PHONETICS AND PHONOLOGY
Segmental Aspects

Voicing of speech sounds is caused by the vocal folds activity – the vocal folds vibrate during the articulation of the consonants defined as voiced, as well as during the articulation of vowels, because they are naturally pronounced as voiced.

When the vocal folds do not vibrate during articulation of speech sounds, it means that the vocal folds are inactive, voiceless consonants are pronounced.

Voiceless consonants “have a shortening effect on sounds preceding them within a syllable”, so /eɪ/ is pronounced shorter in mate /meɪt/ than in made /meɪd/ (Jones, 2003, p. xi) because t is a voiceless consonant whereas d is a voiced one. Instead of the word shortening, the term clipping is also used as its equivalent.

English:

VOICED: b, d, g, v, δ, z, ʒ, ʤ, l, m, n, η, r, j, w

VOICELESS: p, t, k, f, θ, s, ʃ, h, ʧ

Slovak:

VOICED: b, d, ď, g, v, z, ʒ, dz, ʤ, h, l, ľ, m, n, ň, r, j, ĺ, ŕ

VOICELESS: p, t, ť, k, f, s, ʃ, c, ʧ, x

The fact that voiceless consonants have really no voice in their pronunciation is easily verified if we place a voiceless consonant word-finally, e.g. stop /stɒp/. Focusing our attention on the final consonant, in this case /p/, we hear only something as “whispering” in its pronunciation, there is really no “audible voice” present.

Vibration of the vocal folds is felt when we put our hand on the throat. We can feel the trembling of this organ because it is located in the larynx behind the Adam´s apple, so we can “reach” it easily.

Voiced consonants either have their voiceless counterparts, or there are no voiceless partners from the point of view concerning voicing. The former are obstruents, the latter are also called sonorants.