Consonant
In
Since the number of speech sounds in the world's languages is much greater than the number of letters in any one alphabet, linguists have devised systems such as the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) to assign a unique and unambiguous symbol to each attested consonant. The English alphabet has fewer consonant letters than the English language has consonant sounds, so digraphs 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.)
Etymology
The word consonant comes from
This description does not apply to some languages, such as the Salishan languages, in which plosives may occur without vowels (see Nuxalk), and the modern concept of "consonant" does not require co-occurrence with a vowel.
Consonant sounds and consonant letters
The word consonant may be used ambiguously for both speech sounds and the letters of the alphabet used to write them. In English, these letters are B, C, D, F, G, J, K, L, M, N, P, Q, S, T, V, X, Z and often H, R, W, Y.
In English 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/ in yoke, the vowel /ɪ/ in myth, the vowel /i/ in funny, the diphthong /aɪ/ in sky, and forms several digraphs for other diphthongs, such as say, boy, key. Similarly, R commonly indicates or modifies a vowel in non-rhotic accents.
This article is concerned with consonant sounds, however they are written.
Consonants versus vowels
This section needs additional citations for verification. (July 2021) |
Consonants and vowels correspond to distinct parts of a
One blurry area is in segments variously called semivowels, semiconsonants, or glides. On one side, there are vowel-like segments that are not in themselves syllabic, but form diphthongs as part of the syllable nucleus, as the i in English boil [ˈbɔɪ̯l]. On the other, there are approximants that 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 be /bit/, beet would be /bii̯t/, and yield would be phonemically /i̯ii̯ld/. Likewise, 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] 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 as church in
Other languages use fricative and often trilled segments as syllabic nuclei, as in Czech and several languages in Democratic Republic of the Congo, and China, including Mandarin Chinese. In Mandarin, they are historically allophones of /i/, and spelled that way in Pinyin. 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.
Many
Each spoken consonant can be distinguished by several phonetic features:
- The manner of articulation is how air escapes from the vocal tract when the consonant or approximant (vowel-like) sound is made. Manners include stops, fricatives, and nasals.
- The pharyngealisation. Consonants with two simultaneous places of articulation are said to be coarticulated.
- The voiceless.
- The Aspirationis a feature of VOT.
- The implosivesuse different mechanisms.
- The Sami languageshave 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" [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:
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Symbols to the right in a cell are voiced, to the left are voiceless. Shaded areas denote articulations judged impossible. |
IPA: Non-pulmonic consonants | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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IPA: Co-articulated consonants |
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Examples
The recently extinct
Most common
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 the
See also
- IPA consonant chart with audio
- Articulatory phonetics
- List of consonants
- List of phonetics topics
- Words without vowels
Notes
- ^ Dionysius Thrax:
- σύμφωνα δὲ τὰ λοιπὰ ἑπτακαίδεκα· β γ δ ζ θ κ λ μ ν ξ π ρ σ τ φ χ ψ. σύμφωνα δὲ +λέγονται+, ὅτι αὐτὰ μὲν καθ᾽ ἑαυτὰ φωνὴν οὐκ ἔχει, συντασσόμενα δὲ μετὰ τῶν φωνηέντων φωνὴν ἀποτελεῖ.
- 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]
- ^ Dionysius Thrax:
- τούτων ἡμίφωνα μέν ἐστιν ὀκτώ· ζ ξ ψ λ μ ν ρ σ. ἡμίφωνα δὲ λέγεται, ὅτι παρ᾽ ὅσον ἧττον τῶν φωνηέντων εὔφωνα καθέστηκεν ἔν τε τοῖς μυγμοῖς καὶ σιγμοῖς.
- 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]
- ^ Dionysius Thrax:
- ἄφωνα δέ ἐστιν ἐννέα· β γ δ κ π τ θ φ χ. ἄφωνα δὲ λέγεται, ὅτι μᾶλλον τῶν ἄλλων ἐστὶν κακόφωνα, ὥσπερ ἄφωνον λέγομεν τὸν τραγωιδὸν τὸν κακόφωνον.
- 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 letters t and n pronounce them as [k] and [ŋ] except in formal speech. However, Samoan does have another 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 that varies between [t] and [k].
References
- Perseus Project
- ^ 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.
- ^ a b c Dionysius Thrax. τέχνη γραμματική (Art of Grammar), ς´ περὶ στοιχείου (6. On the Sound)
- ^ ἡμίφωνος in Liddell and Scott
- ^ ἄφωνος in Liddell and Scott
- ISBN 0-631-19815-6.
- ^ Georges Dumézil and Tevfik Esenç, 1975, Le verbe oubykh: études descriptives et comparatives. Adrien Maisonneuve: Paris.
- ^ Naumann, Christfied (2008). "The Consonantal System of West !Xoon". 3rd International Symposium on Khoisan Languages and Linguistics. Riezlern.
- ^ The most common sounds in spoken English The Language Nerds.
- ^ "World Language Statistics and Facts". www.vistawide.com. Archived from the original on 2019-01-14. Retrieved 2019-01-13.
- ^ Ian Maddieson and Sandra Ferrari Disner, 1984, Patterns of Sounds. Cambridge University Press
- ^ "The World Atlas of Language Structures Online: Absence of Common Consonants". Archived from the original on 2009-06-01. Retrieved 2008-10-28.
- ^ 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.
- Sources
- Ian Maddieson, Patterns of Sounds, Cambridge University Press, 1984. ISBN 0-521-26536-3
External links
- Media related to Consonants at Wikimedia Commons
- Interactive manner and place of articulation
- Consonants (Journal of West African Languages)