Place of articulation
This article includes a list of general references, but it lacks sufficient corresponding inline citations. (August 2018) |
In articulatory phonetics, the place of articulation (also point of articulation) of a consonant is a location along the vocal tract where its production occurs.[1]: 10 It is a point where a constriction is made between an active and a passive articulator. Active articulators are organs capable of voluntary movement which create the constriction, while passive articulators are so called because they are normally fixed and are the parts with which an active articulator makes contact.[2]: 24 Along with the manner of articulation and phonation, the place of articulation gives the consonant its distinctive sound.
Since
The terminology used in describing places of articulation has been developed to allow specifying of all theoretically possible contrasts. No known language distinguishes all of the places described in the literature so less precision is needed to distinguish the sounds of a particular language.[1]: 39
Overview
The human voice produces sounds in the following manner:[4][page needed][5][page needed]
- pharynx(back of the throat). Therefore, the air moves out of the lungs through a coordinated action of the diaphragm, abdominal muscles, chest muscles and rib cage.
- The sound waves.
- Resonances in the vocal tract modify these waves according to the position and shape of the lips, jaw, tongue, soft palate, and other speech organs, creating formant regions and so different qualities of sonorant (voiced) sound.
- Mouth radiates the sound waves into the environment.
- Nasal cavity adds resonance to some sounds such as [m] and [n] to give nasal quality of the so-called nasal consonants.
The larynx
The
The lips of the mouth can be used in a similar way to create a similar sound, as any
Active articulators
The active articulators are movable parts of the vocal apparatus that impede or direct the airstream, typically some part of the tongue or lips.[3]: 4 There are five major parts of the vocal tract that move: the lips, the flexible front of the tongue, the body of the tongue, the root of the tongue together with the epiglottis, and the glottis. They are discrete in that they can act independently of each other, and two or more may work together in what is called coarticulation.[1]: 10-11
The five main active parts can be further divided, as many languages contrast sounds produced within the same major part of the vocal apparatus. The following areas are known to be contrastive:[1]: 10-15
- The lower lip (labial)
- Various parts of the front of the tongue (coronal):
- The body of the tongue (dorsal) which is sometimes further divided into front and back
- The base a.k.a. root of the tongue and the throat (pharyngeal)
- The aryepiglottal)
- The glottis at the very back of the windpipe (glottal)
In
In dorsal gestures, different parts of the body of the tongue contact different parts of the roof of the mouth, but it cannot be independently controlled so they are all subsumed under the term dorsal. That is unlike coronal gestures involving the front of the tongue, which is more flexible.
The epiglottis may be active, contacting the pharynx, or passive, being contacted by the aryepiglottal folds. Distinctions made in these laryngeal areas are very difficult to observe and are the subject of ongoing investigation, and several still-unidentified combinations are thought possible.
The glottis acts upon itself. There is a sometimes fuzzy line between glottal, aryepiglottal, and epiglottal consonants and phonation, which uses these same areas.
Passive articulators
The passive are the more stationary parts of the vocal tract that the active articulator touches or gets close to; they can be anywhere from the lips, upper teeth, gums, or roof of the mouth to the back of the throat.[3]: 4 Although it is a continuum, there are several contrastive areas so languages may distinguish consonants by articulating them in different areas, but few languages contrast two sounds within the same area unless there is some other feature which contrasts as well. The following areas are contrastive:
- The upper lip (labial)
- The upper teeth, either on the edge of the teeth or inner surface (dental)
- The alveolar ridge, the gum line just behind the teeth (alveolar)
- The back of the alveolar ridge (post-alveolar)
- The hard palate on the roof of the mouth (palatal)
- The soft palate further back on the roof of the mouth (velar)
- The uvula hanging down at the entrance to the throat (uvular)
- The throat itself, a.k.a. the pharynx (pharyngeal)
- The epiglottal)
The regions are not strictly separated. For instance, in some sounds in many languages, the surface of the tongue contacts a relatively large area from the back of the upper teeth to the alveolar ridge, which is common enough to have received its own name, denti-alveolar. Likewise, the alveolar and post-alveolar regions merge into each other, as do the hard and soft palate, the soft palate and the uvula, and all adjacent regions. Terms like pre-velar (intermediate between palatal and velar), post-velar (between velar and uvular), and upper vs. lower pharyngeal may be used to specify more precisely where an articulation takes place. However, although a language may contrast pre-velar and post-velar sounds, it does not also contrast them with palatal and uvular sounds (of the same type of consonant) so contrasts are limited to the number above, if not always their exact location.
Table of gestures and passive articulators and resulting places of articulation
The following table shows the possible combinations of active and passive articulators.
The possible locations for
Front/back → | Front | Back | ||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Major class → | Labial | Coronal | " Guttural "
| |||||
Acute/grave ↓ |
Active articulator → | Lower lip (Labial) |
Tongue blade (Laminal) |
Tongue tip (Apical) |
Underside of tongue (Subapical) |
Tongue body (Dorsal) |
Tongue root ( Radical )
|
Larynx (Laryngeal) |
Passive articulator ↓ | ||||||||
Grave | Upper lip | bilabial | linguolabial | |||||
Upper teeth | labiodental | |||||||
Acute | Upper teeth | interdental | dental | |||||
Upper teeth/ alveolar ridge
|
denti-alveolar | |||||||
Alveolar ridge
|
laminal alveolar | apico-alveolar | ||||||
Back of alveolar ridge ( postalveolar )
|
palato-alveolar | apical retroflex | alveolo-palatal | |||||
Hard palate (front) | retroflex | palatal | ||||||
Grave | Soft palate | subapical velar | velar | |||||
Uvula | uvular | |||||||
Pharynx
|
pharyngeal | epiglotto-pharyngeal
| ||||||
Epiglottis | (ary-)epiglottal
| |||||||
Glottis | glottal |
A precise vocabulary of compounding the two places of articulation is sometimes seen. However, it is usually reduced to the passive articulation, which is generally sufficient. Thus dorsal–palatal, dorsal–velar, and dorsal–uvular are usually just called "palatal", "velar", and "uvular". If there is ambiguity, additional terms have been invented, so subapical–palatal is more commonly called "retroflex".
NOTE: Additional shades of passive articulation are sometimes specified using pre- or post-, for example prepalatal (near the border between the
Homorganic consonants
Consonants that have the same place of articulation, such as the alveolar sounds /n, t, d, s, z, l/ in
Central and lateral articulation
The tongue contacts the mouth with a surface that has two dimensions: length and width. So far, only points of articulation along its length have been considered. However, articulation varies along its width as well. When the airstream is directed down the center of the tongue, the consonant is said to be central. If, however, it is deflected off to one side, escaping between the side of the tongue and the side teeth, it is said to be
Coarticulation
Some languages have consonants with two simultaneous places of articulation, which is called coarticulation. When these are doubly articulated, the articulators must be independently movable, and therefore there may be only one each from the major categories labial, coronal, dorsal and pharyngeal.
The only common doubly articulated consonants are
.More commonly, coarticulation involves
Common coarticulations include these:
- Labialization, rounding the lips while producing the obstruction, as in [kʷ] and English [w].
- Palatalization, raising the body of the tongue toward the hard palate while producing the obstruction, as in Russian [tʲ] and [ɕ].
- Velarization, raising the back of the tongue toward the soft palate (velum), as in the English dark el, [lˠ] (also transcribed [ɫ]).
- Arabic"emphatic" [tˤ].
See also
- Articulatory phonetics
- Manner of articulation
- Relative articulation
- Tongue shape
- Sibilant
- Index of phonetics articles
Notes
References
External links
- Interactive places and manners of articulation Archived 2007-12-20 at the Wayback Machine