The course Practical phonetics 2 concentrates on the consonant system of English covering several subphonemic phenomena like the aspiration of the strong plosives, degrees of voicing of the weak obstruents, the rise of syllabic sonorants, the devoicing of English sonorants and the distribution of the nasal consonants. Some of the segmental phenomena can only be explained by reference to what are known as suprasegmental or metrical phenomena. Hence the need to also discuss the fundamentals of English word and phrasal stress, rhythm and intonation.
