Inphonetics andphonology, asonorant orresonant is aspeech sound that isproduced with continuous, non-turbulent airflow in thevocal tract; these are the manners of articulation that are most oftenvoiced in the world's languages.Vowels are sonorants, as aresemivowels like[j] and[w],nasals like[m] and[n], andliquids (laterals andrhotics) like[l] and[r]. This set of sounds contrasts with theobstruents (stops,affricates andfricatives).[1]
For some authors, only the termresonant is used with this broader meaning, whilesonorant is restricted to the consonantal subset—that is, nasals and liquids only, notvocoids (vowels and semivowels).[2]
Whereasobstruents are frequentlyvoiceless, sonorants are almost always voiced. In thesonority hierarchy, all sounds higher thanfricatives are sonorants. They can therefore form thenucleus of asyllable in languages that place that distinction at that level of sonority; seeSyllable for details.
Sonorants contrast withobstruents, which do stop or cause turbulence in the airflow. The latter group includesfricatives andstops (for example,/s/ and/t/).
Among consonants pronounced in the back of the mouth or in the throat, the distinction between anapproximant and a voiced fricative is so blurred that no language is known to contrast them.[citation needed] Thus,uvular,pharyngeal, andglottal fricatives never contrast with approximants.
Voiceless sonorants are rare; they occur asphonemes in only about 5% of the world's languages.[3] They tend to be extremely quiet and difficult to recognise, even for those people whose language has them.
In every case of a voiceless sonorant occurring, there is a contrasting voiced sonorant. In other words, whenever a language contains a phoneme such as/ʍ/, it also contains a corresponding voiced phoneme such as/w/.[citation needed]
Voiceless sonorants are most common around thePacific Ocean (inOceania,East Asia, andNorth andSouth America) and in certain language families (such asAustronesian,Sino-Tibetan,Na-Dene andEskimo–Aleut).
One European language with voiceless sonorants isWelsh. Itsphonology contains a phonemicvoiceless alveolar trill/r̥/, along with three voiceless nasals: bilabial, alveolar, and velar/m̥n̥ŋ̊/.
Another European language with voiceless sonorants isIcelandic, with[l̥r̥m̥n̥ɲ̊ŋ̊ȷ̊] for the corresponding voiced sonorants[lrmnɲŋj].
Voiceless[r̥l̥ʍ] and possibly[m̥n̥] are hypothesized to have occurred in various dialects ofAncient Greek. TheAttic dialect of theClassical period likely had[r̥] as the regular allophone of/r/ at the beginning of words and possibly when it was doubled inside words. Hence, manyEnglish words from Ancient Greek roots haverh initially andrrh medially:rhetoric,diarrhea.
Voiceless vowels are allophonic in many languages, particularly when surrounding voiceless consonants, but their phonological status as contrastive phonemes lacks strong evidence;[4] cases where they were previously reported to have contrastive status have failed corroboration in later studies.
Most sonorants haveglottalized variants. In languages that useLatin scripts, they are often written with a modifier apostrophe, either preceding⟨ʼw⟩, succeeding⟨wʼ⟩, or above⟨w̓⟩. Numerous studies have shown that the timing of glottalization for sonorants is fluid, and that they may be realized with:
For simplicity, the remainder of this section will transcribe these sounds with a preceding superscript glottal stop, as in/ˀw/, but these transcriptions should not be assumed to be phonetically precise in describing the type of glottalization; they are merely representative.
It has been noted thatglottal stops withpalatalization andlabialization, respectively/ʔʲ/ and/ʔʷ/, are quite similar to the glottalized sonorants/ˀj/ and/ˀw/, and either case may be analyzed instead as sequences,/ʔj/ and/ʔw/; the specific interpretation of these sounds is mostly dependent upon how they pattern with other sounds within a particular language's phonological structure.[9] Some languages (such asLillooet) may still contrast glottalized sonorants with glottal–sonorant or sonorant–glottal sequences.
Glottalized vowels occur in a variety of languages and are perhaps the most common examples of glottalized sonorants. For consonants, the most common examples cross-linguistically of glottalized sonorants are the aforementioned palatal and labiovelar semivowels/ˀj/ and/ˀw/, the alveolar lateral/ˀl/, and the bilabial and alveolar nasals/ˀm/ and/ˀn/. Among others, they are particularly common in theSalish,Tsimshianic, andWakashan language families of thePacific Northwest, as well as several languages of theAtlantic–Congo family ofSub-Saharan Africa and theKra–Dai family ofmainland Southeast Asia andsouthern China.
Of the rarer glottalized sonorant consonants:
English has the following sonorant consonantal phonemes:/l/,/m/,/n/,/ŋ/,/ɹ/,/w/,/j/.[10]
Old Irish had one of the most complex sonorant systems recorded in linguistics, with 12 coronal sonorants alone.Coronallaterals,nasals, andrhotics had both afortis–lenis and abroad–slender contrast:/Nˠ,nˠ,Nʲ,nʲ,Rˠ,rˠ,Rʲ,rʲ,Lˠ,lˠ,Lʲ,lʲ/ (seeIrish phonology § Fortis and lenis sonorants). There were also/ŋ,ŋʲ,m/ and/mʲ/, making 16 sonorant phonemes in total.[11]
Voiceless sonorants have a strong tendency to either revoice or undergofortition, for example to form africative like/ç/ or/ɬ/.[example needed]
In connected, continuous speech inNorth American English,/t/ and/d/ are usuallyflapped to[ɾ] following sonorants, including vowels, when followed by a vowel or syllabic/l/.[12]
