SHORT ESSAY

QUESTION 10: Explain in articulatory terms the features of the following

consonants: affricate.
The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) was designated in the year 1886 to
devise a universal phonetic alphabet. It consists of the vowels and the consonants
as a whole and complements the everyday communication in a way to have the
accurate pronunciation. From the topic chosen, the focus is on the consonants of
affricates. What is consonant in the phonological system? It is actually a terms of
where the constriction is made, how it is made, and what kind of phonation it
supports.(John Clark & Collin Yallop, 1990). Other than that,(Finegan, 2008) states
that consonants are sounds produced by partially or completely blocking of air in its
passage from the lung through the vocal tract. This means that, human makes
consonant sounds through the blockage of air in their vocal tract. In the consonants
chart, there is the place of articulation which is placed from the left side to the right
side (from the front of the vocal tract to the back) of the chart. It is then combined
with the manners of articulation which is placed from the top until the bottom of the
chart (from stops to semi-vowel) and they are also categorised into the voiceless
and the voicedway of sounding.
Next after that, what is it actually the affricate? It is the degree of air
turbulence and friction at the release of the stops(John Clark & Collin Yallop, 1990).
While on the other hand, (Finegan, 2008) states that in the pronunciation of affricate,
air is built up by a complete closure of the oral tract. It can be clearly seen that, the
production of affricate sound involves air friction due the blockage in the vocal tract.
This affricate manner of articulation consists of the voiceless affricate (t )and voice
affricate (d)that comes with the combination of place of articulation of alveolar.So,
what is the definition of alveolar? It refers to the gum ridge; the thick membranous
covering on the bone structure which joins the tooth-bearing bone of the upper jaw
and the arched bone structure of the hard palate(John Clark & Collin Yallop, 1990). It
is the articulation place right after the teeth that produce voiceless [t] and [s] with
voiced [d], [z] and [n].The affricate is normally a short duration that counts as the
release burst of the stop itself. For example, the initial sounds of chin and ginand
the final sounds of batch and badge. If the sound is pronounced slowly enough, we


can recognize it as the stop-fricatives, which are more accurately called as
affricates. In the pronunciation of affricate, air is built up by a complete closure of
the oral tract and at some place of articulation, then released (something like a stop)
and continued (like a fricative). The sound of chin earlier is the combination of the
stop [ t ] and the fricative [ ]and is then represented as (t ). The sound at the
beginning and the end of judge is a combination of the stop [ d ] and the fricative
[ ], represented as(d). In English, there is only this type of affricates and they are
called alveo-palatal affricates in order to capture their place of articulation. In addition,
as they share the phonetic property of constricting the airflow through the vocal tract,
fricatives, stops, and affricates are together referred as obstruentwhich is a fricative
or plosive speech sound.