced as [s?? ] (Roach, 2000:67), so clearly for audio system comparable to this, we should always analyse [? ] as an allophone of /n/.
Moreover, in cautious pronunciation, some audio system insert a velar plosive on the finish of phrases comparable to being, and this may happen in Singapore English (Setter & Deterding, 2003) as is obvious from the next utterance from the NIECSSE corpus (Deterding & Low, 2001): then the distribution of [? ] is totally predictable, so it’s an allophone and never a phoneme. Lastly we would word that phrases comparable to lengthy /l?? /, sturdy /str?? / and younger /j ? / don’t have any closing / /, however there’s a / / when a comparative suffix is added: longer /l?? ?/, stronger /str?? ?/, youthful /j ? ?/.
So this appears to lend additional Help to the doable existence within the base type of these phrases of a closing / / which will get deleted in some circumstances. (However word that there is no such thing as a / / with the –ing suffix or the agentive –er suffix: singing /s???? / and singer /s??? /; not */s?? ?? / and */s?? ?/. ) In conclusion, we will say that, on the idea of minimal pairs, /? / is mostly considered a phoneme of English, however that there are some counter-arguments which elevate a couple of questions on its standing. 26 | David Deterding REFERENCES Deterding, D. (2004). What number of vowel sounds are there in English?
STETS Language & Communication Evaluate, 19(10): 19-21. Deterding, D. & Low, E. L. (2001). The NIE corpus of spoken Singapore English (NIECSSE). SAAL Quarterly, 56: 2–5. Ladefoged, P. (2001). A course in phonetics (4th version). Fort Price: Harcourt School Publishers. Laver, J. (1994). Rules of phonetics. Cambridge: Cambridge College Press. Lim, S. H. & Deterding, D. (2005). Added closing plosives in Singapore English. In D. Deterding, A. Brown and E. L. Low (Eds. ), English in Singapore: Phonetic analysis on a corpus, pp. 37-42. Singapore: McGraw Hill. Mugglestone, L. 2003). ‘Speaking correct’: The rise of accent as a social image (2nd version). Oxford: Oxford College Press. Roach, P. (2000). English phonetics and phonology: A sensible course (third version). Cambridge: Cambridge College Press. Setter, J. & Deterding, D. (2003, August). Additional closing consonants within the English of Hong Kong and Singapore. Paper offered on the Worldwide Convention of Phonetic Sciences, Barcelona. Wells, J. (1982). Accents of English. Cambridge: Cambridge College Press. Copyright © 2005 Singapore Tertiary English Lecturers Society (STETS)
