In articulatory phonetics The field of articulatory phonetics is a subfield of phonetics. In studying articulation, phoneticians explain how humans produce speech sounds via the interaction of different physiological structures, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the upper vocal tract The vocal tract is the cavity in animals where sound that is produced at the sound source is filtered. In birds it consists of the trachea, the syrinx, the oral cavity, the upper part of the esophagus, and the beak. In mammals it consists of the laryngeal cavity, the pharynx, the oral cavity, and the nasal cavity, and in some nonhuman mammals, the upper vocal tract being defined as that part of the vocal tract that lies above the larynx The larynx , colloquially known as the voicebox, is an organ in the neck of mammals involved in protection of the trachea and sound production. The larynx houses the vocal folds, and is situated just below where the tract of the pharynx splits into the trachea and the esophagus. Consonants contrast with vowels In phonetics, a vowel is a sound in spoken language, such as English ah! [ɑː] or oh! [oʊ], pronounced with an open vocal tract so that there is no build-up of air pressure at any point above the glottis. This contrasts with consonants, such as English sh! [ʃː], where there is a constriction or closure at some point along the vocal tract. A.

Since the number of consonants in the world's languages is much greater than the number of consonant letters in any one alphabet, linguists Linguistics is the scientific study of natural language. Linguistics encompasses a number of sub-fields. An important topical division is between the study of language structure and the study of meaning (semantics). Grammar encompasses morphology (the formation and composition of words), syntax (the rules that determine how words combine into have devised systems such as the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) to assign a unique symbol A symbol is something such as an object, picture, written word, sound, or particular mark that represents something else by association, resemblance, or convention. For example, a red octagon may stand for "STOP". On maps, crossed sabres may indicate a battlefield. Numerals are symbols for numbers to each attested consonant. In fact, the Latin alphabet The Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most widely used alphabetic writing system in the world today. It evolved from the western variety of the Greek alphabet called the Cumaean alphabet, and was initially developed by the ancient Romans to write the Latin language, which is used to write English, has fewer consonant letters than English has consonant sounds, so digraphs A digraph or digram is a pair of characters used to write one phoneme (distinct sound) or a sequence of phonemes that does not correspond to the normal values of the two characters combined. The sound is often, but not necessarily, one which cannot be expressed using a single character in the orthography used by the language. Usually, the term & like "ch", "sh", "th", and "zh" are used to extend the alphabet, and some letters and digraphs represent more than one consonant. For example, many speakers are not aware that the sound spelled "th" in "this" is a different consonant than the "th" sound in "thing". (In the IPA they are transcribed ð and θ, respectively.)

Origin of the term

The word consonant comes from Latin Latin is an Italic language historically spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. Through the Roman conquest, Latin spread throughout the Mediterranean and a large part of Europe. Romance languages such as Italian, French, Catalan, Romanian, Spanish, and Portuguese are descended from Latin, while many others, especially European languages, including oblique stem cōnsonant-, from cōnsonāns (littera) "sounding-together (letter)", a loan translation In linguistics, a calque or loan translation is a word or phrase borrowed from another language by literal, word-for-word (Latin: "verbum pro verbo") or root-for-root translation of Greek σύμφωνον sýmphōnon.^[1] As originally conceived by Plato,^[2] sýmphōna were specifically the stop consonants A stop, plosive, or occlusive is a consonant sound produced by stopping the airflow in the vocal tract. The terms plosive and stop are usually used interchangeably, but they are not perfect synonyms. Plosives are oral stops with a pulmonic egressive airstream mechanism. The term is also used to describe oral stops. Many use the term nasal, described as "not being pronounceable without an adjacent vowel sound".^[3] Thus the term did not cover continuant consonants A continuant is a sound produced with an incomplete closure of the vocal tract. That is, any sound except a stop . An affricate is considered to be a complex segment, composed of both a stop and a continuant, which occur without vowels in a minority of languages, for example at the ends of the English words bottle and button. (The final vowel letters e and o in these words are only a product of orthography; Plato was concerned with pronunciation.)

However, even Plato's original conception of consonant is inadequate for the universal description of human language In the philosophy of language, a natural language is a language that is spoken, signed, or written by humans for general-purpose communication, as distinguished from formal languages (such as computer-programming languages or the "languages" used in the study of formal logic, especially mathematical logic) and from constructed languages, since in some languages, such as the Salishan languages The Salishan languages are a group of languages of the Pacific Northwest (the Canadian province of British Columbia and the American states of Washington, Oregon, Idaho and Montana). They are characterised by agglutinativity and astonishing consonant clusters—for instance the Nuxálk word xłp̓x̣ʷłtłpłłskʷc̓ (IPA: [xɬpʼχʷɬtɬpɬː, stop consonants may also occur without vowels (see Nuxálk Nuxálk is a Salishan language spoken in the vicinity of the Canadian town Bella Coola, British Columbia by approximately 20-30 elders. Until recently, the language was called Bella Coola, but the native designation Nuxálk is now preferred), and the modern conception of consonant does not require cooccurrence with vowels.

Consonantal features

Each consonant can be distinguished by several features In linguistics, a distinctive feature is the most basic unit of phonological structure that may be analyzed in phonological theory:^[4]

• The manner of articulation In linguistics , manner of articulation describes how the tongue, lips, jaw, and other speech organs are involved in making a sound make contact. Often the concept is only used for the production of consonants. For any place of articulation, there may be several manners, and therefore several homorganic consonants is the method that the consonant is articulated, such as nasal A nasal consonant is produced with a lowered velum in the mouth, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. The oral cavity still acts as a resonance chamber for the sound, but the air does not escape through the mouth as it is blocked by the lips or tongue. Rarely, other types of consonants may be nasalized (through the nose), stop A stop, plosive, or occlusive is a consonant sound produced by stopping the airflow in the vocal tract. The terms plosive and stop are usually used interchangeably, but they are not perfect synonyms. Plosives are oral stops with a pulmonic egressive airstream mechanism. The term is also used to describe oral stops. Many use the term nasal (complete obstruction of air), or approximant Approximants are speech sounds that could be regarded as intermediate between vowels and "typical" consonants. In the articulation of approximants, articulatory organs produce a narrowing of the vocal tract, but leave enough space for air to flow without much audible turbulence. Approximants are therefore more open than fricatives. This (vowel like).
• The place of articulation In articulatory phonetics, the place of articulation of a consonant is the point of contact, where an obstruction occurs in the vocal tract between an active (moving) articulator (typically some part of the tongue) and a passive (stationary) articulator (typically some part of the roof of the mouth). Along with the manner of articulation and is where in the vocal tract the obstruction of the consonant occurs, and which speech organs are involved. Places include bilabial In phonetics, a bilabial consonant is a consonant articulated with both lips. The bilabial consonants identified by the International Phonetic Alphabet are: (both lips), alveolar Alveolar consonants are articulated with the tongue against or close to the superior alveolar ridge, which is called that because it contains the alveoli of the superior teeth. Alveolar consonants may be articulated with the tip of the tongue (so-called apical consonants), as in English, or with the flat of the tongue just above the tip (the " (tongue against the gum ridge), and velar Velars are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue against the soft palate, the back part of the roof of the mouth, known also as the velum) (tongue against soft palate). Additionally, there may be a simultaneous narrowing at another place of articulation, such as palatalisation The second may be the result of the first, but they often differ. A vowel may "palatalize" a consonant , but the result might not be a palatalized consonant in the phonetic sense (sense 2), or the phonetically palatalized (sense 2) consonant may occur irrespective of front vowels or pharyngealisation Pharyngealization is a secondary articulation of consonants or vowels by which the pharynx or epiglottis is constricted during the articulation of the sound. In the International Phonetic Alphabet, pharyngealization can be indicated by one of two methods:.
• The phonation Phonation has slightly different meanings depending on the subfield of phonetics. Among some phoneticians, phonation is the process by which the vocal folds produce certain sounds through quasi-periodic vibration. This is the definition used among those who study laryngeal anatomy and physiology and speech production in general. Other phoneticians, of a consonant is how the vocal cords The vocal folds, also known commonly as vocal cords, are composed of twin infoldings of mucous membrane stretched horizontally across the larynx. They vibrate, modulating the flow of air being expelled from the lungs during phonation vibrate during the articulation. When the vocal cords vibrate fully, the consonant is called voiced; when they do not vibrate at all, it's voiceless In linguistics, the term voiceless describes the pronunciation of sounds when the larynx does not vibrate. Phonologically, this is a type of phonation, which contrasts with other states of the larynx, but some object that the word "phonation" implies voicing, and that voicelessness is the lack of phonation.
• The voice onset time In phonetics, voice onset time, commonly abbreviated VOT, is defined as the length of time that passes between when a stop-consonant is released and when voicing, the vibration of the vocal folds, begins in unvoiced aspirated stops. Some authors allow negative values of VOT to mark voicing that begins during the period of articulatory closure for (VOT) indicates the timing of the phonation. Aspiration In phonetics, aspiration is the strong burst of air that accompanies either the release or, in the case of preaspiration, the closure of some obstruents. To feel or see the difference between aspirated and unaspirated sounds, one can put a hand or a lit candle in front of his or her mouth, and say tore and then store ([stɔɹ]). One should either is a feature of VOT.
• The airstream mechanism In phonetics, the airstream mechanism is the method by which airflow is created in the vocal tract. Along with phonation, it is one of two mandatory aspects of sound production; without these, there can be no speech sound is how the air moving through the vocal tract is powered. Most languages have exclusively pulmonic egressive In human speech, egressive sounds are those in which the air stream is created by pushing air out through the mouth or nose. The three types of egressive sounds are pulmonic egressive , glottalic egressive, lingual egressive consonants, which use the lungs and diaphragm, but ejectives In phonetics, ejective consonants are voiceless consonants that are pronounced with simultaneous closure of the glottis. In the phonology of a particular language, ejectives may contrast with aspirated or tenuis consonants. Additionally, some languages have sonorants with creaky voice that pattern with ejectives while other languages have, clicks Clicks are speech sounds found as consonants in many languages of southern Africa, and in three languages of East Africa. Examples of these sounds familiar to English speakers are the tsk! tsk! used to express disapproval, or the tchick! used to spur on a horse and implosives Implosive consonants are stops with a mixed glottalic ingressive and pulmonic egressive airstream mechanism. That is, the airstream is controlled by moving the glottis downward in addition to expelling air from the lungs. Therefore, unlike the purely glottalic ejective consonants, implosives can be modified by phonation, which is almost use different mechanisms.
• The length In phonetics, gemination happens when a spoken consonant is pronounced for an audibly longer period of time than a short consonant is how long the obstruction of a consonant lasts. This feature is borderline distinctive in English, as in "wholly" [hoʊlli] vs. "holy" [hoʊli], but cases are limited to morpheme boundaries. Unrelated roots are differentiated in various languages such as Italian, Japanese and Finnish, with two length levels, "single" and "geminate In phonetics, gemination happens when a spoken consonant is pronounced for an audibly longer period of time than a short consonant". Estonian Estonian (eesti keel; pronounced [ˈeːsti ˈkeːl] ) is the official language of Estonia, spoken by about 1.1 million people in Estonia and tens of thousands in various émigré communities. It is a Uralic language and is closely related to Finnish and some Sami languages Sami or Saami is a general name for a group of Uralic languages spoken by the Sami people in parts of northern Finland, Norway, Sweden and extreme northwestern Russia, in Northern Europe. Sami is frequently believed to be a single language. Several names are used for the Sami languages: Saami, Sámi, Samic, Saamic, Lappish and Lappic. The last two have three phonemic lengths: short, geminate, and long geminate, although the distinction between the geminate and overlong geminate includes suprasegmental features.
• The articulatory force is how much muscular energy is involved. This has been proposed many times, but no distinction relying exclusively on force has ever been demonstrated.

All English consonants can be classified by a combination of these features, such as "voiceless alveolar stop consonant" [t]. In this case the airstream mechanism is omitted.

Some pairs of consonants like p::b, t::d are sometimes called fortis and lenis Fortis and lenis ("weak") are linguistic terms. They refer in a vague way to the opposition between "stronger" and "weaker" (or "more tense" vs. "more lax") consonants, such as the distinction between p, t and b, d. These terms were used, and may have originated, in 19th century German linguistics, but this is a phonological Phonology is the systematic use of sound to encode meaning in any spoken human language, or the field of linguistics studying this use. Just as a language has syntax and vocabulary, it also has a phonology in the sense of a sound system. When describing the formal area of study, the term typically describes linguistic analysis either beneath the rather than phonetic distinction.

Consonant as a symbol

The word consonant is also used to refer to a letter of an alphabet that denotes a consonant sound. Consonant letters in the English alphabet are B, C, D, F, G, H, J, K, L, M, N, P, Q, R, S, T, V, X, Z, and usually W and Y: The letter Y stands for the consonant [j] in "yoke", and for the vowel [ɪ] in "myth", for example; W is almost always a consonant except in rare words (mostly loanwords from Welsh) like "crwth" "cwm".

Consonants and vowels

Consonants and vowels correspond to distinct parts of a syllable: The most sonorous part of the syllable (that is, the part that's easiest to sing), called the syllabic peak or nucleus, is typically a vowel, while the less sonorous margins (called the onset and coda) are typically consonants. Such syllables may be abbreviated CV, V, and CVC, where C stands for consonant and V stands for vowel. This can be argued to be the only pattern found in most of the world's languages, and perhaps the primary pattern in all of them. However, the distinction between consonant and vowel is not always clear cut: there are syllabic consonants and non-syllabic vowels in many of the world's languages.

One blurry area is in segments variously called semivowels, semiconsonants, or glides. On the one side, there are vowel-like segments which are not in themselves syllabic, but which form diphthongs as part of the syllable nucleus, as the i in English boil [ˈbɔɪ̯l]. On the other, there are approximants which behave like consonants in forming onsets, but are articulated very much like vowels, as the y in English yes [ˈjɛs]. Some phonologists model these as both being the vowel /i/, so that the English word bit would phonemically be /bit/, beet would be /bii̯t/, and yield would be phonemically /i̯ii̯ld/. Similarly, foot would be /fut/, food would be /fuu̯d/, wood would be /u̯ud/, and wooed would be /u̯uu̯d/. However, there is a (perhaps allophonic) difference in articulation between these segments, with the [j] in [ˈjɛs] yes and [ˈjiʲld] yield and the [w] of [ˈwuʷd] wooed having more constriction and a more definite place of articulation than the [ɪ] in [ˈbɔɪ̯l] boil or [ˈbɪt] bit or the [ʊ] of [ˈfʊt].

The other problematic area is that of syllabic consonants, that is, segments which are articulated as consonants but which occupy the nucleus of a syllable. This may be the case for words such as church in rhotic dialects of English, although phoneticians differ in whether they consider this to be a syllabic consonant, /ˈtʃɹ̩tʃ/, or a rhotic vowel, /ˈtʃɝtʃ/: Some distinguish an approximant /ɹ/ that corresponds to a vowel /ɝ/, for rural as /ˈɹɝl/ or [ˈɹʷɝːl̩]; others see these as the a single phoneme, /ˈɹɹ̩l/.

Other languages utilize fricative and often trilled segments as syllabic nuclei, as in Czech and several languages in Congo and China, including Mandarin Chinese. In Mandarin, they are historically allophones of /i/, and spelled that way in Pinyin. Ladefoged and Maddieson^[4] call these "fricative vowels" and say that "they can usually be thought of as syllabic fricatives that are allophones of vowels." That is, phonetically they are consonants, but phonemically they behave as vowels.

Many Slavic languages allow the trill [r̩] and the lateral [l̩] as syllabic nuclei (see Words without vowels), and in languages like Nuxalk, it is difficult to know what the nucleus of a syllable is (it may be that not all syllables have nuclei), though if the concept of 'syllable' applies, there are syllabic consonants in words like /sx̩s/ 'seal fat'.

Common consonants

Many consonants are far from universal. For instance, nearly all Australian languages lack fricatives; a large percentage of the world's languages, for example Mandarin Chinese, lack voiced stops such as [b], [d], and [g]. The most common consonants around the world are the three voiceless plosives [p], [t], [k] and the two nasals [m], [n].

Most languages, however, do include one or more fricatives, with [s] being the most common, and a liquid consonant or two, with [l] the most common. The approximant [w] is also widespread. However, even the basic five—[p], [t], [k], [m], [n]—are not universal. Several languages in the vicinity of the Sahara Desert, including Arabic, lack [p]. Several languages of North America, such as Mohawk, lack both labials, [p] and [m]. Some West African languages, such as Ijo, lack /n/ on a phonemic level, but [n] does occur as an allophone of /l/. A few languages on Bougainville Island and around Puget Sound, such as Makah, lack both nasals, [m] and [n]. The 'click language' Nǀu lacks [t],^[5] and colloquial Samoan lacks both alveolars, [t] and [n].^[6] Xavante has no dorsal consonants whatsoever. However, nearly all other languages have at least one velar consonant: the few languages which do not have a simple [k] have a consonant that is very similar.^[7] For instance, an areal feature of the Pacific Northwest coast is that historical *k has become palatalized in many languages, so that Saanich for example has [tʃ] and [kʷ] but no plain [k].^[8][9]

The most frequent consonant (that is, the one appearing most often in speech) in many languages is [k].

See also

• Articulatory phonetics
• Table of consonants
• List of consonants
• List of phonetics topics
• Words without vowels

References

1. ^ Robert K. Barnhart, ed., Chambers Dictionary of Etymology, Previously published as The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology, originally ©1988 The H.W. Wilson Company; Edinburgh, reprinted 2001: Chambers Harrap Publishers Ltd., p. 210.
2. ^ Plato, Cratylus 424 C; Theaetetus 203 B.
3. ^ R.H. Robins, A Short History of Linguistics, 2nd Ed.; ©1967 R.H. Robins, ©1979 Longman Group Ltd.; paper edition, 5th printing 1985, p. 23.
4. ^ ^{a b} Ladefoged, Peter; Ian Maddieson (1996). The Sounds of the World's Languages. Oxford: Blackwell. ISBN 0-631-19814-8.
5. ^ Nǀu has a [ts] instead. Hawaiian is often said to lack a [t], but it actually has a consonant that varies between [t] and [k].
6. ^ Samoan words written with the letters t and n are pronounced with [k] and [ŋ] except in formal speech. However, Samoan does have an alveolar consonant, [l].
7. ^ The Niʻihau–Kauaʻi dialect of Hawaiian is often said to have no [k], but as in other dialects of Hawaiian it has a consonant which varies between [t] and [k], with [t] before [i] but [k] at the beginnings of words, though they are often in free variation.
8. ^ Ian Maddieson and Sandra Ferrari Disner, 1984, Patterns of Sounds. Cambridge University Press
9. ^ The World Atlas of Language Structures Online: Absence of Common Consonants

External links

• interactive manner and place of articulation

References

Ian Maddieson, Patterns of Sounds, Cambridge University Press, 1984. ISBN 0-521-26536-3

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