Dental nasal

The dental nasal is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ⟨n̪⟩.

Features

Features of the dental nasal:

• Its manner of articulation is stop, which means it is produced by obstructing airflow in the vocal tract. Since the consonant is also nasal, the blocked airflow is redirected through the nose.
• Its place of articulation is dental which means it is articulated with the tongue at either the upper or lower teeth, or both. (Most stops and liquids described as dental are actually denti-alveolar.)
• Its phonation is voiced, which means the vocal cords vibrate during the articulation.
• It is a nasal consonant, which means air is allowed to escape through the nose, either exclusively (nasal stops) or in addition to through the mouth.
• Because the sound is not produced with airflow over the tongue, the central–lateral dichotomy does not apply.
• The airstream mechanism is pulmonic, which means it is articulated by pushing air solely with the lungs and diaphragm, as in most sounds.

Occurrence

True dental consonants are relatively uncommon. In the Romance languages n is often called dental. However, the rearmost contact (which is what gives a consonant its distinctive sound) is actually alveolar, or perhaps denti-alveolar. The difference between the Romance languages and English is not so much where the tongue contacts the roof of the mouth, as which part of the tongue makes the contact. In English it is the tip of the tongue (such sounds are termed apical), whereas in the Romance languages it is the flat of the tongue just above the tip (such sounds are called laminal).

However, there are languages with true apical (or less commonly laminal) dental n. It is found in Dravidian languages such as Tamil and Malayalam, and in the South-American Mapudungun. For example, in the Malayalam pronunciation of "Nārāyanan", the first "n" is dental (the second is retroflex and the third alveolar).

See also

• List of phonetics topics

References

Bibliography

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