English Phonology Home Paper
...tters following each other can be mistranscibed, however, their n+g combinations are not pronounced /N/. Words like dungeon, danger, angel, anchovy or range do include an n before g, but the letter g is pronounced differently in these cases, it becomes a voiced palatal affricate sound, /dZ/ , which does not transform the alveolar nasal /n/ into the velar nasal /N/. So danger is pronounced and transcribed /'deIndZ«/ and not /'deINdZ«/ and angel is pronounced /'eIndZ«l/ and not /'eINdZ«l/. (2) If a word contains a nasal, i.e. /n/, /m/ or /N/ which is followed by a stop, i.e. /b/, /p/, /d/, /t/, /g/ or /k/, their combination is called a nasal+stop cluster. For example there is a nasal+stop cluster in words like tempest, camp, sink, number,land,linger, tamper, tango, tank, tinker, lamp, plant, lantern, random, amber, hunt, finger,lumber, tendon, wanton, tamper. But as we discussed earlier, the n+g cluster does not always count as a nasal+stop cluster. When n is followed by g morpheme-finally, it remains silent and the velar nasal /N/ is produced instead of /ng/. (The n+g cluster forms a nasal+stop cluster whenever they stand in morpheme-medial position.) E.g.: thing, song, tang, The same problem occurs by the m+b combination. In the cases where m is followed by b in morpheme-final position, b remains silent, i.e. no nasal+stop cluster appeares. E.g. in words like lamb, dumb or thumb, mb stand morpheme-finally so b is silent, no nasal+stop cluster can be found. The main reason for this is that /m/ and /b/ are produced in the same place of articulation: both of them are bilabials which makes it difficult to pronounce them word-finally. So when pronouncing and transcibing these words, we must pay attention that /b/ is silent, e.g.: lamb /lQm/, dumb /dĂm/ thumb /TĂm/. The word number can be analysed in to ways: if we take it as a noun, there is a nasal+stop cluster in it, b is pronounced, so it is transcribed /'nĂmb«/, but if we consider it as a comparatrive adjective numb-er, b is silent as in the original form of the word and it must be pronounced /' nĂm«/. This problem may appear in the case of similar word pairs. Nádasdy also writes about this problem in Background: In word- (or morpheme-) final position the b of mb is silent(...); but it must be pronounced in morpheme-medial position, as in number/nĂmb«/, which cannot be analysed as numb+er. (Actually, when number is the comparative of the adjective numb, it is grammatically numb+er, pronounced /' nĂm«/, as the rule predicts!) For this reason b is silent in comb, plumber, climbing, but pronounced in amber, timber, jumble, scramble, jumbo. 9 Nádasdy sums up the ng, mb problem in Background as follows: morpheme-final g and b must be silent after a nasal. Consequently ( ) no English word may end in /Ng/ or /mb/ in pronounciation.10 What Gussman writes about the ng combination, which is also true for the mb pair: The velar nasal and the following velar plosive are linked through their common place of articulation they are homorganic. 11 (3) The same regularity can be found in the words of question (3) as in (2), the regularity can be extended to them: words like stunned, stones, stands, sender,standing and trendy contain nasal+stop cluster, because there is a nasal followed by a stop in them, but they do not contain morpheme-final ng and mb. In the case of the words belongs, hangs, hanged, /g/ is silent because ng stands in morpheme-final position and only the velar nasal /N/ is pronounced: /b«'lNz/, /hQNz/, /hQNd/. The words singer, slangy, stringy, thingy and singable contain the velar nasal /N/, and it stands morpheme-finally, but in these cases, /N/ is followed by a vowel. And as it has been pointed out above, /N/ cannot stand intervocally, so it must be followed by a consonant, i.e. a velar plosive. It means that these words must be pronounced/transcribed as follows: singer /sINg«/ , slangy /slQNgi/, stringy /strINgi/, thingy /TINgi/ and singable /sINg«bl/. In the case of climbed, succumbing,and climber the b remains silent even if it is followed by a vowel in some of the cases. Mb cannot be pronounced, however they do not stand word-finally, but they stand in morpheme.final position, which means that b cannot be pronounced. In succumbing and standing two nasal+stop pairs can be found: we have already discussed nd in standing and mb in succumbing above, but there is another nasal+stop pair which needs to be observed: the morpheme ing contains the velar nasal /N/ and because it stands in morpheme-final position, it is pronounced /N/ and g remains silent. (4) The regularity above can be extended to similar cases, e.g. the comparative-superlative forms of adjectives. When n is followed by a g or m is followed by a b in certain words and these ng, mb pairs stand in morpheme-final position, g and b becomes silent and it is only the velar nasal /N/ or the bilabial nasal /m/ which is pronounced. We discussed earlier that this happens in morpheme-final position, which might, but does not neccessarily mean word final position. When discussing comperative or superlaitve forms of adjectives, it is important that these adjectives are built of two morphemes: the original word, i.e. the stem plus the comparative or superlative suffix. So if the stem ends in the ng or mb which is followed by a suffix, g and b remains silent even if the stem is followed by a vowel, which would make it easier to pronounce g and b too. It means that words like youngest, stronger, longer, diphtongize, iambic are pronounced /jĂN«st/, /'strN«/, /'lN«/, /,dIft«N'aIz/, /'aI«mik/, but as oid in rhomboid is not a morpheme, it is not a suffix, b is pronounced, so it is transcribed /rm'boId/. (5) The above regularity can be extended to words like dumber and numbest. As Nádasdy writes in Background Exactly the same rule applies to mb as ng.12 And as it has been quoted above: In word-( or morpheme) final position the b of the mb is silent. 13 The author also writes about the word number/ numb-er which can be analysed in two ways, of which we need the latter one. Mb remains silent in the words dumber and numbest too, because both of them are adjectives with comperative or superlative suffixes which means that mb stands in morpheme-final position, at the end of the stem of the original adjective so the words are transcribed dumber /dĂmə / numbest /nĂməst/. Of course, the rule that b in mb (and g in ng too) is silent in morpheme-final position does not only refers to comparative or superlative suffixes, but every morpheme. E.g.: sing sing|er, wrong wrong|ly, hang hang|ing, ring ring|ing, belong belong|ed, numb numb|ly, dumb dumb|ness, comb comb|ing, thumb thumb|s, thumb thumb|nail, thumb|tack, etc. (6) It was found out in question (2) that the pronounciation of the ng, mb word pairs are up to their place in the morpheme. If they are in morpheme-final position, the g is silent in ng and only the velar nasal /N/ is pronounced and b is silent in mb, only the bilabial nasal /m/ is pronounced and t...