Transcribing English 1 Start with Ladefoged s minimal sets for English consonants These are lists of words that illustrate the main consonant contrasts used in English Note how these lists are constructed because you will need to try to come up with such lists for your project language though in many languages it is very hard to make such large lists Stop consonants p t k b d pie pea tie tea kye key by bee dye D guy Gee Nasal consonants m n my me ram nigh knee ran rang Fricative consonants f v s fie fee vie V thigh thy thee sigh sea listen Z mizzen she mission z shy h vision high he Affricate consonants chi me chea p ji ve G Approximant consonants l w r j lie lee why we rye ye 3 We focus on the activities of the mouth how the articulators move as a basis of the systematicity of the English phonetic system And this focus on speech pronunciation or articulation results in an analysis that can be presented as a consonant chart of English The columns of the chart indicate the place of articulation of the sound the rows indicate the manner of articulation of the sound and where symbols appear in pairs within a cell of the table the symbol on the left is analyzed as voiceless while the symbol on the right is analyzed as voiced 5 Relating the consonant chart to the articulators a Passive articulator does not move generally the upper lip is an exception and is generally on the upper surface of the vocal tract upper lip upper incisors alveolar ridge hard palate soft palate velum uvula and back pharyngeal wall b Active articulator does move and is generally on the lower surface of the vocal tract lower lip tongue tip tongue blade tongue body and tongue root c Because active and passive articulators are not freely combinable e g lower lip cannot touch pharyngeal wall the places of articulation are generally considered as unitary descriptors despite the fact that we name many of them using a combination of the names of the active and passive articulators involved e g labio dental place of articulation active articulator passive articulator bilabial labio dental interdental alveolar palato alveolar palatal velar glottal lower lip lower lip tongue tip tongue blade tongue blade tongue front tongue center vocal folds upper lip teeth upper incisors teeth upper incisors alveolar ridge hard palate hard palate soft palate velum d Manner of articulation refers to the degree of constriction and secondary openings by which sounds are made at these places stop fricative affricate nasal approximant lateral and glide e Voicing refers to whether the vocal folds vibrate more or less during the consonant constriction 6 For example the alveolar stop articulation found in t tip d dip or n nip is like the one captured below in a tracing of one frame from an x ray movie of a person saying a word with an alveolar stop
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