The system of consonants
On the articulatory level each consonant may be identified by stating two general facts about it:
1) what sort of articulatory posture it is formed by;
2) where about in the vocal tract it is produced.
Besides these major characteristics the particular quality of a consonant may depend on a lot of
factors, i. e. by what articulatory organ (or organs) an obstruction is made, how the vocal cords work
at the moment of production, what cavity is used as a resonator, what is the force of articulatory fort and many others. So in our view the particular quality of a consonant would be best thought of as a
complex bundle of features. Each sound is known to have three aspects: articulatory; acoustic and auditory; and therefore can be studied on three levels. For the sake of analysis each aspect can be considered and described independently, though it is obvious that there is no sharp dividing line between them. It is suggested that the first and basic principle of classification is the degree of noise. It leads to dividing English into two big groups:
A -noise consonants;
B -sonorants.
It is easy to see that the term "degree of noise" belongs to auditory level analysis. But it is generally acknowledged that there is an intrinsic connection between articulatory and auditory aspects of
describing speech sounds, so that sometimes it is impossible to account for the former except in terms of the latter. In the above mentioned case it is the terms of auditory level that defme the characteristic more adequately. Sonorants are consonants that phoneticians traditionally have a lot of arguments about. Sonorants are sounds that differ greatly from all other consonants of the language. This is due to the fact that in their production the air passage is fairly wide, much wider than in the production of noise consonants. As a result the auditory effect is tone, not noise. This peculiarity of articulation makes sonorants sound more like vowels than consonants. Acoustically sonorants are opposed to another consonants because they are characterized by a sharply defined formant structure and the total energy of most of them is very high. However, on functional grounds according to their position in the syllable sonorants are included in the consonantal category. The great articulatory and acoustic difference of noise consonants and sonorants could be very well relied upon as having classificatory value. The phonological relevance of this factor (the degree of noise) could be proved by the following oppositions: [berk -merk] bake make (noise consonant -sonorant) [vi:l-wi:l] veal -wheel (noise consonant sonorant)
The manner of the production of noise and the type of obstruction is another characteristic of English
consonants. On this ground three classes of consonants are distinguished:
a) occlusive, in the production of which a complete obstruction is formed;
b) constrictive, in the production of which an incomplete obstruction is formed;
c) occlusive-constrictive consonants (affricates), in the production of which the obstruction is complete at the beginning of production, then it becomes incomplete.
Articulatory features are considered to be relevant from phonological point of view:
I) type of obstruction;
2) place of articulation and active organ of speech;
3) force of articulation.
The above mentioned articulatory characteristics are the primary ones as they specify the essential
quality of a consonant which is enough to describe it as an item of a system. On this level of analysis
it is the point where the distinction becomes phonemic that matters. However, from the point of view of pronunciation teaching we should gain some additional information about the articulation of a
consonant like apical-dorsal; dental, alveolar, post-alveolar, palato-alveolar; oral-nasal;
flat narrowing -round narrowing characteristics. They provide necessary information for comparison between the English and Ukrainian consonants. It is for this reason that these characteristics are normally included into descriptions.