Alaminal consonant is aphone (speech sound) produced by obstructing the air passage with theblade of the tongue, the flat top front surface just behind the tip of the tongue, in contactwith upper lip, teeth, alveolar ridge, to possibly, as far back as theprepalatal arch, although in the last contact may involve parts behind the blade as well.^[1] It is distinct from anapical consonant, produced by creating an obstruction with the tongue apex (tongue tip) only.Sometimes laminal is used exclusively for an articulation that involves only the blade of the tongue with the tip being lowered and apicolaminal for an articulation that involves both the blade of the tongue and the raised tongue tip.^[2][3]The distinction applies only tocoronal consonants, which use the front of the tongue.

Some languages contrast laminal and apical sounds:

• The contrast is common inAustralian Aboriginal languages, which usually have nofricatives.
• Some languages inSouth Asia contrast apical and laminalstops. InHindustani, the apical stops are normally called "retroflex" but are reallyalveolar orpostalveolar.Malayalam has a three-way distinction between laminal dental, apical alveolar and true subapical retroflex in nasal and voiceless oral stops.
• Basque andMirandese differentiate between laminal and apicalsibilants in thealveolar region;Mandarin Chinese,^[4]Serbo-Croatian, andPolish make such a distinction withpostalveolar consonants.
• Some native languages ofCalifornia have the distinction in both stops and fricatives.
• Dahalo makes the distinction only in its stops.

Because laminal consonants use the flat of the tongue, they cover a broader area of contact than apical consonants. Laminal consonants in some languages have been recorded with a broad occlusion (closure) that covers all the front of the mouth from the hard palate to the teeth, which makes it difficult to compare the two. Alveolar laminals and apicals are two different articulations.

A very common laminal articulation is sometimes calleddenti-alveolar. It spans the alveolar ridge to the teeth but is a little farther forward than other alveolar laminal consonants, which cover more of the alveolar ridge and might be considered postalveolar. This occurs inFrench.

Part of the confusion in naming laminal consonants is quite literally a matter of point of view. When one looks at a person pronouncing a laminalalveolar or denti-alveolar, the tip of the tongue can be seen touching the back of the teeth or even protruding between the teeth, which gives them the common name ofdental.

Acoustically, however, the important element is the place of the rearmost occlusion, which is the point that the resonant chamber in the mouth terminates. That determines the size, shape and acoustics of theoral cavity, which produces the harmonics of the vowels. Thus, French coronals are alveolar and differ from English alveolars primarily in being laminal rather than apical (in French, the tongue is flatter).

There are true laminal dentals in some languages with no alveolar contact, such as inHindustani, which are different from French consonants. Nevertheless, the breadth of contact has some importance; it influences the shape of the tongue farther back and so the shape of the resonant cavity. Also, if the release of a denti-alveolar consonant is not abrupt, the tongue may peel off from the roof of the mouth from back to front and so shift from an alveolar to a dental pronunciation.

In theIPA, the diacritic for laminal consonants isU+033B◌̻COMBINING SQUARE BELOW.

• Apical consonant
• Subapical consonant
• Coronal consonant
• List of phonetic topics

• Catford, J.C. (1977).Fundamental problems in phonetics. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
• Gafos, Diamandis (1997)."A Cross-Sectional View of s, ʃ, θ".Proceedings of the North East Linguistics Society.27.
• Dart, Sarah N. (1991).Articulatory and Acoustic Properties of Apical and Laminal Articulations. Working Papers in Phonetics. Vol. 79.
• Dart, Sarah N.; Nihalani, Paroo (1999)."The articulation of Malayalam coronal stops and nasals".Journal of the International Phonetic Association.29 (2). Cambridge University Press:129–142.doi:10.1017/S0025100300006502.JSTOR 44526241.S2CID 145638382.
• Ladefoged, Peter;Maddieson, Ian (1996).The Sounds of the World's Languages. Oxford: Blackwell.ISBN 0-631-19815-6.