This chapter examines consonants in Slavic languages primarily from a synchronic perspective. I begin by reviewing the consonant inventories. Key properties of the inventories are secondary palatalization, a large inventory of coronal fricatives and affricates, and a voicing contrast in obstruents. The remainder of the chapter reviews four types of consonant patterns: palatalization, voicing, other local alternations, and long-distance alternations. Palatalization is inherited from Proto-Slavic, but the contemporary languages differ in terms of segments undergoing it, morphological triggers, and phonological conditioning. Slavic voicing alternations offer typological insight into the extent of cross-linguistic variation. The key differences are in final devoicing, directionality, and participation of sonorants. Slavic languages also exhibit limited place assimilation, dissimilation, and consonant decomposition. As for long-distance patterns, I review both assimilatory (sibilant consonant harmony) and dissimilatory (consonant co-occurrence restrictions) phenomena in two Slavic languages.

This chapter examines the narrative scheme surrounding each collection and how the god Yhwh is drawn as a character in each source, speaking in an array of cadences and registers that conjure their associated types of speakers. Rather than biblical law making Israelite law into divine speech, biblical literature presents all forms of divine speech as fully compelling law.

We investigate acoustic correlates of the laryngeal contrast in intervocalic stops in three speech communities – homeland Polish speakers and first- and second-generation heritage Polish speakers in Toronto. Using a sample of 1,187 tokens extracted from conversational speech, we show that the employment of some parameters signaling laryngeal contrast differs between the homeland and heritage speakers. Some parameters are suppressed (i.e., closure phonation and duration) and some are amplified (i.e., vowel and release duration). We interpret these processes in light of proposals by Flege and Bohn (2021) and Polinsky (2018) regarding contact-induced interaction (i.e., assimilation versus dissimilation between languages). We propose that the interaction between systems occurs at a low level of granularity, that is, at the level of individual phonetic properties of a single phoneme.

We examined the production and perception of voiced versus voiceless obstruents by thirty-three adolescent heritage speakers of Polish and Russian. First, a word list task was used to elicit the production of voiced and voiceless plosives in word-initial position. Voice onset time (VOT) values for both sets of stops were compared to the values reported for monolingual Polish and Russian speakers. To investigate the perception of phoneme contrasts in the heritage language, we used an auditory phoneme discrimination task that contained ten minimal pairs of real and nonce words with contrasting voiced and voiceless obstruents. The results showed an almost perfect perceptual discrimination and a separation of voiced and voiceless plosives in production; however, the VOT values differed significantly from those of monolinguals. Both groups showed convergence of VOT values towards the values reported for fortis and lenis stops in the majority language (i.e., German), leading to a non-native accent in the heritage language.

Following our discussion of English vowels in Chapter 3 and rhoticity in Chapter 4, this chapter introduces you to English consonants, as well as variation in consonant inventories across varieties of English. We begin the chapter with a discussion of the characteristics of consonants, focusing on the classification of consonant sounds by place of articulation, manner of articulation, and voicing. This overview also examines consonant inventories cross-linguistically, to help you understand which consonants – and consonant features – are the most common across languages, and why.

The next two sections of the chapter provide an overview of English consonants by introducing the consonant phonemes common to many varieties of English, with variation in these inventories discussed as relevant. A brief overview of modern-day spelling of English consonants is also given. Consonant variation within varieties of English and phonological rules that govern this variation are then discussed. In the final section of the chapter, you will be guided through exercises designed to check your understanding of the content of the chapter and an analysis of your own English consonant inventory.

The word consonant means 'with a sonant' or vowel. Consonants are one of two main types of speech sounds, the other being vowels. In the production of consonants, the vocal tract is blocked, the vocal tract is seriously constricted, or the airflow is diverted through the nasal passage. The term articulation is used for the movements and adjustments required to produce an individual speech sound. Consonants are classified by (1) whether the vocal folds are vibrating, (2) where in the vocal tract articulation takes place, and (3) the manner of articulation (the type of articulation). Manners of articulation include plosives, nasals, fricatives, and approximants, the latter of which can be broken down into laterals and glides. Other manners of articulation include trills. Consonants may be produced with a secondary articulation in addition to the primary articulation.

This chapter explores the contributions of two minoritized indigenous languages of Brazil, Maxakalí and Kaingang, to representations of nasality gestures akin to musical scores, as well as the right way to frame the universality of the kinship terms (and ideal universal syllables)' mama’ and ‘papa’ in light of a phonetic model called Enhancement Theory. These languages have either the consonants /m/ and /p/, but not /b/, or /b/ and /p/, but not /m/, and the allophonic environments in which this available phonetic space is used are organized around perceptual and articulatory optimization.

In this chapter, I offer examples of ethnographic approaches to discourse, focusing in particular on how linguistic anthropologists have engaged with and expanded upon the concepts and theoretical tools offered by Goffman and Bakhtin. This includes attention to how Goffman unpacks interactional participant roles, how his concept of footing has been critical to recent interest in stance, and also how speakers linguistically shift in and out of registers. Drawing on Bakhtin, discourse analysts have turned to explore the productive concepts of genre, intertextuality, voicing and chronotopes. Ethnographic discourse analysis connects levels of discourse and context and relies on specific methodological strategies to capture the dynamic ethnographic and sociopolitical contexts within which language is located and to which it contributes and responds.

Drawing from a wide range of standard and nonstandard Germanic varieties past and present, this chapter examines the contrast between sounds traditionally written as <p, t, k, f, s> etc. and those written as <b, d, g, v, z>, etc. Following ‘Laryngeal Realism’, two main systems within Germanic are identified: [spread glottis] or Glottal Width languages like Icelandic, German and English on the one hand and [voice] or Glottal Tension languages like Dutch, Frisian and Yiddish on the other. The two differ phonetically — notably by aspiration of /p, t, k/ in the former and robust glottal pulsing of /b, d, g/ in the latter — but more importantly in terms of phonological activity. For instance, [spread] languages show progressive laryngeal assimilation while [voice] ones show regressive assimilation. Both types can neutralize the distinction in coda or word-final position. A few Germanic varieties have lost a laryngeal distinction and others have transformed the distinction into a contrast based on length.

Laryngeal voice quality classifications and ‘states of the larynx’ are reviewed and expanded. Supplementary notes accompanying the text describe the video, audio, and text materials in the online companion site that accompanies the book to illustrate and explain the articulatory production of each laryngeal voice quality. Constricted phonation types exploit degrees of laryngeal articulator tightening with concomitant lingual and larynx-height settings. A new continuum of laryngeal stricture, from open to closed, is introduced. Glottal, ventricular, and epiglottal stop are illustrated. Breathiness vs. whisperiness is redefined. Creaky voice and varieties of harsh voice are investigated, including ventricular production and trilling of the aryepiglottic folds. New drawings and laryngoscopic photographs capture the extent of open and constricted postures. Breathy states with and without voicing are compared side by side with whispery states. The concept of vocal tract tension is reattributed to constrictive settings of the laryngeal articulator mechanism. The aim is to paint an auditory portrait of the articulatory configurations of the vocal tract.