Sonorant
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Manners of articulation |
|---|
| Obstruent |
| Click |
| Plosive |
| Ejective |
| Implosive |
| Affricate |
| Fricative |
| Sibilant |
| Sonorant |
| Nasal |
| Flaps/Tap |
| Trill |
| Approximant |
| Liquid |
| Vowel |
| Semivowel |
| Lateral |
| This page contains phonetic information in IPA, which may not display correctly in some browsers. [Help] |
In phonetics and phonology, a sonorant is a speech sound that is produced without turbulent airflow in the vocal tract. Essentially this means that a sound is sonorant if it can be produced continuously at the same pitch. For example vowels are sonorants, as are consonants like /m/ and /l/. Other consonants, like /d/ or /k/, can not be produced continuously and so are non-sonorant. In addition to vowels, phonetic categorizations of sounds that are considered sonorant include approximants, nasal consonants, taps, and trills. In the sonority hierarchy, all sounds higher than fricatives are sonorants.
Sonorants are those articulations in which there is only a partial closure or an unimpeded oral or nasal scape of air; such articulations, typically voiced, and frequently frictionless, without noise component, may share many phonetic characteristics with vowels.
The word resonant is sometimes used for these non-turbulent sounds. In this case, the word sonorant may be restricted to non-vocoid resonants; that is, all of the above except vowels and semivowels. However, this usage is becoming dated.
Sonorants contrast with obstruents, which do cause turbulence in the vocal tract.
[edit] See also
 |
This linguistics article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |
