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 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. Examples are [p], pronounced with the lips; [t], pronounced with the front of the tongue; [k], pronounced with the back of the tongue; [h], pronounced in the throat; [f] and [s], pronounced by forcing air through a narrow channel (fricatives Fricatives are consonants produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together. These may be the lower lip against the upper teeth, in the case of [f]; the back of the tongue against the soft palate, in the case of German [x], the final consonant of Bach; or the side of the tongue against the molars, in); and [m] and [n], which have air flowing through the nose (nasals 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). Contrasting with consonants are 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 marginally greater than the number of consonant letters in any one alphabet An alphabet is a standardized set of letters — basic written symbols or graphemes — each of which roughly represents a phoneme in a spoken language, either as it exists now or as it was in the past. There are other systems, such as logographies, in which each character represents a word, morpheme, or semantic unit, and syllabaries, in which, 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 and pragmatics). Grammar encompasses morphology (the formation and composition of words), syntax (the rules that determine how words 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 be a symbol for "STOP". On maps, crossed sabres may indicate a battlefield. Numerals are symbols for numbers . All language consists of symbols 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, which was borrowed and modified by the Etruscans who ruled early Rome, whose alphabet was then adapted and further modified by the ancient, 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, the sound spelled "th" in "this" is a different consonant than the "th" sound in "thistle". (In the IPA they are transcribed [ð] and [θ], respectively.)
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Origin of the term
The word consonant comes from Latin Latin or sometimes Roman is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. Although often considered a dead language, in view of the fact that it has no native, fluent speakers, Latin continues to be taught in schools and has been, and currently is, used in the process of new word production in modern languages from many 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 Plato , was a Classical Greek philosopher, mathematician, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. Along with his mentor, Socrates, and his student, Aristotle, Plato helped to lay the foundations of Western philosophy and science. Plato was originally a,[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 any language which arises in an unpremeditated fashion as the result of the innate facility for language possessed by the human intellect. A natural language is typically used for communication, and may be spoken, signed, or written. Natural language is distinguished 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: [xɬpʼχʷɬtʰɬpʰɬ, stop consonants may also occur without vowels (see Nuxálk), and the modern conception of consonant does not require cooccurrence with vowels. It is not a vowel and is not followed by any vowels.
Consonant letters
Main article: Writing system Writing systems are distinguished from other possible symbolic communication systems in that one must usually understand something of the associated spoken language to comprehend the text. By contrast, other possible symbolic systems such as information signs, painting, maps and mathematics often do not require prior knowledge of a spoken languageThe word consonant is also used to refer to a letter A letter is an element in an alphabetic system of writing, such as the Greek alphabet and its descendants. Each letter in the written language is usually associated with one phoneme in the spoken form of the language of an alphabet An alphabet is a standardized set of letters — basic written symbols or graphemes — each of which roughly represents a phoneme in a spoken language, either as it exists now or as it was in the past. There are other systems, such as logographies, in which each character represents a word, morpheme, or semantic unit, and syllabaries, in which that denotes a consonant sound. Consonant letters in the English alphabet are B B is the second letter in the Latin alphabet. Its name in English ( / , C ‹C› is the third letter in the Latin alphabet. Its name in English ( / , D "D" is the fourth letter in the Latin alphabet. Its name in English ( / , F F is the Sixth letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet. English ( / , G ‹G› is the seventh letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English ( / , H H is the eighth letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet. Its name in both British and American English is ' / , J J is the 10th letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet used today; it was the last of the 26 letters to be added. Its name in English ( / , K K is the 11th letter of the English and basic modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English ( / , L L is the twelfth letter of the basic modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English ( / , M M is the thirteenth letter of the basic modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English ( / , N N is the fourteenth letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English ( / , P P is the sixteenth letter of the basic modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English ( / , Q Q is the seventeenth letter of the basic modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English ( / , R R is the eighteenth letter of the modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English ( / , S S is the nineteenth letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English ( / , T T is the twentieth letter in the English alphabet. Its name in English ( / , V V is the twenty-second letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English ( / , X X is the twenty-fourth letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English ( / , Z The name of the Semitic symbol was zayin, possibly meaning "weapon", and was the seventh letter. It represented either z as in English and French, or possibly more like /dz/, and usually W and Y The letter Y is the twenty-fifth and penultimate letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet, representing a vowel in most languages that use it. Its name in English ( / : 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 By contrast, a calque or loan translation is a related concept, whereby it is the meaning or idiom that is borrowed rather than the lexical item itself. The word loanword is itself a calque of the German Lehnwort, while calque is a loanword from French from Welsh Welsh is a member of the Brythonic branch of the Celtic languages spoken natively in Wales, in England by some along the Welsh border, in the Welsh immigrant colony in the Chubut Valley in Argentine Patagonia, and the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand) like "crwth" "cwm".
Consonants and vowels
Consonants and vowels correspond to distinct parts of a syllable A syllable is a unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds. For example, the word water is composed of two syllables: wa and ter. A syllable is typically made up of a syllable nucleus (most often a vowel) with optional initial and final margins (typically, consonants): The most sonorous part of the syllable (that is, the part that's easiest to sing), called the syllabic peak or nucleus In phonetics and phonology, the nucleus is the central part of the syllable, most commonly a vowel. In addition to a nucleus, a syllable may begin with an onset and end with a coda, but in most languages the only part of a syllable that is mandatory is the nucleus. The nucleus and coda form the rime of the syllable, is typically a vowel, while the less sonorous margins (called the onset In phonetics and phonology, a syllable onset is the part of a syllable that precedes the syllable nucleus and coda In phonology, a syllable coda comprises the consonant sounds of a syllable that follow the nucleus, which is usually a vowel. The combination of a nucleus and a coda is called a rime. A coda is not required in syllables. Some languages' phonotactics, like that of Japanese, limit syllable codas to a small group of single consonants, whereas others) 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 Semivowels, also known as glides or non-syllabic vowels, are vowels that form diphthongs with full syllabic vowels. That is, they are vowel-like sounds that do not form the nucleus of a syllable or mora; they are not the most prominent part of the syllable. They are normally written by adding the IPA non-syllabicity mark [ ̯ ] to a vowel letter,, semiconsonants, or glides. On the one side, there are vowel-like segments which are not in themselves syllabic, but which form diphthongs In phonology, a diphthong, pronounced /ˈdɪf.θɒŋ/ or /ˈdɪp.θɒŋ/, (from Greek δίφθογγος, diphthongos, literally "two sounds" or "two tones") refers to two adjacent vowel sounds occurring within the same syllable. In most dialects of English, the words eye, boy, and cow contain examples of diphthongs as part of the syllable nucleus, as the i in English boil [ˈbɔɪ̯l]. On the other, there are approximants Approximants are speech sounds that involve the articulators approaching each other but not narrowly enough or with enough articulatory precision to create turbulent airflow. Therefore, approximants fall between fricatives, which do produce a turbulent airstream, and vowels, which produce no turbulence. This class of sounds includes lateral 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 underlying vowel /i/, so that the English word bit would phonemically In a language or dialect, a phoneme is the smallest segmental unit of sound employed to form meaningful contrasts between utterances 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'.
Features of spoken consonants
| Manners of articulation |
|---|
| Obstruent |
| Stop |
| Affricate |
| Fricative |
| Sibilant |
| Sonorant |
| Nasal |
| Flaps/Tap |
| Trill |
| Approximant |
| Liquid |
| Vowel |
| Semivowel |
| Lateral |
| Airstreams |
| Ejective |
| Implosive |
| Click |
| Alliteration |
| Assonance |
| Consonance |
| This page contains phonetic information in IPA, which may not display correctly in some browsers. [Help] |
Each spoken consonant can be distinguished by several phonetic features:[4]
- The manner of articulation is the method that the consonant is articulated, such as nasal (through the nose), stop (complete obstruction of air), or approximant (vowel like).
- The place of articulation is where in the vocal tract the obstruction of the consonant occurs, and which speech organs are involved. Places include bilabial (both lips), alveolar (tongue against the gum ridge), and velar (tongue against soft palate). Additionally, there may be a simultaneous narrowing at another place of articulation, such as palatalisation or pharyngealisation.
- The phonation of a consonant is how the vocal cords 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.
- The voice onset time (VOT) indicates the timing of the phonation. Aspiration is a feature of VOT.
- The airstream mechanism is how the air moving through the vocal tract is powered. Most languages have exclusively pulmonic egressive consonants, which use the lungs and diaphragm, but ejectives, clicks and implosives use different mechanisms.
- The length 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". Estonian and some Sami languages 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, but this is a phonological rather than phonetic distinction.
Consonants are scheduled by their features in a number of IPA charts:
| Pulmonic consonants | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Place → | Labial | Coronal | Dorsal | Radical | Glottal | |||||||||||||||||||
| ↓ Manner | Bilabial | Labiodental | Dental | Alveolar | Postalv. | Retroflex | Palatal | Velar | Uvular | Pharyngeal | Epiglottal | Glottal | ||||||||||||
| Nasal | m | ɱ | n̪ | n | ɳ | ɲ | ŋ | ɴ | ||||||||||||||||
| Plosive | p | b | p̪ | b̪ | t̪ | d̪ | t | d | ʈ | ɖ | c | ɟ | k | ɡ | q | ɢ | ʡ | ʔ | ||||||
| Fricative | ɸ | β | f | v | θ | ð | s | z | ʃ | ʒ | ʂ | ʐ | ç | ʝ | x | ɣ | χ | ʁ | ħ | ʕ | ʜ | ʢ | h | ɦ |
| Approximant | ʋ | ɹ | ɻ | j | ɰ | |||||||||||||||||||
| Trill | ʙ | r | • * | ʀ | я * | |||||||||||||||||||
| Flap or tap | ⱱ̟ | ⱱ | ɾ | ɽ | ɢ̆ | ʡ̯ | ||||||||||||||||||
| Lateral Fric. | ɬ | ɮ | ɭ˔̊ | ʎ̥˔ | ʟ̝̊ | |||||||||||||||||||
| Lateral Appr. | l | ɭ | ʎ | ʟ | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Lateral flap | ɺ | ɺ̢ * | ʎ̯ | |||||||||||||||||||||
| Clicks | ʘ | ǀ | ǃ | ǂ | ǁ |
| Implosives | ɓ | ɗ | ʄ | ɠ | ʛ |
| Ejectives | pʼ | tʼ | kʼ | qʼ | sʼ |
| tɬʼ | tʃʼ |
| p̪f | ts | dz | tʃ | dʒ | tɕ | dʑ | ʈʂ | ɖʐ | |
| tɬ | dɮ | cç | ɟʝ |
| Fricatives | ɕ | ʑ | ɧ | |
| Approximants | ʍ | w | ɥ | ɫ |
| Stops | k͡p | ɡ͡b | ŋ͡m | |
| These tables contain phonetic symbols, which may not display correctly in some browsers. [Help] |
| Where symbols appear in pairs, left—right represent the voiceless—voiced consonants. |
| Shaded areas denote pulmonic articulations judged to be impossible. |
| * Symbol not defined in IPA. |
Common spoken consonants
The extinct Ubykh language with 2 vowels have 81 consonants. The Taa language have 77 consonants.[5] 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 [ɡ]. 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 a consonant /n/ on a phonemic level, but the sound [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],[6] and colloquial Samoan lacks both alveolars, [t] and [n].[7] 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.[8] 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].[9][10]
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
- ^ 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.
- ^ Plato, Cratylus 424 C; Theaetetus 203 B.
- ^ 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.
- ^ a b Ladefoged, Peter; Ian Maddieson (1996). The Sounds of the World's Languages. Oxford: Blackwell. ISBN 0-631-19814-8.
- ^ World Language Statistics and Facts
- ^ 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].
- ^ 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].
- ^ 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.
- ^ Ian Maddieson and Sandra Ferrari Disner, 1984, Patterns of Sounds. Cambridge University Press
- ^ The World Atlas of Language Structures Online: Absence of Common Consonants
External links
Listen to this article (info/dl) This audio file was created from a revision of Consonant dated 2005-07-20, and does not reflect subsequent edits to the article. (Audio help) More spoken articlesReferences
Ian Maddieson, Patterns of Sounds, Cambridge University Press, 1984. ISBN 0-521-26536-3
Categories: Consonants
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Sun, 16 May 2010 03:40:04 GM
I leave this video posted to make my newer vids look good.
Q. i want to know how to find a double consonant.
Asked by Michelle L - Sun Sep 28 17:48:03 2008 - - 4 Answers - 0 Comments
A. A double consonant is any two of the same consonants in a word side by side, like aTTack or faLL or paSS.
Answered by Nobody... - Sun Sep 28 17:56:16 2008
