Bilabial plosives /p/ and /b/
/p/ is unvoiced and is the counterpart to the voiced /b/. With /p/ and /b/, the lips are the tools to stop the air, and then pop the air. To create /p/ and /b/, air is briefly prevented from leaving the vocal tract by closing the lips. The sound is aspirated when the air is released. To make /b/, we need to vibrate the vocal cords to make it voiced. The aspiration for a /p/ is far greater than the aspiration for a /b/, and, for this reason, voiced plosives are not viewed as having aspiration. When we do not use aspiration when needed, we can confuse our listeners. For example, if we said “pill” without aspiration, people might think we said “Bill.”
Words with /p/
As we learned in the previous section on the allophones of plosives, words with voiceless plosives can have three different sounds, aspirated, unaspirated and unreleased. That is, /t/, /p/ and /k/ are pronounced in English with aspiration either initially or in stressed syllables, but without aspiration in non-initial, unstressed syllables. So we examine words with ‘p’ based on these three allophone types.
Words with aspirated p, [pʰ]
When /p/ comes at the beginning of a word or at the beginning of a stressed syllable, it is an aspirated [pʰ]. These words have aspirated [pʰ] sounds as ‘p’ comes at the beginning of the word:
pin, pie, part, pause, pocket, problem, prevent, put, plain, please, park, propose,
These words have aspirated [pʰ] sounds as ‘p’ comes at the beginning of a stressed syllable:
appear, appearance, computer, opinion, report, support
Words with unaspirated p, [p]
When /p/ does not come at the beginning and does not begin a stressed syllable, it is not aspirated, These words with ‘p’ are unaspirated:
company, apple, opera, stupid, typical, shopping
Also, when /p/ is in a consonant cluster after /s/, it is unaspirated. There is no puff of air.
spring, spade, display, expect, especially
In the following words, the initial p is aspirated whereas the medial p is not:
paper, papa, people, piper, pepper,
Unreleased p, [p̚]
When a plosive comes at the end of a word, it is often unreleased.
develop, help, hope, shape, shop, stop, type, wipe,
Complementary Distribution vs free variation
Linguistically interesting facts about the relationships among the three allophones of /p/, i.e., aspirated, unaspirated and unreleased, are these. Between aspirated and unaspirated /p/, if one sound occurs the other sound does not occur. That is, aspirated /p/ occurs in the initial or stressed syllable, and unaspirated /p/ occurs in the non-initial or unstressed syllable. Linguists call this type of mutually exclusive occurrence of sounds the complementary distribution. By contrast, the unreleased /p/ at the end of a word is optional. That is, the /p/ can be released or not. Linguists call this type of interchangeable occurrence of sounds the free variation.
Silent /p/ words
When /p/ is pronounced, it is pronounced as one of its three allophones: aspirated, unaspirated or unreleased. But the letter P is silent in some words. These are some rules relating to the silent P. First, if the P is followed by an N, S, or T creating a "PN", "PS", "PT" bond, especially at the beginning of a word, then the P is silent. For example, pneumonia, psychic, pterodactyl. The letter P is not silent if a "PN", "PS", or "PT" is in a separate syllable like capsize, flipside, upside, upset, heptagon, September, captain, caption, capture, rapture.
Secondly, the P is silent in the following words:
corps, coup, cupboard, raspberry, receipt, pseudonym, psalm
Silent /b/ words
Compared with /p/, the pronunciation of /b/ is simple, as we do not need to worry about the aspiration element. Words with B can be tricky when the B is silent. These are two cases where B is silent. First, B is not pronounced after M at the end of a word. These are examples:
limb, plumb, numb, crumb, dumb, comb, bomb, thumb, climb, tomb.
Second, B is usually not pronounced before T. These are examples:
debt, doubt, debtor, doubtful, subtle
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