The distinctive and non-distinctive features of English consonants

Most phoneticians agree that distinctive features of English consonants are:

1. manner of articulation way in which the obstruction of the airstream is produced - Vasiliev's point of view (occlusives – 2 articulators form a complete closure which is suddenly released, constrictives – the 2 articulators come close together forming a stricture, affricates)

2. place of articulation – the location in the vocal tract where a particular speech sound is produced (labial:bilabial/labio-dental, lingual:dental/interdental/alveolar/palato-alveolar/post-alveolar, glottal)

3. degree of noise - Sokolova's point of view (noise, sonorants)

The following characteristics are not important from the phonological point of view but still very important for the articulation of sounds:

1) palatalization – softening of the consonants due to the rising of the back of the tongue to the hard palate

2) aspiration – puff of air following the release of a plosive

3) nasalization- pronounce or utter (a speech sound) with the breath resonating in the nose

Problems of the phonemic inventory of English vowels

The 1st problem of the phonological analysis is to establish phonemes in a language. There are some difficulties in English:

1. IF THERE IS A SCHWA-VOWEL PHONEME? Though the schwa-vowel can be opposed only to weakened vowel phonemes, which are partially reduced due to their position in unstressed syllables, it can form phonological oppositions with the number of other phonemes and can distinguish words (accept-except, solar-solo).

2. IF DIPHTHONGS AND TRIPHTHONGS ARE MONOPHONEMIC OR BIPHONEMIC CLUSTERS? Trubetzkoy worked out a number of rules which help to determine whether a sound of a complex nature is monophonemic: 1) a phoneme is indivisible, as no syllable division can occur within a phoneme; 2) a phoneme is produced by 1 articulatory effort; 3) the duration of a phoneme should not exceed that of other phonemes in the language => 1. The syllabis and articulatory indivisibility of diphthongs and their duration of English historically vowels, clearly determine their monophonemic character. 2. triphthongs [aue, aie] are not produced by a single articulatory effort, as there is an increase in the force of articulation and intensity for the 1st and the last element. The syllabic division generally occurs in between the diphthong and the schwa-vowel. So they are regarded as biphonemic clusters.

In such a way it has been established that in RP there are 20 vowel phonemes (12 monophthongs, 8 diphthongs).

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