THE SYSTEM OF ENGLISH PHONEMES

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 608.

The previous section has been concerned with the aims and methods of phonological analysis. In this section we are going to give a brief and readable description of the problems which scholars face trying to describe the English sounds from the func­tional point of view. We shall try to explain what is understood by qualityof a sound, what articulatory characteristics may be considered constituents of quality and to determine which of them are important enough to arrest our attention as phonologically relevant.

By way of introduction we would like to remind you that

there are two major classes of sounds traditionally distinguished by phoneticians in any language. They are termed consonantsand vowels.It would be fair to mention that the distinction is based mainly on auditory effect. Consonants are known to have voice and noise combined, while vowels are sounds consisting of voice only. From the articulatory point of view the difference is due to the work of speech organs. In case of vowels no obstruc­tion is made. In case of consonants various obstructions are made. So consonants are characterized by so-called close articulation, that is by a complete, partial or intermittent blockage of the air-passage by an organ or organs. The closure is formed in such a way that the air-stream is blocked or hindered or otherwise gives rise to audible friction. As a result consonants are sounds which have noise as their indispensable and most defining characteristic.

What we have said makes it logic-enough to consider each class of sounds independently. So we shall start with consonants.