ABSTRACT
It is convenient to think of speech production as involving a number of different processes, which may be varied independently, and combined in various ways to produce discriminable speech sounds. The four main processes involved in speech production are the airstream mechanism, phonation, articulation and the oro-nasal process. This chapter considers how these processes are involved in production of consonants. Chapter 2 discussed some common approaches to phonetic analysis, including the use of symbols from the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) to transcribe particular speech sounds. This chapter aims to increase readers’ familiarity with the IPA by using phonetic symbols wherever speech sounds are referred to, and the IPA chart is included as Appendix A. You need not be concerned, however, if you do not immediately remember the symbols, as speech sounds are also described in terms of speech production and illustrated by examples of words in which they occur wherever this is appropriate.
