In this chapter …

In this chapter we begin to look at how contrast can be put to formal use in identifying what entities function as the underlying consonant sounds of English. We see that certain speech sounds – consonants – contrast with each other when they appear in certain positions of words and/or syllables (an example would be /pɪn/ and /tɪn/). From the contrast we can infer that these sounds are reliably parts of the system of English sounds.

We shall also observe that there are certain sounds one can make that are not part of the system of English sounds. They are not, precisely because they don't contrast with other consonant sounds in the same environments: they are just ‘noise’. Of course, such noises – ‘tut-tut’ and so forth – may have important societal functions (e.g. to indicate (dis)approval), but nevertheless they are not part of English phonology.

At the end of the chapter we begin to do further work on contrastiveness and we'll notice how important the notion of ‘minimal pair’ is in diagnosing how many English consonants there might be. We construct several minimal pair tests, and these will net twenty-four consonants for us to consider. In chapters 3–4 we shall further examine how English consonants might be classified using features of production and perception such as voice, place and manner.