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SHORT ESSAY

QUESTION 10: Expla in in art icu latory terms th e features of th e fol lowin g

con son ants: af f r icate.

The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) was designated in the year 1886 to

devise a universal phonetic alphabet. It consists of the vowels and the consonants

as a whole and complements the everyday communication in a way to have the

accurate pronunciation. From the topic chosen, the focus is on the consonants of

affricates.What is consonant in the phonological system? It is actually a terms of

where the constriction is made, how it is made, and what kind of phonation it

supports.(John Clark & Collin Yallop, 1990). Other than that,(Finegan, 2008) states

that consonants are sounds produced by partially or completely blocking of air in its

passage from the lung through the vocal tract.This means that, human makes

consonant sounds through the blockage of air in their vocal tract. In the consonants

chart, there is the place of articulationwhich is placed from the left side to the right

side (from the front of the vocal tract to the back) of the chart. It is then combined

with the manners of articulationwhich is placed from the top until the bottom of the

chart (from stops to semi-vowel) and they are also categorised into the voiceless

and thevoicedway of sounding.

Next after that, what is it actually the affricate? It is the degree of air

turbulence and friction at the release of the stops(John Clark & Collin Yallop, 1990).

While on the other hand, (Finegan, 2008) states that in the pronunciation of affricate,

air is built up by a complete closure of the oral tract.It can be clearly seen that, the

production of affricate sound involves air friction due the blockage in the vocal tract.

This affricate manner of articulation consists of the voiceless affricate (t )and voiceaffricate (d)that comes with the combination of place of articulation of alveolar.So,

what is the definition of alveolar? It refers to the gum ridge; the thick membranous

covering on the bone structure which joins the tooth-bearing bone of the upper jaw

and the arched bone structure of the hard palate(John Clark & Collin Yallop, 1990). It

is the articulation place right after the teeth that produce voiceless [t]and [s]with

voiced [d], [z]and [n].The affricate is normally a short duration that counts as the

release burst of the stop itself. For example, the initial sounds of ch inand ginand

the final sounds of batch andbadge.If the sound is pronounced slowly enough, we

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can recognize it as the stop-fricatives, which are more accurately called as

affricates. In the pronunciation of affricate, air is built up by a complete closure of

the oral tract and at some place of articulation, then released (something like a stop)

and continued (like a fricative). The sound of ch inearlier is the combination of thestop [ t ]and the fricative [ ]and is then represented as (t ). The sound at the

beginning and the end ofjudge is a combination of the stop [ d ]and the fricative

[ ], represented as(d). In English, there is only this type of affricates and they are

called alveo-palatal affricates in order to capture their place of articulation. In addition,

as they share the phonetic property of constricting the airflow through the vocal tract,

fricatives, stops, and affricates are together referred as obstruentwhich is a fricative

or plosive speech sound.