Plosives 

Recap

In the previous three sections, we learned three ways of categorizing consonants: place (where in the mouth consonants are produced), manner (how consonants are produced), and voice (whether the vocal cords vibrate). To recap, regarding the place of articulation, English consonants are classified as follows: bilabials, labio-dentals, dentals, alveolars, palatals, velars, and glottals. Bilabials are consonants produced at the lips. Labio-dentals are consonants produced at the bottom lip and top teeth. Dentals are consonants produced at the teeth. Alveolars are consonants produced at the alveolar ridge. Palatals are consonants produced at the hard palate. Velars are consonants produced at the soft palate. And glottals are consonants produced at the glottis.

These are types of English consonants based on the manners of articulation: plosives, fricatives, affricates, nasals, liquids, and glides. Plosives are made by popping the blocked air. Fricatives are made by letting the air escape through partially-blocked narrow space continuously. Affricates are made by letting blocked air escape slowly. Nasals are made by forcing the air to escape through the nose. Liquids are made by redirecting the airstream with the tongue. And glides are made by letting the air glide over quickly through unblocked narrow space.   

To study individual consonants, in this book, we use the manner of articulation as the primary categorization scheme, and use the place of articulation as the secondary categorization scheme. We begin with plosives.

There are 7 plosives in English, which are /p/, /b/, /t/, /d/, /k/, /g/ and /ʔ/ (glottal stop). Plosives are produced by blocking the air and then popping the air. The blocking of the air can be made by such instruments in the mouth as the lips, tongue and glottis. In particular, lips block the air for /p, b/. The tip of the tongue blocks the air for /t, d/. The back of the tongue blocks the air for /k, g/. The glottis stops the air for the glottal stop ([ʔ]). In English, the glottal stop is not a phoneme, but occurs only allophonically in t-glottalization. To indicate this fact, brackets are normally used for ‘ʔ’: [ʔ].

Plosives also differ in where the stop happens. For the /p, b/ pair, the stop happens at the lips. For the /t, d/ pair, the stop happens at the alveolar ridge. For the /k, g/ pair, the stop happens at the velum. And for the glottal stop, the stop happens at the glottis. Within the pairs, /p, t, k/ are voiceless, and /b, d, g/ are voiced.

As mentioned, plosives are produced by blocking the air and then popping the air. Blocking the air is the reason that they are called stops, and poppin the air is the reason that they are called plosives. To make the sounds, there is a momentary stop. But when we speak, we want to connect sounds together, which is called connected speech. To avoid frequent stopping with plosives, plosives have several different modified sounds. That is, when they are pronounced in speech, plosives often sound different from their phoneme sounds. These different sounds of the same phoneme are called allophones. Several English phonemes have allophones such as the dark-L or the Schwa variants.  But allophones are found the most commonly in plosives as plosives make connected speech difficult. So, before we learn individual plosives, in this section, we learn the allophones of plosives