Fricatives and Affricates

Fricatives are produced when the two articulators do not perform a complete closure letting the air escapes through a small passage making a hissing sound. Affricates begin as plosives and end as fricatives. Try to pronounce the following words: A. Church /t:t/ B. Tip /tIp/ C. Ship / Ip/

Notes 1. As it is obvious affricates compose of a plosive+ a fricative as in (t+ ). 2. Not all plosives followed by fricatives result in affricates; say the following word: breakfast The /k/ sound is plosive and the /f/ sound is fricative but we dont have an affricative sound /kf/ why?

Because
The /k/ and /f/ are not produced by the same articulators; the /k/ is velar and the /f/ is dental; in other words they are no homorganic. Now compare between:

K+ f

t+

d+

The Fricatives in English are:

Place of Articulation
Labiodental Dental Alveolar

Voicing Voiceless

Postalveolar

Glottal

Voiced

Notes..
1. /f/ and /v/ as in fan/van, safer/saver, and half/halve are called labiodental fricatives; the /f/ is voiceless (fortis) and the /v/ is voiced (lenis). 2. // and // as in thumb/thus, ether/father, and breath/ breather are called dentals; the // is voiceless and // is voiced. 3. /s/ and /z/ as in facing/ phasing, rice/rise are alveolars; the /s/ is voiceless and the /z/ is voiced. 4. / / and // as in ship/ (initial // very rare in English), Russia/ measure, Irish/garage are called post-alveolars.

5. The last fricative sound is /h/ as in head/ahead/ playhouse and is called glottal. 6. The voiceless fricatives have the effect of shorting a preceding vowels similar to .. . Compare: ice: /ais/ and eyes /aiz/. 7. We dont have voiced and voiceless glottal. 8. The post-alveolar fricatives / / and // can be taken to mean that the tongue is in contact with an area slightly further back than that for /s/ and /z/.

9. All the fricatives mentioned can be found in word initial, medial, and final positions. In the case of // the distribution is very limited in case of word initial position. 10. The friction produced when we pronounce /h/ is between the vocal cords (folds). 11. /t/ and /d/ are the only affricate phonemes in English; /t/ voiceless and /d/ voiced. 12. The place of articulation is similar to // and // the postalveolar.

Nasals and Other Consonants

- The basic characteristic of nasal consonants is that the air escapes through the nose when the soft palate is lowered. If you produce a long sequence of dndndndnd without moving your tongue, you will feel the soft palate moving up and down. - There are three places of articulation for nasals, bilabial, alveolar, and velar. - /m/ is. -/n/ is .. - // is

Distribution of Nasals
1. The distribution of /m/ and /n/ are similar to that of plosives; however // is a different matter. 2. // sound gives considerable problem to foreign learners since it is usually followed by a non-pronounced /k/ or /g/. First: In initial position we find /m/ and /n/ occurring freely, but // never occurs initially similar to ? Second: In medial position // occurs frequently. When it is followed by /k/, it is always pronounced. However, some words with /ng/ in the middle will have a pronunciation containing /g/ and others will have // without g. Why?

Study the following table:

-Ag finger anger /fig/ /g/ singer hanger -B.... / si/ /h/

Why?

The important difference is the way the words are constructed; their morphology. The words in -B- can be divided into two morphemes sing and er, hang and -er.
This is the rule: Within a word containing the letters ng in the spelling // occurring without a following /g/ if it occurs at the end of a morpheme; if it occurs in the middle of a morpheme it has a following /g/

Third: All the words ended with ng morphologically are pronounced as with // never followed by /g/. Examples: Sing: /s /, Hang: /h/, Song: /s/, Bang: /b/, Long: /l/ Fourth: - sound never occurs after a diphthong or long vowel; there are only five vowels are found preceding this consonant: , e, , and

The lateral consonant

A lateral consonant is produced when the air escapes along the both sides of the tongue. If you produce dldldldld without moving the middle of the tongue, you will feel the movement of the sides of the tongue.

Dark and Light Lateral

Feel /heal/ seal/ meal/ Lamp/ lord/ lake/ list/luck

Fail/ sail/ mail/ nail/ jail

Fall/call/Paul/ hall/ mall

Filter/ filler/ neutrality

Boiler/ globalization

Fill/hill/ nil/ gill/ mill/ bill

Calmer/ caller/ help/ install

Settler/ glimpse /alarm

Enclose/ client/ block

Rules:
1. Word initial position: (Light or clear) Lamp/ lord/ lip/ lack/ laundry/ learning/love 2. Word final position: (Dark) Fail/ jail/ call/ nil/ fill/ ball/ wall/ battle/ hotel/ 3. Before vowels: (Light or clear)/ After vowels (Dark) Study how the following laterals change from dark to light:

Dark
Fill Natural

Light
Filler Naturalization

Global
Boil Kill Cool

Globalization
Boiler Killer Cooler

4. Before a consonant (Dark), after a consonant (light):

Dark Calm / halt/ built/ felt/ gulf/ pulp/

Light Settler/ glimpse/ block/ enclose/ slaughter/ alarm