Page 82 - DENG504_LINGUISTICS

Linguistics

Notes (lips), alveolar (tongue blade against alveolar ridge) and velar (back of tongue against the palate).
This set of places produces three nasal consonants - m, n, ŋ — which correspond to the three places
of articulation for the pairs of plosives p b, t d, k g.
The consonants m, n are simple and straightforward with distributions quite similar to those of the
plosives. There is in fact little to describe. However, ŋ is a different matter. It is a sound that gives
considerable problems to foreign learners, and one that is so unusual in its phonological aspect that
some people argue that it is not one of the phonemes of English at all. The place of articulation of ŋ is
the same as that of k, l; it is a useful exercise to practise making a continuous ŋ sound. If you do this,
it is very important not to produce a k or l at the end - pronounce the ŋ like m or n.
We will now look at some ways in which the distribution of ŋ is unusual.
1. In initial position we find m, n occurring freely, but ŋ never occurs in this position. With the
possible exception of ¥, this makes ŋ the only English consonant that does not occur initially.
2. Medially, ŋ occurs quite frequently, but there is in the BBC accent a rather complex and quite
interesting rule concerning the question of when ŋ may be pronounced without a following
plosive. When we find the letters ‘nk’ in the middle of a word in its orthographic form, a k will
always be pronounced; however, some words with orthographic ‘ng’ in the middle will have a
pronunciation containing ŋl and others will have ŋ without l. For example, in BBC
pronunciation we find the following:
A B
‘finger’ fwŋl e ‘singer’ swŋ e
‘anger’ æŋl e ‘hanger’ hæŋ e

In the words of column A the ŋ is followed by l, while the words of column B have no l. What
is the difference between A and B? The important difference is in the way the words are
constructed - their morphology. The words of column B can be divided into two grammatical
pieces: ‘sing’ + ‘- er’, ‘hang’ + ‘- er’. These pieces are called morphemes, and we say that column
B words are morphologically different from column A words, since these cannot be divided into
two morphemes. ‘Finger’ and ‘anger’ consist of just one morpheme each.
We can summarise the position so far by saying that (within a word containing the letters ‘ng’
in the spelling) ŋ occurs without a following l if it occurs at the end of a morpheme; if it occurs
in the middle of a morpheme it has a following l.
Let us now look at the ends of words ending orthographically with ‘ng’. We find that these
always end with ŋ; this ŋ is never followed by a l. Thus we find that the words ‘sing’ and
‘hang’ are pronounced as swŋ and hæŋ; to give a few more examples, ‘song’ is sZŋ, ‘bang’ is
bæŋ and ‘long’ is lZŋ. We do not need a separate explanation for this: the rule given above, that
no l is pronounced after ŋ at the end of a morpheme, works in these cases too, since the end of
a word must also be the end of a morpheme. (If this point seems difficult, think of the comparable
case of sentences and words: a sound or letter that comes at the end of a sentence must necessarily
also come at the end of a word, so that the final k of the sentence ‘This is a book’ is also the final
k of the word ‘book’.)
Unfortunately, rules often have exceptions. The main exception to the above morpheme-based
rule concerns the comparative and superlative suffixes ‘-er’ and ‘-est’. According to the rule
given above, the adjective ‘long’ will be pronounced lZŋ, which is correct. It would also predict
correctly that if we add another morpheme to ‘long’, such as the suffix ‘-ish’, the pronunciation
of ŋ would again be without a following l. However, it would additionally predict that the
comparative and superlative forms ‘longer’ and ‘longest’ would be pronounced with no l
following the ŋ , while in fact the correct pronunciation of the words is:
‘longer’ lZŋl e ‘longest’ lZŋl st
e

76 LOVELY PROFESSIONAL UNIVERSITY