Nasality, a fourth distinctive feature of consonants, is used in only 3 phonemes in English: "M," "N," and "Ng."
- Put your hand on your larynx and say "P" and "B" several times in succession. You can feel the vibration of the larynx on the "B" sound. Which one of the pairs of following cognates are voiced (have +Voicing):
- P B
- D T
- F V
- S Z
- G K
- Which of the two affricates that we discussed has +voicing?
The answers are "B," "D," "V," "Z," and "G." The affricate in "judge" is also voiced.
- Nasality: Unlike French which includes nasal resonance in some vowels, no vowels in English include it. No consonants can be made either nasality with the exception these three: "M," "N," and "Ng."
- There are many more distinctive features for consonants, but we'll leave these for all those linguistically brilliant babies to discover, and for those few lifeless speech pathologists or linguists to describe in a book.