Thursday, 25 December 2014

Allophonic variants for English Consonants (Part 2)

  • Devoicing of the voiced fricatives
Just like voiced plosives, when voiced fricatives (/v, ð, z, ʒ/) are in final position and followed by silence, they normally lose their voicing. Examples:

"your eyes" [jɔ:r' aɪz̥]   ;    "and breathe" [ənd ' bri:ð̥]

  • Devoicing of the voiced affricate
Like voiced plosives and fricatives, when the voiced affricate /ʤ/ is in final positiond and followed by silence, it normally loses its devoicing.  

  • Allophones of nasal consonants
Variation of place of the alveolar nasal /n/

The alveolar nasal /n/ is affected by the consonant that follows it; it tends to take the place of articulation of the consonant that follows it. We have the following three allophones for this consonant:

/n/ followed by bilabial consonant: it becomes bilabial. Example: "in part" [ɪm ' pʰɑ·t]

/n/ followed by a velar consonant: it becomes velar. Example: "in coma" [ɪŋ ' kʰəʊmə]

/n/ followed by a dental consonant: it becomes dental. Example: "in theory" [in̪ ' θɪərɪ]

Syllabic n

Syllabic consonants occur only in unstressed syllables. In English, when the unstressed vowel schwa /ə/ is followed by /n/ in the same syllable, the vowel schwa is not heard, and the nasal consonant becomes syllabic. The symbol for this allophone of /n/ is [n̩]

Examples: "heaven" [' hevn̩] ;    "mission" [ ' mɪʃn̩]

  • Allophones of the lateral consonant /l/
The lateral phoneme in English has the following allophones:

Clear and Dark l

The /l/ in words like "lost" and "feel" sound different. The /l/ at the beginning of these words and the /l/ at the end of these words have a different sound. This is because the lateral phoneme is clear (alveolar) when followed by vocoid (vowel or /j/), and it is dark (velarized) in any other position. A clear l is represented with the symbol [l] and a dark l is represented with [ɬ]

Examples: "lost" [lɒst]   ;    "feel" [fi:ɬ]

Syllabic l

Syllabic consonants occur only in unstressed syllables. In English, when the unstressed vowel schwa is followed by /l in the same syllable, the vowel is not heard, and the lateral consonat becomes syllabic. The symbol for this allophone of /l/ is [l̩]

Examples: "Cattle" [kʰætɫ̩]   ;   "middle" [mɪ̃dɫ̩]

Devoicing of l

The lateral consonant is devoiced following a voiceless plosive in initial stressed position. This devoiced allophone of the lateral consonant is represented with the symbol [l̥]

Example: "clue"  [kl̥u:]

  • Allophones of approximant consonants
Devoicing of approximants 

The approximants /r, j, w/ are devoiced following a voiceless plosive in initial stressed position. These devoiced approximants are represented with the symbols [ɹ̥, j̊, w̥]

Examples: "try" [tɹ̥ɑɪ]   ;   "queen" [kw̥i:n]

And that's it! This is all you need to know about the allophones. I hope this was easy for you! :-)

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