Episode 40: Consonant Clusters

In Part Two of this series on Diacritics, Phil Thompson and Eric Armstrong discuss the intricacies of diacritic symbols and what they mean when applied to vowel and consonant symbols of the IPA. The guys follow along with the list of diacritic marks on the Wikipedia page for the International Phonetic Alphabet. The episode begins at laminal diacritic, which Wikipedia classifies as part of the “articulation diacritics”, and continue on to discuss “co-articulation diacritics” and “suprasegmentals”.

Though Phil and Eric had intended to cover all the diacritical marks in the IPA in this podcast, they just couldn’t do it. In fact, Eric’s recorder stopped recording after 45 minutes, though they kept talking for 15 more minutes... so this is merely an introduction to diacritics, not an exhaustive review of all of them. For reference, the boys work their way through the symbols following the order that the wikipedia article on the International Phonetic Alphabet’s section on diacritics takes, so you might want to follow along.

In this episode, Phil and Eric tackle two of the “centering diphthongs” (aka the r-colored diphthongs in rhotic accents), square and start. Much of the episode is spent tackling the very subtle possibilities of vowel quality where these lexical sets might be realized, and the fun that one can have tweaking those possibilities—smoothing, breaking, more or less rhoticity, more open vs. more close nuclei or codas. FUN!

This week we delve deeper into the topic of weaken vowels that behave similarly to schwa /ə/, namely the weakened forms of the /i/ and /u/ vowels [usually realized as somewhere in the range of [i̽] or [ɨ], [ʊ] or perhaps [ɵ], sometimes known—controversially—as “schwee” and “schwoo.” We even chat about weakened diphthongs and what that might mean for speakers (“schwoe” and “schwhy,” anyone?). Phil and Eric also chat for quite some time about Geoff Lindsay’s blog post on the topic of “Schwee”.

We’re tackling strings of consonants in this episode! Phil and Eric talk about clusters of consonants and how they “work” for us. Eric refers to J.C. Catford’s book A Practical Introduction to Phonetics quite a bit!

Phil and Eric managed to do an episode on the Lexical Set choice this week, in spite of Phil’s never-ending cold and Eric’s dogs (who wanted to go out when they were in, and in when they were out...) Phil talks a bit about the history of the set, we talk about its representation in the IPA and we tackle odd variations, including the classic New York choice - nurse (near) merger.

We tackle the consonants that don’t conveniently fit within the Pulmonic Consonant chart of the IPA — the Non-pulmonics and the so-called “Other Symbols” area. Many of these consonants are a review of things we’ve covered elsewhere in the podcast series, but it’s always nice to tidy things up, to pick up the leftovers.

Phil and Eric tackle the mouth lexical set, and compare it, briefly to the price set. We reference Robbie Burns’ To a Mouse, and talk about how it evolved through the Great Vowel Shift from an /u/ vowel, to its present location, in the range of /æʊ/—/aʊ/—/ɑʊ/. Eric touches on Canadian Raising, and the two glossonomians explore the range of articulations, modulating the initial component of the “vector”, and then the final component.

Eric and Phil tackle the entire Pulmonic Chart of the IPA, focusing on the Non-English sounds. We move quickly, and don’t focus on what languages you might here these consonants. Instead we focus on how to make them and points to remember when teaching them. If you do want to know what language you want to hear a certain consonant in, please refer to Wikipedia. The best method is to search for the consonant that you’re interested in, for example, the voiceless velar fricative /x/, which would take you here. In this case, /x/ occurs in languages literally from A-Z, Abaza to Zapotec.

After a YEAR on hiatus, Phil and Eric return to Glossonomia with an episode about the lexical set price. We cover the history of the /aɪ/ sound, how it evolved from the /i/ sound we hear in fleece words today. We also dig deep into concepts such as smoothing, Canadian Raising, price allophony, and other variations of the set, such as we hear in the South of the United States, in Scotland or Ireland.