Inarticulatory phonetics, aconsonant is aspeech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of thevocal tract, except for [h], which is pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Examples are[p] and [b], pronounced with thelips;[t] and [d], pronounced with the front of thetongue;[k] and [g], pronounced with the back of the tongue;[h], pronounced throughout the vocal tract;[f], [v],[s], and [z] pronounced by forcing air through a narrow channel (fricatives); and[m] and[n], which have air flowing through the nose (nasals). Most consonants arepulmonic, using air pressure from the lungs to generate a sound. Very few natural languages are non-pulmonic, making use ofejectives,implosives, andclicks. Contrasting with consonants arevowels.
Since the number of speech sounds in the world's languages is much greater than the number of letters in any onealphabet,linguists have devised systems such as theInternational Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) to assign a unique and unambiguoussymbol to each attested consonant. TheEnglish alphabet has fewer consonant letters than the English language has consonant sounds, sodigraphs like⟨ch⟩,⟨sh⟩,⟨th⟩, and⟨ng⟩ are used to extend the alphabet, though some letters and digraphs represent more than one consonant. For example, the sound spelled⟨th⟩ in "this" is a different consonant from the⟨th⟩ sound in "thin". (In the IPA, these are[ð] and[θ], respectively.)
The wordconsonant comes fromLatin oblique stemcōnsonant-, fromcōnsonāns 'sounding-together', acalque ofGreekσύμφωνονsýmphōnon (pluralsýmphōna,σύμφωνα).[1][2]
Dionysius Thrax, a Classical Greek grammarian, called consonantssýmphōna (σύμφωνα 'sounded with') because in Greek, they can only be pronounced with a vowel.[a] He divides them into two subcategories:hēmíphōna (ἡμίφωνα 'half-sounded'),[4] which are thecontinuants,[b] andáphōna (ἄφωνος 'unsounded'),[5] which correspond toplosives.[c]
This description does not apply to some languages, such as theSalishan languages, in which plosives may occur without vowels (seeNuxalk), and the modern concept of "consonant" does not require co-occurrence with a vowel.
The wordconsonant may be used ambiguously for both speech sounds and theletters of the alphabet used to write them. In English, these letters areB,C,D,F,G,J,K,L,M,N,P,Q,S,T,V,X,Z and oftenH,R,W,Y.
InEnglish orthography, the letters H, R, W, Y and the digraph GH are used for both consonants and vowels. For instance, the letter Y stands for the consonant/semi-vowel/j/ inyoke, the vowel/ɪ/ inmyth, the vowel/i/ infunny, the diphthong/aɪ/ insky, and forms several digraphs for other diphthongs, such assay, boy. Similarly, R commonly indicates or modifies a vowel innon-rhotic accents.
This article is concerned with consonantsounds, however they are written.
Consonants and vowels correspond to distinct parts of asyllable: The most sonorous part of the syllable (that is, the part that is easiest to sing[citation needed]), called thesyllabic peak ornucleus, is typically a vowel, while the less sonorous margins (called theonset andcoda) 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 calledsemivowels,semiconsonants, orglides. On one side, there are vowel-like segments that are not in themselves syllabic, but formdiphthongs as part of the syllable nucleus, as thei in Englishboil[ˈbɔɪ̯l]. On the other, there areapproximants that behave like consonants in forming onsets, but are articulated very much like vowels, as they in Englishyes[ˈjɛs]. Some phonologists[who?] model these as both being the underlying vowel/i/, so that the English wordbit wouldphonemically be/bit/,beet would be/bii̯t/, andyield would be phonemically/i̯ii̯ld/. Likewise,foot would be/fut/,food would be/fuu̯d/,wood would be/u̯ud/, andwooed 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]foot.
The other problematic area is that of syllabic consonants, segments articulated as consonants but occupying the nucleus of a syllable. This may be the case for words such aschurch inrhotic 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/, forrural as/ˈɹɝl/ or[ˈɹʷɝːl̩]; others see these as a single phoneme,/ˈɹɹ̩l/.
Other languages use fricative and often trilled segments as syllabic nuclei, as inCzech and several languages inDemocratic Republic of the Congo, andChina, includingMandarin. In Mandarin, they are historically allophones of/i/, and spelled that way inPinyin. Ladefoged and Maddieson[6][page needed] 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.
ManySlavic languages allow the trill[r̩] and the lateral[l̩] as syllabic nuclei (seeWords without vowels). In languages likeNuxalk, it is difficult to know what the nucleus of a syllable is, or if all syllables even have nuclei. If the concept of 'syllable' applies in Nuxalk, there are syllabic consonants in words like/sx̩s/ (/s̩xs̩/?) 'seal fat'.Miyako in Japan is similar, with/f̩ks̩/ 'to build' and/ps̩ks̩/ 'to pull'.
Each spoken consonant can be distinguished by several phoneticfeatures:
Themanner of articulation is how air escapes from the vocal tract when the consonant orapproximant (vowel-like) sound is made. Manners include stops, fricatives, and nasals.
Theplace of articulation is where in the vocal tract the obstruction of the consonant occurs, and which speech organs are involved. Places includebilabial (both lips),alveolar (tongue against the gum ridge), andvelar (tongue against soft palate). In addition, there may be a simultaneous narrowing at another place of articulation, such aspalatalisation orpharyngealisation. Consonants with two simultaneous places of articulation are said to becoarticulated.
Thephonation of a consonant is how thevocal cords vibrate during the articulation. When the vocal cords vibrate fully, the consonant is calledvoiced; when they do not vibrate at all, it isvoiceless.
Thelength 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 someSami 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[by whom?], 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"[t]. In this case, the airstream mechanism is omitted.
Some pairs of consonants likep::b,t::d are sometimes calledfortis and lenis, but this is aphonological rather than phonetic distinction.
Consonants are scheduled by their features in a number of IPA charts:
The recently extinctUbykh language had only 2 or 3 vowels but 84 consonants;[7] theTaa language has 87 consonants underone analysis, 164 underanother, plus some 30 vowels and tone.[8] The types of consonants used in various languages are by no means universal. For instance, nearly allAustralian languages lack fricatives; a large percentage of the world's languages lack voiced stops such as/b/,/d/,/ɡ/ as phonemes, though they may appear phonetically. Most languages, however, do include one or more fricatives, with/s/ being the most common, and aliquid consonant or two, with/l/ the most common. The approximant/w/ is also widespread, and virtually all languages have one or morenasals, though a very few, such as the Central dialect ofRotokas, lack even these. This last language has the smallest number of consonants in the world, with just six.
In rhotic American English, the consonants spoken most frequently are/n,ɹ,t/. (/ɹ/ is less common in non-rhotic accents.)[9]The most frequent consonant in many other languages is/p/.[10]
The most universal consonants around the world (that is, the ones appearing in nearly all languages) are the three voiceless stops/p/,/t/,/k/, and the two nasals/m/,/n/. However, even these common five are not completely universal. Several languages in the vicinity of theSahara Desert, includingArabic, lack/p/. Several languages of North America, such asMohawk, lack both of the labials/p/ and/m/. TheWichita language ofOklahoma and some West African languages, such asIjo, lack the consonant/n/ on a phonemic level, but do use it phonetically, as anallophone of another consonant (of/l/ in the case of Ijo, and of/ɾ/ in Wichita). A few languages onBougainville Island and aroundPuget Sound, such asMakah, lack both of the nasals[m] and[n] altogether, except in special speech registers such as baby-talk. The 'click language'Nǁng lacks/t/,[d] and colloquialSamoan lacks both alveolars,/t/ and/n/.[e] Despite the 80-odd consonants ofUbykh, it lacks the plain velar/k/ in native words, as do the relatedAdyghe andKabardian languages. But with a few striking exceptions, such asXavante andTahitian—which have no dorsal consonants whatsoever—nearly all other languages have at least one velar consonant: most of the few languages that do not have a simple/k/ (that is, a sound that is generally pronounced[k]) have a consonant that is very similar.[f] For instance, an areal feature of thePacific Northwest coast is that historical *k has become palatalized in many languages, so thatSaanich for example has/tʃ/ and/kʷ/ but no plain/k/;[11][12] similarly, historical *k in theNorthwest Caucasian languages became palatalized to/kʲ/ in extinctUbykh and to/tʃ/ in mostCircassian dialects.[13]
The remaining seventeen are consonants: b, g, d, z, th, k, l, m, n, x, p, r, s, t, ph, ch, ps. They are called 'sounded with' because they do not have a sound on their own, but, when arranged with vowels, they produce a sound.[3]
Of these, eight are half-sounded: z, x, ps, l, m, n, r, s. They are called 'half-sounded' because, though a little weaker than the vowels, they are still harmonious [well-sounding] in their moaning and hissing.[3]
Nine are unsounded: b, g, d, k, p, t, th, ph, ch. They are called 'unsounded' because, more than the others, they are discordant [ill-sounding], just as we call the ill-sounding tragedist 'unsounded'.[3]
^Nǀu has/ts/ instead.Hawaiian is often said to lack/t/, but it actually has a consonant that varies between[t] and[k].
^Samoan words written with the letterst andn pronounce them as[k] and[ŋ] except in formal speech. However, Samoan does have another alveolar consonant,/l/.
^The Niʻihau–Kauaʻi dialect ofHawaiian is often said to have no[k], but as in other dialects of Hawaiian it has a consonant that varies between[t] and[k].
^Viacheslav A. Chirikba, 1996,Common West Caucasian: the reconstruction of its phonological system and parts of its lexicon and morphology, p. 192. Research School CNWS: Leiden.
