Paper of Phonology

TRANSCRIPTION OF CONSONANTS

Presentation in English Phonology Lesson

English Departement

Semester III

Lecturer

Marina Pakaja, SS, M. Hum

Oleh Kelompok IV

Moh. Fakhrurozi Buhungo

Nur Jannah

Nur Hidayah

Nurjana Lalata

Nurliati

Nurmaya Seyedi

Sakina Fitriany Hilly

MAJOR ENGLISH DEPARTEMENT

FACULTY TARBIYAH / ILMU KEGURUAN

IAIN SULTAN AMAI GORONTALO

2013   

CHAPTER I

FOREWORD

English speech sound are formed by modifying in some way the stream of fair which is forced out of the lugs throught the oral and/or nasal cavities, sounds created using this type of air flow are said to be made by using a pulmonic agressive airsream mechanism. Other airstream mechanisms are possible but will not be disussed here.

Consonants, unlike vowels, are speech sounds produced with a narrowing somewhere in the vocal tract which is usually sufficient to prevent them from  functioning as syllable nuclei (the nucleus is the “heart” of the syllable, carrying stress, loudness, and pitch informations; it usually consists of a vowel). When describing a consonant it is necessary to provide information about three different aspects of the articulation of the consonants.

CHAPTER II

DISCUSSION

A.    The Transcription Of Consonants

Let us began by considering the contrasting consonant sounds in English. Take, for example, all the words that rhyme with ‘’pie’’ and have only a single consonant at the beginning. A set of words each of which differs from all the others by only one sounds is called a animal set of this kind. There are of obviously many additional words that rhyme with ‘’pie,’’ such as ‘’spy, try, spry,’’ but these words begin with sequences of two or more of the sounds already in the animal sets. Some of the words in the list begin with two consonant letters (‘’high, thy, shy’’), but they each begin with a single consonant sound. ‘’Shy,’’ for example, does not contain a sequence of two consonant sounds in the way thay ‘’spy’’ and ‘’try’’ do.

Symbols for transcribing English consonants. (Alternative symbols that may be found in others books are given in parentheses.)

p	pie	pea
t	Tie	Tea
K	Kye	key
b	By	bee
d	Dye	D
g	guy
m	my	Me	ram
n	nigh	knee	ran
η			rang
f	Fie	fee
v	vie	V
Θ	thigh
Ә	thy	thee
s	sigh	sea
z		Z	mizzen
ʃ (š)	shy	she	mission
Ӡ (ž)			vision
1	lie	Lee
w	why	We
r(r)	rye
j(y)		Ye
h	High	He
Note also the following
tʃ	chi (me)	chea(p)
dӠ (ǰ)	ji(ve)	G

Some consonant do not accur in words rhyming with ‘’pie’’ if we allow the names of the letters as words, then we can find a set of consonants beginning words rhyming with ‘’pie.’’ A list of such words in snown in the third column (Speakers of British English will have to remember that in American English the name of the last letter of the alphabet belongs in this set rather in the set of words rhyming with ‘’bed,’’

Even in this of words we are still missing some consonant sounds that contrast with others only in the middle or at the end of words. The letters ng often represent a single consonant sound that does not occur at the beginning of a word. You can hear this sound at the end of the word ‘’rang,’’ where it contrast with other nasals in words such as ‘’ram, ran.’’ There is also a contrast between the consonant in the middle of ‘’mission’’ and vision,’’ although there are very few pairs of words that are distinguished by this contrast in English. (One such pairs I my English involves the name of a chain of island – ‘’Aleutian’’ versus ‘’allusion.’’) Words illustrating these consonants are given in the fourth column.

Most of in the symbols in table are the same letters we use in spelling these words, but there are few differences. One variation between spelling and phonetic usage occurs with the letter c, which is sometimes used to respresent a [k] sound, as in ‘’cup’’ or ‘’bacon’’ and sometimes to respresent an [s] sound, as in ‘’cellar’’ or ‘’receive.’’ Two c’s may even respresent a sequence of these sounds in the saveme word, as in ‘’accent, access.’’ Another example is the symbol [g] , which is used for the sound ‘’guy’’ and ‘’guess’’ but never for the sound in ‘’age’’ or the letter g itself.

A few other symbols are needed to supplement the regular alphablet.the velar  nasal  at the end  of”rang”is written with [ŋ], a letter  n combined with the tail  of the letter  g descending below the line. The symbol [θ], an upreight vesion of the greek letter  theta,is used for the voiceless dental fricative in words such as “thigh, thin, thimble, ether, breath, mouth.”The symbol [ð], derivet from an Anglo-saxon letter, is used for the corresponding voiced sound in words such as “thy, then, then ,them, breathe” Both these symbols are ascenders (letters that go up from the line of writing rather than descending below it). The spelling system of the English languages does not distinguish between [θ] and [ð]. The are both written with the letters th in pairs such as”ether, either”.

The voiceless palate-alveolar fricative [ʃ] IN “shy, sheep, rash” is both as ascender and a descender. It is like a long, straightened s going both above and below the line of writing. The corresponding voiced symbol [3] is like a long z descending below  the line. This sound occurs in the middle of words suh as “vision, measure, leisure” and at the beginning of foreign words such as the French”jean, gendarme.”

 The sound at the beginning of the word ”rye” is written with an approximant in words such as “red, rose.” The phonetic symbols used here are part of the set suggested by the Internationalphonetic Association (IPA), a body founded in 1886 Britain, and Denmark. A more complete set of these symbols will along with recommendations for their usage,is given in the booklet Principles of the International Phonetic Association (obtainable  the Phonetic Departement, University College, London).

There are also disagreements among texts on phonetics on how to transcribe sounds such as the first and last sounds in both “church” and judge.” It is taken the position that these be written [tʃ] and [d3]. You can see that a word such as “choose” in the first might be said to begin with [tʃ] if you compare your pronounciation of the phrases “white shoes” and “way choose.” In the first phrase the [t] is at the end of one word and the [ʃ] at the beginning of the second word. The difference between the two phrases is simply one of the articulations involved rather than the use of different articulations. Other pairs pharases that demonstrate this point are “versus” “he cheats” and might shop versus ‘’my chop’’ there are no pairs of phrases illustrating the same point for the voiced counterpart [d3] found in ‘’jar, gentle, age’’ because no english word begins with [3].

Some other books on phonetics take the view that the sounds [tʃ] [d3] as in ‘’church’’ and ‘’judge’’ are really single units and are better transcribed with a single symbol such as [Č] and [ʃ]. This view has much to commend it since the consonanst [ʃ] and [3] are not like other consonants such as [r] and [1]. Each of the letter pair of consonants can occur as the second element in many cluster only with [t] and [d] respectively. However, as this is a book on phonetics, it seems appropriate to use two symbols for the consonants in words such as ‘’jay’’ and ‘’age’’ so as to show that there are two elements in each of them, jjust as there are in other words containing consonant cluters, such as ‘’thee’’ and ‘’eats.’’

There is one minor matter still to be considered in the transcription of the consonant contrast of English. In many forms of both british and American English, ‘’wich’’ does not contrast with ‘’witch.’’ Accordingly, both ‘’why, wye; whetever, weather.’’ These speakers will have to transcribe the first of each of these pairs of in the spelling the w occurs before the h.

B.     Example of Consonant

Example the voiced consonants are :

            b     1    η    v    z

            d     m    r    w   ž

            g     n     ð     y   dž

Example voiceless consonants are

            f     k    s    t    hw

            h    p    š    θ    tš

Example english consonants

[p] pat, map                                                     [ð] then, father

[t] tin, mat                                                       [z] zinc, ties

[k] came, pick                                                  [ž] measure, azure

[?] bottle                                                          [Č] chain

[b] bud, dub                                                    [ǰ] Jane

[d] din, mad                                                     [m] man, came

[g] game, flag                                                  [n] no, tin

[f] fine, leaf                                                      [η] sing, finger

[] thin, tooth                                                    [l] lap, fall

[h] hand, who                                                  [r] rap, tar

[v] vine, leave                                                  [w] witch, sew

[y] you, few

•   Manner of Articulation

Beside stating whether a sound is voiced or voiceless and giving the sound’s point of articulation, it is necessary to describe its manner of articulation, that is how the airstream is modified by the vocal tract to produce the sound. English then has six groups of consonant sounds : stops, fricativies, affricates, nasals, liquids, and glides.

·         Stops

The different between the members of each of these pairs lies in the operation of the vocal cords, which are two elastic membranes that can be moved by muscles in the larynx. The position of the membranes can vary from completely closed to completely open.

·         Fricativies

By forcing air through a narrow opening in the oralcavity, the process that creats audible turbulence in the airstream, fricativies are made. The constriction maybe made in different places of the mouth, as is the case with stops.

·         Affricates

The affricates are a special group of sound that are formed by combining a stop and a fricative.

·         Nasal

In english, the three nasals, [m, n, ŋ], are made with the lips and tongue in the same respective positions as they are for [p, t, k]; however, air pressure does not build up as it does in the stops. Instead, the uvula (the flap that controls the opening to the nasal passage) is open, allowing the air to flow through the nose.

·         Liquids

            When a liquid is produced there is an obstruction formed by the articulators, but it is not arrow enough to stop the airflow or to cause friction. The [1] in leaf  is produced by resting the tongue on the alveolar ridge with the airstream escaping around the sides of tongue.

·         Glides

      The last two consonants are the glides, [w] and n [y]. A [w] is formed with the back of the tongue arched high and the lips in a rounded position-much as they are in making the sound “oo” [as in too].