Consonants

Modern English has the following consonant phonemes:

One of the questions for the historical study of English is where and how these
phonemes originated. To start that process, examine the set of consonant phonemes in PIE:

The charts are quite similar in some aspects, though there are some major differences.
Both PIE and Modern English have the set of voiceless and voiced stops /p/ /t/ /k/
and /b/ /d/ /g/, but PIE divides its velar stops into three distinct types. Instead
of a simply /k/ for instance, there is a palatalized /k’/, a standard velar /k/,
and then a labiovelar /kw/. The first of these is similar to the type of /k/ that
we would pronounce in the words leak or king, where the velar
/k/ is what we would pronounce in the words lock or kong. The
labiovelar is a /k/ with rounded lips, similar to our “q” sound as in queen.

A further difference between PIE and Modern English consonant phonemes is that
PIE has a set of voiced aspirated stops: /bh/, /dh/, /gh/. These are similar to
/b/, /d/, and /g/, but with a heavy breath of air. In Modern English the voiceless
stops /p/ /t/ and /k/ are aspirated at the beginning of a stressed syllable,
but this aspiration is not phonemic; on the other hand, Modern English voiced stops /b/
/d/ and /g/ are not aspirated. In PIE, voiced stops were phonemically distinguished
into aspirated and non-aspirated varieties. To approximate the voiced varieties,
try saying the words abhor or adhere.

Finally, a number of Modern English phonemes do not occur. PIE only has one fricative,
/s/, and there are only two nasal phonemes, /m/ and /n/; /ŋ/ does not appear.

Laryngeals

The last set of sounds to discuss in the consonant set are the so-called laryngeals,
a set of sounds that sometimes acted as vowels, sometimes as consonants. They were
first proposed by Ferdinand de Saussure in a paper he wrote (when he was 21!) to
explain some idiosyncrasies in the Greek phonetic system. To put it extremely simply,
Saussure showed using the comparative method that there were some sounds in Greek
words that should have been different sounds if all the proper developments of
sound laws were followed. He hypothesized that the reason the “wrong” sounds appeared
in a few places in Greek could be explained by assuming that there must have been
other sounds in PIE that had entirely disappeared but had affected the sound changes
before they disappeared. It was difficult for him to prove the existence of something that
had completely disappeared, and therefore many people did not accept his theory when it
first appeared. Several decades later, however, some clay tablets were excavated
in Turkey written in a previously unknown language around the 16th century BCE.
The language, which scholars named Hittite, was eventually deciphered and recognized
an Indo-European language. In fact, it is the earliest Indo-European language that
was ever written down. As the language was documented, linguists realized that it
contained sounds which corresponded exactly to the laryngeals Saussure had proposed
and which occurred in the same places where he said they should! They are written today
as h₁, h₂ and h₃. It is not entirely clear what
the distinctions between these were, and the details are not necessary to go into here.
Simply put, these sounds disappear in almost all PIE languages (except for the Anatolian
branch), but they do leave traces. The h₁ laryngeal is a neutral one
and has no effect on the vowel around it. The h₂ laryngeal has an “a-coloring”
to it. This is why we used it when we reconstructed the PIE word for father,
*ph₂ter-. PIE only had an /e/ and an /o/ vowel, and so the /a/ vowel in the words
for father must have come from the h₂ laryngeal. Finally, the
h₃ laryngeal probably included lip rounding as well, since it often led to an /o/
type vowel.

The laryngeals disappear in Germanic and so we will not discuss them in any more detail.

Vowels

There are major differences in the vowels of PIE compared to Modern English. Modern English has
a set of five front vowels, some tense and some lax, one central vowel, and six back vowels,
again tense and lax varieties. According to some scholars, PIE in its earliest
stages only had one vowel /e/. Most scholars, however, find it easier to work with
the notion of two vowels: /e/ and /o/, each of which could occur in long and short varieties,
making four vowel phonemes total: /e/, /ē/, /o/, /ō/. Note that these are both mid vowels,
differing from each other in frontness and in roundness of the lips. Note also that in PIE vowel
length was a phonemic difference.

We can add to these four vowels the two semivowels /w/ and /j/. When these appear in an environment
in which there is no other vowel, they convert to the appropriate vowel /u/ and
/j/. Thus, the root *wed- (which we will discuss in the section on morphemes) has
a version in which there is no /e/ vowel. It would appear as *wd-, but this is
unpronounceable, and so the /w/ converts to its corresponding vowel, /u/, giving us
*ud-.

Although not classified as true vowels, the resonant sounds (i.e., /r/, /l/, /m/, /n/) could
appear as the nucleus of a syllable as well. This is similar to a Modern English word
like bottle, where the final /l/ acts as a syllable to itself, in the
same way a vowel would. In other words, to pronounce that word, we do not say
[bɑtəl] but rather [bɑtḷ]. The dot underneath the [ḷ] signifies that it is acting
as the nucleus of a syllable in the way that vowels normally do. We do the same
with nasals in English, such as in the words bottom or button.

chapter 11.10: features and rules

As discussed in the sections above on consonants and vowels, phonemes can be categorized
by certain distinctive features. Understanding these features will be very important
when it comes time to see how sounds can change into other sounds.

Features are given in a binary form between square brackets, using the plus (+)
or minus (-) signs to indicate whether a particular phoneme has or does not have
that feature. For example, we learned that the phoneme /p/ was a bilabial voiceless
stop. Because it is a labial consonant, we can use the notation [+labial], whereas
a consonant like /t/ would be [-labial]. Because it is voiceless, we can use the
notation [-voice], whereas a sound like /b/ is [+voice]. Because it is a stop,
in which the air flow through the oral cavity is completely obstructed, it can
be notated by the feature [-continuant], where a sound like /f/ or /l/ or /e/
would all be [+continuant].

The advantage of this type of binary notation is that it makes the specific processes
of various sound changes more transparent. As an example, let us continue with the sound
/p/, a labial, voiceless, stop. It was mentioned earlier that the sound /p/ in
Proto-Indo-European became /f/ in Germanic languages like English. This change
explains why we have Latin words like piscis, pedem and pater,
all beginning with /p/, while their English counterparts, fish, foot, and
father, all begin with /f/. It is one thing to say that /p/ becomes /f/,
but it is another thing to explain how this process takes place. How can one
sound simply become another?

As already described, using feature notation we can write /p/ as

[+labial] [-voice] [-continuant]

If we look at the features for the sound [f] we have

[+labial][-voice][+continuant]

The only difference between the two sounds is in the [continuant] feature. In other
words, we are not dealing so much with one sound becoming an entirely different
sound, but with a sound altering a single feature. We can write the change thus:

[+labial][-voice][-continuant] → [+labial][-voice][+continuant]

In fact, the change from [p] to [f] is part of a larger shift, called Grimm’s Law,
in which all three voiceless stops, [p], [t], and [k], became voiceless fricatives [f], [θ],
[h]. Because this is a universal change for all stops, we can omit the place of
articulation feature and write the change thus:

[-voice][-continuant] → [-voice][+continuant]

This change covers all voiceless, non-continuants, that is, all voiceless stops, and says
that they all become voiceless continuants. In other words, it says that [p],
[t], [k] become [f], [θ], [h].

A simpler example of the use of features to describe changes can be seen if the
following instance of assimilation. We have already learned how nasals are easily
assimilated to following consonants. Take the phrase “on call.” In everyday speech,
the alveolar nasal [n] in “on” is assimilated to the velar stop [k] that begins
the word “call,” and becomes pronounced [ŋ]. Using feature notation we can write the
change [n] > [ŋ] as

[+nasal][+alveolar] → [+nasal][+velar]

List of Distinctive Features

The following features are some (from a
larger list)
that we will occasionally see in this course as we discuss phonological changes. You will notice
that most of them are terms you have already seen in the description of phonemes from Week 2.

• [+/- consonant] Segments with this feature include all consonants, whether stops, fricatives, affricates, nasals, or liquids. Vowels and semivowels lack this feature.
• [+/- continuant] This feature describes consonantal segments in which the airflow is allowed to pass through the oral cavity without stopping. It includes fricatives and liquids, but not stops or affricates.
• [+/- approximant] As learned already, approximants are segments in which there is little to no obstruction of the air. This class includes vowels, semivowels, liquids. Segments without this feature are stops, fricatives,
  affricates, and nasals.
• [+/- sonorant] Sonorant segments include vowels, semivowels, liquids and nasals. Segments without this feature are stops, fricatives and affricates.

In addition to these, there are place features such as [+labial] or [-velar] and voicing [+/- voice].

For vowels, the features [+/-high][+/-mid][+/-low], [+/-front][+/-central][+/-back], [+/-tense] and [+/-rounded] can be used.

Phonological rules

The change in Grimm’s Law wherein [p] > [f] is an unconditioned change. It
happened throughout all occurrences of Indo-European [p]. But the change from
[n] to [ŋ] is a conditioned change. It only occurs in certain phonetic environments,
specifically, when the alveolar nasal comes before a velar sound. When we use
features to describe the change like we did above, we can incorporate notation
which specifies the type of phonetic environment that is necessary to cause the change.

The change we want to describe says that an alveolar nasal becomes a dental nasal
whenever the alveolar nasal comes before a velar stop. So we write a phonological
“rule” that describes this:

[+nasal][+alveolar] → [+nasal][+velar] /____ [+velar]

Let’s break down this equation. The first part, [+nasal][+alveolar], describes the
features of the phoneme before the sound change. The arrow, → (or you can use >) represents
the process of change itself, and is followed by the features after the change
has occurred, in this case [+nasal][+velar]. This change is followed by a slash /
that means “in the following condition,” and is followed by a description of the
phonetic environment that must exist for the change to occur. In this case we have
____ [+velar]. The underscore here represents the phoneme that is being affected
by the sound change. So we can read this equation as whenever a nasal alveolar phoneme
occurs directly before a velar phoneme, then it will change to a nasal velar phoneme.

In effect, this rule is the same as simply saying [n] > [ŋ] before velars. By using
the notation of features, we can see the underlying mechanisms that cause the change.

As second example, let’s take the “rule” that describes plurals in English. With a
word like “dog,” we add the [z] to the end, so that we have [dɔgz] (or [dɑgz]).
But if we add a plural to a word like “hat” we have [hæts]. One of these words
has [z] and the other has [s]. The difference is that “dog” ends in a voiced sound
while “hat” ends in a voiceless sound. The plural is normally voiced but becomes
voiceless by assimilation when it follows a voiceless sound. We can represent
this change in the following way:

[+alveolar][+continuant][+voice] → [+alveolar][+continuant][-voice] /[-voice] _____

The environment is given as /[-voice] _____, meaning that the change occurs when the sound
[+alveolar] [+continuant][+voice] occurs directly after a voiceless sound. The
change shows that the voiced alveolar continuant, that is, [z], becomes a voiceless,
alveolar continuant, that is, [s].

In this course we will most often use the simple method for ease, but I will assume
that you know the features of the sounds that we are talking about, and in some
instances it will be useful to discuss the changes through the distinctive features.

chapter 11.9: vowel sound changes

Vowels are fundamentally different from consonants in several ways that affect how
they can change. First, all vowels are voiced, so there cannot be a change in voicing.
Second, all vowels are said in the same manner, so there cannot be changes in manner
either. Finally, vowels are not produced by placing the tongue in contact with discrete
speech organs, so there can be no movement from one part to another either. The features
of vowels that can change are frontness, height,
roundedness, and tenseness. The causes of these
changes can be neighboring consonants, although that is rare. More often, the change
is a “long-distance” change in that it is produced by assimilating with vowels in a
preceding or following syllable (since vowels form the nucleus of a syllable, other
vowels are most often in other syllables). This type of change, where one vowel is
influenced by another, is called metaphony.

One type of metaphony vowels undergo is called mutation, where a
vowel in one syllable “anticipates” a vowel in a following syllable and changes to
become more like it. The structure of a two-syllable word can be written like
this CV₁CV₂C, where C = Consonant and V = Vowel. In mutation
V₁ changes to become more like V₂, because it is easier for
the tongue to anticipate the shape it will need to be in for the following vowel.
For example, we have a word in which V₁ is a low vowel and V₂
is a high vowel, V₁ could be “raised” to a high vowel to anticipate
the height of V₂ in the following syllable.

Perhaps the most common example of mutation in English occurred just before the Old
English period, when V₂ was an [i], a high front vowel. This caused the
V₁ vowels to mutate towards the front of the mouth. We call this change
either front mutation, or i-mutation, or in German,
Umlaut, and it has had major effects throughout English.
Compare the list of words with back vowels in the first column, followed by related
words with fronted vowels in the second:

In all these examples the words on the left hand are the original words and contain
back vowels. In the period just before Old English, new words were made out of
them by adding suffixes with the high front vowel [i], and this pulled the back vowel
in the original word to the front.

Vowels can also be raised or lowered (depending on
tongue height). For example, Standard American, the pronunciation of pen
is [pɛn] but in the South it is often [pɪn], so that it sounds more like the word
pin. The mid front lax vowel /ɛ/ has been raised to the high front lax vowel
/ɪ/ because of the following nasal.

Chain shifts

Vowels can also move in what are called chain shifts. This is not a
form of assimilation or metaphony. Rather, it is a process of movement that starts
with the raising or lowering of one vowel, which results in a chain of all other
vowels moving to fill in the resulting gaps. The most famous one in English is the
Great Vowel Shift of the 15th through the 18th centuries, but other
chain shifts are currently going on in regional dialects of American English.
If you are interested, you might look at the charts and descriptions (with audio
examples) of the Northern
California vowel shift that is currently underway. The
Northern
Cities Shift explains why vowels of speakers from places like Chicago
or Detroit sound so distinctive. We will not be covering these shifts in
much detail in this class, mostly because they are still evolving, and therefore
are not part of the past history of English.

Reduction

Reduction is a change in the tenseness of vowel sounds, resulting
in less tenseness. Vowels that are reduced change in a progression from tense to
lax to schwa to zero or null, i.e., they are lost entirely. This is the standard
progression in all English vowels in unaccented syllables, although not all vowels
have or will undergo each stage of this progression, and it has had more of an impact
on English grammar than anything other sound change.

An example of reduction is the vowel in the word “man,” [mæn], a low, front vowel.
When the word stands alone and is stressed, the vowel remains in position. When the
word is joined in a compound, as in “chairman,” it is no longer stressed and therefore
is reduced. It may be pronounced as a schwa (i.e., moved from the front to the central,
that is, neutral, position) [čɛrmən], or even reduced to zero: [čɛrmn̩].

When reduction of a vowel is complete (i.e., the vowel is lost completely), then
it is called elision: the loss of a sound because it is unstressed
(elision can be used of both consonants and vowels). Elision is widespread in two of
our major grammatical categories: the s-plural and the ed-past tense. The plural
ending used to be a full syllable, as it remains in some words (“dishes”), but in
most words the -e- has reduced to zero, that is, it has been elided. The same reduction
has happened in the past tense -ed, which usually takes the form of either a [t]
or a [d] on the ends of verbs.

There are specific words to describe different types of elision, depending on where
in the word the sound has been lost:

• apheresis: loss of an unstressed vowel at the front of words:
  ’bout (for about), ’round (for around)
• syncope: loss of vowel sounds in the middle of a word:
  laboratory, comfortable [kəɱftərbəl] (which includes metathesis of the [r] and
  [t]), family, contractions such as “can’t” or “isn’t” for “cannot” and “is not”
• apocope: loss of vowels from the end of a word (this
  has happened historically in many English words; we will see examples later).

Note: these terms, apheresis, syncope and apocope, can refer to loss of
both vowels and consonants. Thus, “chile” as a pronunciation of “child” with simplification
of the final consonant cluster is an example of apocope, or “fith” as a pronunciation
of “fifth” is an example of syncope, as is “won’t” for “will not.” The pronunciations
‘im or ‘e as a pronunciation of “him” or “he” are examples of consonant apheresis.
But the most common losses are with unstressed vowels.

Epenthesis: In addition to the loss of sounds, sometimes sounds are
added. Epenthesis can be the addition of vowels, such as when “athlete” is pronounced like
“athalete,” or of consonants, such as in the following examples: “drownded” for “drowned,”
“fambly” for “family” (compare also “chimbly” for chimney” with dissimulation and epenthesis),
“hampton” for what was originally “hamton,” “thunder” for what used to be “thunor,”
and “sherbert” for “sherbet.”

chapter 11.8: Assimilation

The principle of least effort, also called ease of articulation,
describes how speakers of a language naturally seek to expend the least effort
possible to articulate sounds without losing intelligibility. Illustrations of this
can be seen in many of the allophones that exist, such as the two types of /k/ in
the words leak and lock. Because of the front vowel in leak,
it requires less effort to keep the tongue nearer to the front of the mouth to
produce the following /k/, resulting in a fronted, or palatalized [k’]. This change
of one sound to become more like another that is near to it is called
assimilation. We have three types of assimilation to discuss for consonants:

1. assimilation of place, where a consonant changes its place of
   articulation
2. assimilation of manner, where a consonant changes its manner of
   articulation
3. assimilation of voicing, where a consonant changes whether or
   not it is voiced.

Assimilation of place

The example above, where the /k/ moved toward the front of the mouth, is an example
of assimilation of place. Assimilation of place is very common in English, especially
with the three nasal phonemes. For example, the phoneme /n/ in the word pan is
a voiced alveolar nasal, but when it is joined to form the word pancake,
many people pronounce the /n/ now as a velar nasal, that is [ŋ], because it has
assimilated to the following velar sound of the [k] in cake: [pæŋkek].
The same assimilation of place with [n] becoming [ŋ] in words like incredible
or ink.

Another nasal assimilation of place occurs in words like symphony, where
the bilabial [m] is followed by a labiodental fricative [f]. This word is often
pronounced with a labiodental nasal, represented by the symbol [ɱ]: [sɪɱfəni].

Another very common type of assimilation of place is called palatalization,
which means that sounds are moved towards the palate. The example above of the [k’]
in leak is an example of a velar sound being pulled towards the palate by the
front vowel. This same processed is the origin of the palatal phoneme /tʃ/ in English, a
sound developed in early Old English from by palatalizing /k/. Many phonemes were also
palatalized in the early Modern English period when the vowel /u/ in some words
developed a palatal semivowel glide before it, causing [u] to become [ju]. When this
palatal sound [j] came after the alveolar sounds /s/, /z/, /t/, /d/, it pulled
them back to the palate, creating the following new pronunciations (in linguistics,
the symbol > means “becomes,” as if it were an arrow, pointing to the new creation):

• [sj] > [ʃ]: sure, sugar
• [zj] > [ʒ]: pleasure, measure
• [tj] > [tʃ]: nature, creature
• [dj] > [dʒ]: educate,adulate

The spelling of these words, which was set before the phonological change, reveals
how these words would have been pronounced in Shakespeare’s day: sure and
sugar were pronounced with [s], pleasure and measure were
pronounced with [z], and nature and creature were pronounced with [t].
Furthermore, the <u> was pronounced [u], not [ju]. (As an aside here, the development
of [u] to [ju] is an unconditioned change and although its development is common
throughout Modern English, it did not develop for all speakers. There are still speakers
of English who pronounce words like pleasure with a [z] and have no [j] before the [u].
In American English there is a divide between people who pronounce words
like news or tune with a straight [u] and those who pronounce them with [ju]).

If we concentrate on Present-Day English, we see the effects of palatalization ongoing,
not only within individual words like discussed above, but in word boundaries. For example,
when a word that ends in the alveolar [t], like don’t is followed by a
word that begins with [j], as in the phrase don’t you, then for many
speakers the [t] is palatalized in the same way as above to become [tʃ]. This also
happens with words than end in [s] and [d]:

• [sj] > [ʃ] “Bless you” pronounced [blɛʃ ju] (“Blesh you”)
• [tj] > [tʃ] “Don’t you” pronounced [dontʃ ju] (“Donchu”)
• [dj] > [dʒ] “Did you” pronounced [dɪdʒ ju] (“Didge you”)

Assimilation of Manner

In addition to allophones changing their place of articulation through assimilation, some change
their manner of articulation. This is a much rarer type of assimilation, but it
does occur. Examples may be found in phrases like “good night,” where the final alveolar
plosive [d] of “good” becomes an alveolar nasal [n]: [ɡʊn naɪt].

Assimilation of Voice

In this type of assimilation, a voiceless sound that is near a voiced sound will
become voiced, or a voiced sound that is near a voiceless sound becomes voiceless.
This type of assimilation is incredibly common in English. For example, the precise
form of the plural ending –s will be the voiceless [s] if the word ends in a voiceless
sound, but [z] if the word ends with a voiced sound: back makes a plural with
[s] to produce [bæks], while bag makes a plural by adding [z], to produce [bægz].

The same
process occurs with the past tense ending –ed. It remains voiced in words that
end with a voiced consonant, like joined [dʒɔɪnd], but in words that
end with a voiceless sound, it assimilated to the voiceless [t], as in jumped [dʒʌmpt].

Using characteristic features to show assimilation

It is easier to understand exactly how assimilation works by considering the
characteristic features of the sounds affected:

1. The assimilation of place of [n] to [ŋ] in “pancake” can also be written as

Of the three features of [n], the only one that changes is the one describing the
place, which moves from [+alveolar] to [+nasal].

2. The assimilation of manner in [d] to [n] in “good night” can be written as:

3. The assimilation of voicing in [s] to [z] in “bags”:

With the example of the past tense jumped, we have:

Other types of sound changes

Dissimilation

The opposite of assimilation is dissimilation, when sounds become
less alike. Although it might seem paradoxical, this is also a function of the
principle of least effort: sometimes it is difficult to say two very similar sounds
in a row. This often happens with /r/ and /l/ as can be seen in our word pilgrim
which is derived from Latin peregrinus. Because the two instances of
[r] so near each other are difficult to say (especially in a time when /r/ was
pronounced as [r] or as the alveolar flap [ɾ]), the first one changed to [l].
To express it through features:

Another one that you may have heard in some dialects is “chimley” for “chimney,” where the
two nasals so close together caused one to change to an approximant. More common
is the change where an alveolar stop [t] that occurs before an alveolar nasal [n],
as in the words kitten, beaten dissimulates to become a glottal stop [ʔ]:

Simplification

Another result of the principle of least effort is simplification.
This change does not involve a change in features but rather the loss of a segment when
consonants occur in groups of two or more. For example, the word hand, pronounced [hænd],
ends in two consonants, but when plural ends in three, [hændz]. Three consonants in
English will often be simplified to two, resulting in the pronunciation [hænz]. Two
consonants can also simplify to one (for example, many people do not pronounce the final [d]
of “hand”: [hæn]).

Metathesis

Another common consonant change does not involve a change of features or the loss of a
segment but instead the reversal of order of the phonemes. This is metathesis:
the reversal of two sounds. Common ones today usually involve the phoneme /r/.
For example, in the word iron, the spelling reveals that the word used
to be pronounced with the [ɹ] before the vowel, while now we pronounce it after
the vowel. The same is true of the word third, where the word three
shows the original order of the [ɹ] and the vowel. These two examples are accepted as standard
English pronunciations, but most of us are aware of non-standard examples as well,
such as “purty” for pretty.

Examples of metathesis with sounds other than [ɹ] are less common today, but one that occurs
frequently is “aks” for ask. This pronunciation often has negative associations in American English
which is ironic since “aks” was the more common form in the Old and Middle English periods,
used by both King Alfred and Chaucer. It can still be found in non-standard dialects throughout
England.

chapter 11.7: Unconditioned sound changes

One of the primary areas of change within a language is the change in its system
of sounds, and much of the nineteenth-century work in linguistics was spent in
figuring out exactly how the sounds in one language corresponded to those in another.
People had long recognized that there were similarities between languages, even
when the pronunciation differed. For example, English “hound” and German “Hund”
both mean “dog” and are so similar that there must be some type of relation between
them, but the precise nature of the connection was unclear. As the nineteenth
century progressed, linguists gathered such correspondences
between the sounds of as many related languages as they could and began to notice
more and more patterns. The greatest example of this is what we call
Grimm’s Law.
Grimm noted that there were
correspondences between the consonants in Germanic languages and those in languages
like Greek and Latin, for example the correspondence between the “t” in Latin
tres, tu and tenuis and the “th” in English three,
thou and thin, or the relationship between the “p” in pater, piscis,
and pedemand the “f” in father, fish, and foot. Grimm
suggested that this correspondence was 1) a
regular one that occurred throughout the language, rather than being entirely
random, and 2) that it had happened at a historical point in time.

As ground-breaking as these two suggestions were, it was a later generation of
scholars, the Neogrammarians, who pushed them to their full conclusion. They
suggested that sound changes like this were not only regular, but that they occurred without
exception. Thus, it wasn’t just that some instances of the phoneme /t/ in Indo-European
languages become /θ/ in Germanic languages, but every single /t/ turned into /θ/.
As they put it, Die Lautgesetze kennen keine Ausnahmen: “Sound Laws know of no exception.”
They modeled the name “Sound Law” on the observable laws that had been discovered
in other sciences like Newton’s Laws of Motion. For the Neogrammarians,
laws could be formulated describing the production and changes of sounds in human
speech in the same way that Newton and others could observe the natural world
and formulate laws that described natural phenomena. The difference between a law
like Grimm’s and one like Newton’s is that Grimm’s Law occurred at one point
in time (i.e., it was historical) and then stopped. Newton’s Law of Inertia
always works.

Sound Laws like these are known as unconditioned
changes, meaning they occur throughout the language without the necessity of
there being any special phonetic conditions the word.
For example, the change from /t/ to /θ/ that we see in a correspondence like Latin
tres and English three did not happen because of the specific
vowel in the word, or the presence of the
phoneme /r/. No special conditions
were needed for it to take place. This separated these types of changes
from the conditioned changes that only occurred under specific
conditions.

Perhaps the most famous unconditioned sound changes in English are Grimm’s Law and
the Great Vowel Shift,
but there are others occurring today. Cities like Buffalo and
Rochester in the Northern US are undergoing what is known as the Northern Cities Shift,
and while parts of California
and the southern US
are in the midst of their own unconditioned vowel changes.
The “cot-caught”
merger in which the vowels in these two words start to rhyme
has affected a large part of the US.

chapter 11.6: allophones

Allophones are non-meaningfully distinct variations within phonemes that do not
provide a contrastive difference with each other. These are the sound variations
that will fail the minimal pair test. While there are many tiny variations within
the phonemes we make while we speak, many of these are two unimportant or unnoticeable
to discuss. Here instead we will see some examples of “complementary distribution.”

Contrastive vs Complementary Distribution

Phonemes occur in contrastive distribution with each other. For example, a /p/
and a /t/ can both occur at the beginning of a word in English, such as “pin”
and “tin.” Because these two sounds contrast with each other, we recognize these
two words as distinct in meaning (they pass the minimal pair test). Therefore,
/p/ and /t/ are each phonemes that will contrast with each other when placed
in identical positions.

Other sounds, however, are found in complementary distribution, meaning that
they never occur in identical positions and so will never contrast with each
other. These sounds will therefore not be recognized as individual phonemes, but
will be allophones, of the same phoneme — non-meaningfully distinct or non-contrastive
variants of a single phoneme.

As an example of complementary distribution, the word “pin” begins with the phoneme
/p/. When we examine this sound in more detail, we find that it comes with a
heavy breath of air: it is an aspirated example of the phoneme /p/, which we can
write as [p^h]. All examples of the phoneme /p/ in English that occur
in word-initial position will also be aspirated. If we compare it with the /p/
found in the word “spin,” we will find that this /p/ does not have aspiration, so
we can write it as [p]. Both [p^h] and [p] are allophones of the phoneme
/p/ which are non-contrastive because they will never occur in identical positions.
[p^h] occurs in word-initial positions, while [p] occurs following [s]. A third
allophone of /p/ occurs in word-final position, such as in the word “tip.” This /p/
is often pronounced “unreleased,” i.e., with no opening of the lips after they close.
It can be written as [p̚]. This [p̚] will never be found in word-initial position.
Instead of contrasting, then, these three examples of /p/ complement each other to
make up the entire set of realizations of the phoneme /p/.

Another way to think of the distinction between phonemes and allophones is that
phonemes provide a mental concept for listening while the allophone is the real-world
production of the concept.

Other examples of allophones

/t/ (voiceless, dental stop)

The phoneme /t/ has the same three variants as /p/ above, as you can see in
the words top, stop, and pot, but it has others as well, such
as those found in the words writer and written. In
the first of these, the /t/ is medial (in the middle of a word) and occurs
after a stressed syllable. In this position in American English the /t/ is
often produced by a simple alveolar flap, produced by a quick “flap” or
“tap” of the tongue against the alveolar ridge; it is thus called an
alveolar flap.
The symbol for this sound is [ɾ]. This sound sounds very much like a [d],
so much so that for most people, the words writer and rider
are difficult to distinguish from each other. British speakers, however,
preserve the [t] here, so that writer and rider can be distinguished.
Another allophone of /t/ is found in the pronunciation of the word written.
Most American English speakers do not actually use an alveolar sound at all for
the /t/ in this word, but instead stop the air in the glottis, the
space between the vocal cords: this is the
glottal stop,
written [ʔ]. It is heard in the word “uh-oh,” which in IPA would be written
something like [ʔə ʔo]. In American English, it appears as an allophone of
/t/ whenever the /t/ occurs after a stressed syllable and before /n/
(as in kitten, mitten, bitten); some pronunciations of didn’t
also use it for the medial /d/. In some dialects of British English, it occurs
before or after the approximants /l/ and /ɹ/, as in the words bottle
[bɒʔəl], forty [fɔɹʔi], etc. American English speakers sometimes use
it for words that end with /t/. For example, people might say at
as either [æt̚] with an unreleased /t/ or as [æʔ] with the glottal stop.
This makes a total of five common allophones for the phone /t/: [t^h],
[t], [t̚], [ɾ], and [ʔ].

chapter 11.5: vowels

Like consonants, vowels are made by expelling air from the lungs through the
vibrating vocal cords and into the oral cavity. Unlike the consonants, however,
when we make the vowel sounds we do not close or greatly obstruct the air flow.
Instead, we move the tongue into various places and raise or lower our lower jaw,
and by doing so, we alter the frequency of the vibrations caused by the air flow
and vocal cords. The variations in frequency are perceived as different phonemes.
In General American English twelve distinct vowel phonemes can be distinguished,
as shown in the following chart.

The chart represents the inside of the mouth with the teeth towards the left.
Where the chart says “front” is the front of the mouth, specifically the area
just behind the teeth, the alveolar ridge. The right-hand side of the chart,
which is labeled “back” is the back of the mouth, roughly where the velum, or
soft palate, is. Similarly, the three sections labeled “high,” “mid,” and “low”
represent the roof of the mouth down to the lower jaw. The symbols are placed
at the various locations within the mouth where the tongue moves in order to
make the relevant vowel sound. The symbols in the white area represent the
vowels in which the tongue is fairly “tense” while saying them, while the symbols
within the grayed area are made with a relaxed tongue. Finally, the four vowel
symbols within the box in the back, high, and mid area are vowels which are
pronounced while the lips are “rounded.” Further explanation of this terminology
will be found below.

An interactive vowel chart, with audio examples, can be found here.

Distinctive Features

Vowels are distinguished by four distinctive features:

• height: Vowel height can be high,
  mid, and low, depending on whether the tongue
  is near the roof of the mouth (i.e., high), or near the floor of the mouth. For
  example, say just the vowels of the words beet, bait, bat, concentrating
  on where your tongue is. The first has a high vowel, the second a mid vowel,
  and the third a low vowel.
• frontness: Vowels can be front,
  central and back, depending on where the
  tongue is. English generally distinguishes only front and back vowels.
  For example, say just the vowels in the words bait and bought
  and feel the position of the tongue sliding forward and back against the
  roof of the mouth. Both are mid vowels, but the first is a front vowel
  and the second is a back vowel.
• tenseness: Vowels can be tense or
  lax, depending again on the tongue. As examples, say
  beet, which has a tense vowel, and then say bit, which has a
  lax vowel. Tense and lax only applies to high and mid vowels. The low vowels
  do not have tense distinctions.
• roundedness: Vowels can be rounded or unrounded
  depending on the shape of the lips. In English generally the front vowels are unrounded
  and the back vowels (at least the mid and high ones) are rounded. For example,
  say the vowels in beet and boot. Besides the tongue
  sliding back and forth to the front and back, you will notice that your lips
  become rounded to say boot but they are not rounded when you say
  beet.

In what follows I will describe the 15 vowel phonemes of English. All
vowels are produced by expelling air through the oral cavity, with minimal
restriction provided by tongue placement and lip rounding. All vowels are
voiced.

High Vowels

• front, tense, unrounded /i/. Examples: bee, beat, machine
• front, lax, unrounded /ɪ/. Examples, bit, flip
• back, tense, rounded /u/. Examples: moon, mood, rude
• back, lax, rounded /ʊ/. Examples: put, foot

Mid Vowels

• front, tense, unrounded /e/. Examples: bait, day, made, name.
• front, lax, unrounded /ɛ/. Examples: bet, head, peck.
• back, tense, rounded /o/: Examles: boat, hope, moan.
• back, lax, rounded /ɔ/: Examples: bought, caught,
  hawk (Note: this phoneme is often not part of the
  Western American dialect)

Low Vowels

• front, unrounded /æ/. Examples: cat, bat.
• back, unrounded /ɑ/. Examples: cot, hock,
  pot, bother, father.
  (People with a Western American dialect will also pronounce
  bought, caught with this vowel
  instead of /ɔ/).

Two other vowel sounds occur

• /ʌ/. This symbol represents is a central, mid, unrounded, lax vowel.
  For many Americans it does not contrast with the following vowel, but is used
  only for stressed vowels. Examples: cup, luck,
  love.
• /ə/. This is the schwa, the reduced central >mid vowel
  found in most unaccented syllables. It comprises several different vowel
  sounds, all found in unaccented syllables, specifically [ə], as in
  about, sofa, occur,
  nation. And a slightly higher vowel, [ɨ], as in
  dishes, messes, rated,
  raided. For the purposes of this course you can transcribe
  both of these as /ə/ if you wish, but you should be aware of both symbols
  in case you see them elsewhere.

Diphthongs

All the above vowel sounds are monophthongs, that is,
they are single vowel sounds. As such, they are distinguished from
diphthongs, two vowels sounds spoken together in a
single syllable. There are three phonemic diphthongs in American English.
Each consists of a main vowel, followed by an offglide which is either a
front or back high vowel. (Note: The “ph” in the
words monophthong and diphthong can be pronounced either as an [f] or a [p]).

• /aɪ/. This sound starts with /a/, a low front vowel very similar to /æ/,
  followed by a glide toward /ɪ/. Examples: rice,
  wife, eye.
• /aʊ/. This sound also starts with /a/, but the glide is the rounded back vowel
  /ʊ/. Examples: house, brown, cow.
• /ɔɪ/. This sound starts with the mid back rounded vowel /ɔ/ before
  moving to the front unrounded /ɪ/. Examples: joy,
  boy, boil.

A note on the pronunciations of monophthongs as diphthongs in American
English: Most speakers of American English pronounce the simplex vowels like
/e/ and /o/ as the diphthongs [eɪ] and [oʊ]. As a result, some textbooks and
online resources give represent these vowels in IPA as diphthongs. In British
resources /o/ is often represented as [ɛʊ]. We will make these distinctions when
necessary, but otherwise will treat these vowels as if they were pronounced
simply /e/ and /o/.

chapter 11.4: consonants

The following chart gives the IPA symbols for each of the 24 consonants used in
General American English. An interactive chart with sound examples of each phoneme
tags: phonology can be found here

One way to understand phonemes is to categorize them according to their
distinctive features. For consonants, the distinctive features
are categorized under several broad headings:

• Place of Articulation: The organ of speech which is the
  primary location for the production of the phone
• Manner of Articulation: How the air flow is obstructed,
  whether stopped entirely or restricted by one of the organs of speech
• Voicing: Whether the vocal cords vibrate or not during
  the production of the phone

Place of Articulation

The places of articulation are given across the top of the chart above. They are

• bilabial: phones that are made by obstructing the air
  flow with both lips
• labiodental: phones that are made by obstructing the air
  with a combination of the lips and teeth
• dental: phones that are made by obstructing the air with
  the tongue against the teeth
• alveolar: phones that are made by obstructing the air with
  the tongue against the alveolar ridge
• palatal: phones that are made by obstructing the air with
  the tongue against the hard palate
• velar: phones that are made by obstructing the air with
  the tongue against the soft palate or velum
• glottal: phones that are made by obstructing the air
  with the glottis

These features can be referred to with notation such as [+alveolar],
signifying an alveolar sound, or [-velar], signifying that the sound is not
velar.

Manner of Articulation

The manners of articulation are given in the left-hand column of the chart. They are

• Plosive (also called stops): phones that
  are made by stopping the air flow completely (and then releasing it)
• Fricative: phones that are made by restricting but not
  stopping the air flow
• Affricate: phones that are made by stopping the air flow
  and then restricting it when released (i.e., a combination of a stop and a
  fricative)
• Nasal: phones that are made by opening the nasal cavity
  so that the air flow by resonate inside it
• Approximant: phones that are made when the articulators
  approach each other, but not as close as in the fricatives
• Semivowel: a subset of approximants, phones that act as
  consonants or vowels depending on the environment they are in.

As with the places of articulation, the manner of a particular sound can also
be specified with feature notation such as [+stop]. In order to refer to a
phoneme that is made by stopping the air with both lips, we can use the features:
[+stop][+bilabial]. One more feature is the term continuant,
which can be referred to in feature notation as [+continuant] or [-continuant].
Continuants are the sounds in which the air is not stopped from going through
the oral cavity. Thus, plosives are [-continuant] because they stop the air
entirely. Nasals are also [-continuant] because in them the air resonates in
the nasal not the oral cavity. Affricates begin by being [-continuant] but
end as [+continuant]. All other consonants are [+continuant].

Voicing

The final distinctive feature of consonants is voicing, that is, whether the
vocal cords vibrate. You can test whether or not a sound is voiced by placing
your hand on the front of your throat while you speak. If you feel a vibration,
as when you say [b] or [d], then the sound is voiced, or
[+voice]. If you do not feel a vibration, as in /p/ or /t/ or /f/, then the
sound is voiceless, or [-voice].

English Consonant Phoneme Symbols

I will now discuss each of these 24 consonant symbols given above, listing them
according to their Manner of Articulation. Make sure to learn each one according
to its three features (place of articulation, manner of articulation and
voicing) and its IPA symbol.

Plosives, or Stops: /p/ /b/ ~ /t/ /d/ ~ /k/ /g/ (The first of each pair is voiceless, the second voiced).

• Bilabial: /p/ and /b/. The first of these symbols
  represents the voiceless bilabial plosive. Bilabial plosives are made
  by stopping the air with both lips (bi-labial) and then releasing it.
  Examples: pin, spin, apt,
  stop. The second symbol, /b/, is made in the same way,
  except it is voiced by the vibration of the vocal cords. Examples:
  bin, tab, table.
• Alveolar: /t/ and /d/. These two plosives are made by
  stopping the air flow by placing the apex (tip) of the tongue against the
  alveolar ridge and then releasing it. The first is voiceless and the second is
  voiced. Examples: top, stop, bat
  and dot, bad, ladder.
• Velar: /k/ and /g/. These sounds are made by stopping the
  air flow by placing the dorsum (back) of the tongue against the velum and then
  releasing it. The first is voiceless, and the second is voiced. Examples:
  kick, making; gall,
  ogre, hog. (Note, the symbol /g/ never
  represents the so-called “soft” g-sound as in gel).

Fricative: /f/ /v/ ~ /θ/ /ð/ ~ /s/ /z/ ~ /ʃ/ /ʒ/ ~ /h/
(The first of each pair is voiceless, the second voiced). Fricatives are made by
creating a restriction in the oral cavity through which air must pass. The
friction of the air passing creates the specific sound.

• Labiodental: /f/ and /v/. These sounds are made by placing
  the upper teeth against the lower lip and breathing through the restricted
  space. The first is voiceless and the second is voiced. Examples:
  fall, after, awful,
  off, and vine, over,
  leave.
• Dental (sometimes called interdental): /θ/ /ð/ (the first
  of these symbols is the Greek letter theta; the second is an Icelandic
  letter called “eth”). These sounds are made by placing the tongue between
  the teeth and breathing through the restricted space. The first is voiceless
  and the second is voiced. Examples of /θ/: thin,
  breath, wealth. Examples of /ð/:
  then, breathe, weather.
• Alveolar : /s/ /z/. These sounds are made by air passing
  between either the apex of the tongue and the alveolar ridge. Examples of /s/:
  sit, cell, lessen,
  ice, hiss. Examples of /z/: zoo,
  wisdom, is.
• Post-alveolar: /ʃ/ /ʒ/ (the first of these is called an “esh”
  or a “long s”; the second is an “ezh”). These sounds are made by air passing
  rapidly between the tongue and the area just behind the alveolar ridge.
  Examples of /ʃ/: shoe, ocean, nation,
  ash. Examples of /ʒ/: measure, azure,
  decision.
• Glottal: /h/. Examples of /h/: hello,
  high. There is no voiced counterpart to this glottal fricative
  in Modern English. It is more historically accurate to consider /h/ a velar
  sound, since it is generally a reduced sound of the velar fricative /x/ which
  English used to have, and still does in some dialects (as in Scottish
  loch), or which you will hear in foreign words like German
  Bach. There was at one time a voiced velar fricative /ɣ/, which will
  come up in discussions of Old English. To make this sound, make the sound in
  Scottish loch, and then vibrate your vocal cords.

Affricate: /tʃ/ /dʒ/ (The first is voiceless, the second voiced).
As you can tell from the symbols, these sounds are really a combination of two
others, but in English we still consider them distinct phonemes.

• Alveo-palatal affricate /tʃ/ /dʒ/. The onset of the sound
  is made by stopping the airflow with the tongue
  against the alveolar ridge, as in /t/ and /d/, but instead of a full release,
  the airflow is released into the restricted flow of the fricatives /ʃ/ or /ʒ/.
  Examples of /tʃ/: church, chin,
  hatch, nature. Examples of /dʒ/:
  judge, jelly, edge.

Nasal: /m/ /n/ /ŋ/ (All three are voiced). Nasals are made
by stopping the air in the same way as in plosives, but rather than releasing
the air, the air is allowed to vibrate in the nasal cavity.

• Bilabial: /m/. This sound is made by stopping the air flow
  by closing both lips and then allowing the air to resonate within the nasal
  cavity. It is voiced. Examples: man, ham,
  hammer.
• Alveolar: /n/. This sound is made by stopping the airflow
  by placing the apex of the tongue against the alveolar ridge and then allowing
  the air to resonate within the nasal cavity. It is voiced. Examples:
  no, man, manner.
• Velar: /ŋ/ (the symbol is called an “eng” or an “engma”).
  This sound is made by stopping the airflow with the dorsum of the tongue
  against the velum and then allowing the air to resonate within the nasal
  cavity. It is voiced. Examples: sing, singer,
  finger. (Note: although we spell this sound with two letters,
  it is a single phoneme).

Approximant: /l/ /
r/ (both voiced)
An approximant is a consonant sound in which the restriction of airflow is not enough to cause any turbulence as described in the previous sounds.

• Lateral alveolar: /l/. The /l/ is made by placing the tip
  of the tongue against the alveolar ridge, and allowing the air to escape
  around the sides of the tongue (i.e., laterally). Examples of /l/:
  lamp, fall.
• Central alveolar: /r/. This sound is produced by placing
  the tip or blade of the tongue near the alveolar ridge and allowing air to
  flow centrally through the gap. Some people make it by curling the tip
  of the tongue backwards, so that it is called a retroflex approximant.
  Examples of /r/: red, very,
  near. (Note: in the chart above I use the symbol /ɹ/, which
  is technically a more accurate symbol for the type of “r” we make in American
  English, but for ease of typing it will be fine to use /r/.)

Semivowel: /j/ /w/ (both voiced) These sounds are made in the same way as an approximant, allowing barely restricted air to flow through, in a manner
very similar to vowels but in environments in which a consonant is needed, i.e., they are usually followed by vowels rather than consonants..

• Palatal: /j/ This sound is made by placing the
  tongue near the hard palate and allowing air to flow through. It is called a
  semivowel because it is produced in the same way as the vowel /i/.
  Examples of /j/: year, yellow,
  yes, you. (Do not confuse the symbol
  /j/ with the letter <j> in words like “judge”).
• Labiovelar: /w/. This sound is made with the back of the
  tongue near the velum and with rounded lips, in the same way as the vowel
  /u/. Examples of /w/: west, wall.

These 24 phonemes represent the consonant phonemes of General American English. You must learn each symbol and the sound it represents, and be able to describe each phoneme according to its three features: voicing, place of
articulation, manner of articulation. I advise you to say these sounds out loud over and over (whispering will not do) until you understand each of them.

chapter 11.3: phonemes

A phoneme is the smallest meaningful unit of sound.
The key word in this definition is meaningful. Although speech is continuous,
as we listen to someone speaking, we are able to break the words and phrases
into individual segments, to which we ascribe meaning. For example, we analyze
the word “pit” as composed of three distinct segments, each of which is a meaningful
phoneme: /p/, /ɪ/, and /t/, or simply /pɪt/. To signify that we are talking about
phonemes and using the IPA, we write the symbols between slashes / /. When we
discuss actual pronunciation, regardless of phonemic status, we use square brackets
[ ].

Minimal pairs

In order to determine if a sound is a phoneme, we can set up a pair of words in
which the only difference is one single sound. For example, take the word “pit”
again, written in IPA as [pɪt], and let us pair it with the word “bit”, in IPA
[bɪt]. These words differ by only a single sound, the first one;
there is the minimal amount of difference between the two words. Thus, we call
the set a minimal pair. Because we as English speakers can distinguish
the utterances [pɪt] and [bɪt] as two distinct words, we can determine that
/p/ and /b/ must have a meaningful
difference to us. This difference allows us to establish that /p/ and /b/
are both phonemes in English. Another way to think of the word “meaningful” is
as a contrastive difference. The sound /p/ has a contrastive difference from
other sounds such as /b/ or /t/ or /f/.

We can establish other phonemes of English in the same way, by taking a word
like “pit,” and changing it by one sound at a time. Take “pit,” and change the
first sound to “b”: “bit.” Now change the first sound to “h”: “hit.” Now change
the vowel to the “ee” sound: “heat.” Now change the last sound to “d”: “heed.”
Now change the first sound to “m”: “mead.” Now change the vowel to the long “a”
sound: “made.” And so on. You can see here that the spelling changes in
various unexpected ways, but if we write these words in IPA it is clearer that
only one sound is changing at a time: [pɪt] ~ [bɪt] ~ [hɪt] ~ [hit] ~ [hid] ~
[mid] ~ [med]. This method can be used to build an inventory of phonemes of a
particular language. This short chain of minimal pairs allows us to determine
that the following are phonemes of English: /p b h ɪ i t d m e/.

It may seem obvious that all these sounds are “meaningful,” but there are many
different ways to pronounce sounds that have no meaningful distinction between
them. Besides all the grunts, burps, squeaks, laughs, etc. that we can make with
our mouths, we have many different types of sounds we can make that are not
phonemes. For example, pronounce the word “bid” with a long, drawn-out vowel.
We could try to convey this vowel in English spelling as “biiiiiiiid,” or we
could write it in IPA by adding the symbol [ː], which is used to indicate a
lengthened vowel: [bɪːd]. Now let’s contrast them as a minimal pair: [bɪd] and
[bɪːd]. These are two very different ways to say the word, and yet the word
remains “bid.” Therefore, these two vowels fail the minimal pair test, which
tells us that [ɪː] and [ɪ] and not two distinct phonemes in English. They are
simply two non-meaningfully different ways to say the phoneme /ɪ/. These variations
within a phoneme are called allophones, a concept that will
be discussed in more detail later.

One more example of non-meaningful variants within a phoneme will suffice. Again,
take the word “bid,” but this time pronounce the initial consonant with a heavy
breath of air. This is an “aspirated” [b], (from the word “aspiration” which means
breathing). We can signify it in IPA by adding a superscript h like this:
[b^h]. If we contrast “bid” said in the usual way with the word with
an aspirated b: [bɪd] and [b^hɪd], we find that the pair do not create
two distinct words and therefore the sounds fail the minimal pair test. Therefore
there is no contrastive difference between [b] and [b^h] and they are
not two distinct phonemes. Instead, they are simply two allophones of the
phoneme /b/.

Every language has its own set of phonemes.
There are languages in which the length of a vowel changes the meaning of a word.
This was the case in English 1000 years ago, when the word “ac” with a short vowel
[ɑk] meant “but” and the word “ac” with a long vowel [ɑ:k] meant “oak tree.” Thus,
in Old English /ɑ/ and /ɑ:/ were two distinct phonemes, whereas now in Modern
English they are two allophones of the same phoneme /ɑ/. Similarly, there are
languages like Hindi in which /b/ and /b^h/ are two distinct phonemes. The
number of phonemes in different languages can also vary widely. Humans have the
ability to produce about 600 different consonant sounds and 200 vowel sounds,
but English only uses about 24 consonant phonemes and 15 vowel phonemes, for a
total of 39 distinct meaningful sounds.
Ubykh,
an extinct language from the Caucasus, had 86 phonemes–84 consonants and only 2
vowels! Hawaiian,
on the other hand, has only 13 distinct phonemes, 8 consonants and 5 vowels. It
does not matter how many phonemes a language has; what matters is that the set of
phonemes function as a system, where those sounds and only those are meaningful and
capable of carrying information. (If you are interested in how babies begin to
distinguish the phonemes of their own language, see
“Does an 11-week-old
know what English sounds like,” from which the figures above on the total
number of consonant and
vowel sounds humans can make were taken).

Chapter 11.2 The organs of speech

When we speak, we use our vocal tracts to produce sounds, or phones. Before
examining the sounds we make in English, it is helpful to understand what
these organs are and how they are used.

In English, almost all sounds are made by obstructing the air in some way as
it passes through the oral cavity. Air is expelled from the lungs, up through
the glottis, past the vocal cords. The vocal cords are two thin membranes that
stretch across the larynx. They open when we breath, but they vibrate against
each other when we make certain sounds (called “voiced” sounds), as you can see in the following videos:

https://youtu.be/mJedwz_r2Pc

Once the air has passed the vocal cords, it is restricted or obstructed, often by some part
of the tongue as it is placed near or against various parts of the oral cavity.
These places include the lips,
the teeth, the hard alveolar ridge directly behind the teeth, the long, concave
roof of the mouth, called the palate or sometimes the hard palate, and then the
velum, also called the soft palate. For most sounds the velum closes the passage
into the nasal cavity, but for nasal sounds the passage is left open so that air
can resonate there.

In this video of two people, an opera singer and a beat boxer, you can see how
the speech organs move to create different sounds. As you watch, concentrate on
the movements of the tongue — notice where and how it hits against various parts
of the mouth, or how it shapes itself to produce different vowels. After completing
the entire section on phonology, you might want to come back and watch it again.

https://youtu.be/M2OdAp7MJAI