The English Consonant System
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The consonant system of the English language can be studied from phonological, phonetic, phonic, and phonemic viewpoints. An ESL/EFL language teacher would be hard pressed to distinguish among these disciplines of language study. As a matter of fact, so would many linguists, because the concepts are fluid and change with the times. Phonology, for instance, is "the study of sound patterns in languages, sometimes regarded as part of phonetics, sometimes as a separate study included in linguistics. Phonologists study phonemes (vowels and consonants) and prosody (stress, rhythm, and intonation) as subsystems of spoken language" (McArthur, 1992, p. 772). Until the 1960s, phonology's focus was on phonemics--the study of phonemes, viz. phonological units of language "that cannot be analyzed into smaller linear units and that in any particular language is realized in non-contrastive variants" (Oxford English Dictionary, 1989). Since then, phonology's focus has been on sound patterns and prosody. Phonetics is the "study and systematic classification of the sounds made in spoken utterance as they are produced by the organs of speech and as they register on the ear and on instruments" (Webster's Third New International Dictionary, 1966).From the point of view of the EFL teacher, it is practical to view English consonants as speech sounds which are distinct from vowels, and are individually represented by a letter of the alp
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er a sound articulated in the same position, the closing of a stop may be absent, since the articulators may already be in position for the stop ("Put it down!, or the last sound in ant).
Lateral Plosion
In lateral plosion or lateral release, the phoneme is withheld until the tongue is in position for /l/ when a stop is followed by /l/, such as in atlas or acclaim. In lateral plosion, the air gets round the central blockage by the tongue by escaping round the sides. The only English lateral is /l/ as in large, hollow, and barrel.
"Lateral resonants are closed at the mid line, and usually at one side. The other side is open enough that no friction occurs. Most laterals have an /l/-like quality to American ears, though there may be several contrasting laterals in some languages" (Gleason, 1955, p. 198).
Coarticulation
In phonetics, coarticulation is the concomitance of articulation, as in fro, ostensibly a succession of three discrete sounds but physically a single articulation (f-) blending into a coarticulation (-fr-), which blends into an articulation (-r-), which blends into a coarticulation (-ro-), which blends into an articulation (-o). It is also called secondary articulation and defined as the movement during the articulat
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Approximate Pages = 11 (250 words per page)
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