Nasals and Approximants

The basic feature of a nasal is that the air escapes through ______________________. There
are _________________ nasal phonemes in BBC English: / /, / / and / /. They are all
_________________, which means all three are pronounced with vocal fold vibration. The
main difference between them is the point where the air is stopped in the mouth:

Nasals
m
___________________
n
___________________

___________________

This last velar sound never occurs in initial position (i.e. there are no words in English
beginning with //; in medial position, it may appear with or without a /g/ sound,
depending on whether it occurs in the _________________ of a morpheme (e.g. anger
/g//hg//)) or at the __________________ of a morpheme (e.g. sing(er) /s()/): If
it occurs in the middle of a morpheme, it has a following /g/; at morpheme boundary,
it normally doesnt, except for the _____________________ and ____________________ of
adjectives! (e.g. stronger /strg/ longest /lgst/).

Activity 1: Decide whether the sequence -ng- is to be pronounced /g/ or // in the

following words:

finger / / wronged / / clinging / / dangle / /

ringing / / hunger / / signed / / angry / /
English / / tongue / / Ingrid / / linguistics / /

Lateral /l/ (Approximant?)

A lateral consonant is one in which air escapes from the mouth along the
_____________________ of the tongue. There is only one lateral in English, /l/, a voiced
_____________________ lateral. It occurs in two versions, the so-called "__________ /l/"
before vowels, as in light, long, and a "___________ l" in cases such as milk, ball namely
before consonants and after vowels. The word little has one of each type. /l/ is
pronounced with the tip of the tongue moving towards the alveolar ridge, but
"_____________ /l/" is pronounced with the back of the tongue raised against the velum.
Now, even though both /l/ articulations are phonetically different, they are not different
sounds of English. If you produce one where usually the other is expected, your
pronunciation will sound foreign, but nobody will understand a different word.
Activity 2: Which /l/ should we pronounce in each case? Write the name of the sound
next to each word:
lonely ____________________ lively _________________
always ____________________ enlightment _________________
not at all! ____________________ kilt _________________
please ____________________ single _________________

Approximant /r/

The approximant /r/ is produced by the tip of the tongue approaching the
________________________ area, though it never really touches it. Also, the tongue is
slightly curled backwards with the tip raised (this is called retroflex). Many accents of
English pronounce /r/ in all positions, while others pronounce /r/ only before
____________________. Rhoticity in English refers to the situations in which English
speakers pronounce /r/ every time it is present in the spelling of a word.

The English dialects of Scotland, Ireland, and most of the United States and Canada
preserve /r/, and are thus termed the rhotic varieties. The non-rhotic varieties, in which
/r/ has been lost except before vowels, include many dialects of England (BBC English
being one of them), as well as the English dialects of Australia, New Zealand, South
Africa. The /r/ which is pronounced at word boundary (especially after /:/, /:/, and
//) when a vowel sound follows is called linking /r/ (e.g. What a lovely car /k:/! vs
That car /k:r z/ is on sale.).

However, native speakers also pronounce a kind of linking /r/ when no r appears in
the spelling, in order to link a word ending in /:/, /:/, or // and another word
beginning with a vowel sound (e.g. idea of /adr v/, law and order /l:r n :d/,
Africa and Asia /frkr nd e/). This type of linking /r/ is called intrusive /r/.

Activity 3: Linking or instrusive? Spa owners / America and Africa / later on / Where are
you?

Approximants /j/ and /w/

These two consonant sounds are phonetically vowels but phonologically consonants,
that is, they are articulated almost as /i:/ and /u:/ but a little bit shorter. But, then, they
only occur before vowel phonemes, so they are considered consonants. /j/ is a voiced
__________________________ approximant, whereas /w/ is a voiced
__________________________ approximant. When p, t, k are followed not by a vowel but by
one of l, r, j, w, these voiced consonants lose their voicing and become fricative, as a
result of the aspiration of p, t, k. So words like play ple, tray tre, quick kwk, cue
kju: contain devoiced and fricative l, r, w, j, whereas lay, ray, wick, you contain
voiced approximant l, r, w, j. Consequently, if for example tray were to be pronounced
without devoicing of the r (i.e. with fully voiced r) English speakers would be likely to
hear the word dray.