7.2. The English Consonant System

The English consonant system consists of 24 consonants (see Table 4), forming oppositions based upon the following principles:

1. The manner of articulation (stops and constrictives).

2. The articulating organ (labial, lingual).

3. The passive speech organ (dental, alveolar, palatal, velar).

4. The shape of the narrowing (a narrow slit or round aperture).

5. The presence or absence of voice (voiced and voiceless).

6. The prevalence of noise or musical tone (voiced noises and sonorants).

7. The kind of resonance (oral and nasal).

8. One or two noise-producing obstacles (single point and double-point consonants).

9. The manner of releasing closure (plosives and affricates).

Pairs of voiced and voiceless consonants are frequently met with in alternations:

1) having grammatical or lexical functions.

t - d as in send [send] — sent [sent]

t - d || id as in stopped, begged, wanted

s z || iz as in caps, boys, boxes

2) Consonant alternations of various kinds are used in word formation, in compound words, in distinguishing different parts of speech, in forming the plural of nouns, etc.

k || t to speak — speech

s || z use — to use

f || v life (n) — live (a)

f || vz life – lives

s || d defence — to defend

Not all the consonants occur in any accidental position; some of them are limited by certain definite conditions. Thus, the phonemes /w/, /r/, /g/, /j/ are used only at the beginning of a syllable, while the /h/-phoneme occurs only at the end of a syllable. // and // do not form very regular oppositions in words, yet their phonemic function is based upon their grammatical and lexical functions. Thus, the //-phoneme is used as the suffix of ordinals, e. g. the fifth, the seventh.

e.g. // and //: bath – baths, a mouth — to mouth.

/w/, /j/, /h/, /1/ and the nasals do not take part in alternations. The /r/-phoneme can form alternations with zero sound. (E. g. there [] but there it is ['r it 'iz]).

The Russian consonant system is different in more than one respect. It contains 35 consonants which form oppositions according to all 9 English principles + the presence or absence of palatalization.

Table 4

Active organ, place of obst­ruction Type of obstruction, a manner of the production of noise		Labial		Lingual						Pharyngal
				Forelingual				Medio-lingual	Back-lingual
		Bi­labial	Labio-dental	Inter-dental	Alveolar	Post-alveolar	Palato-alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Occlusives	Plosives	p, b			t, d				k, g
	Nasal sonants	m			n				
Constrictives	Fricatives		f, v	, 	s, z		, 			h
	Sonants	w			l	r		j
Affricates							t, d