Tenuis consonant

In linguistics, a tenuis consonant /ˈtɛnjuː.ɪs/^[1] is an obstruent that is unvoiced, unaspirated, unpalatalized, and unglottalized. That is, it has the "plain" phonation of [p, t, ts, tʃ, k], with a voice onset time close to zero, as in Spanish p, t, ch, k, or as in English p, t, k after s (spy, sty, sky).

For most languages, the distinction is only relevant for stops and affricates. However, a few languages have analogous series in the fricatives; Mazahua, for example, has the ejective, aspirated, and voiced fricatives /sʼ sʰ z/ alongside tenuis /s/, parallel to the stops /ɗ tʼ tʰ d/ alongside tenuis /t/.

Name

The term tenuis comes from Latin translations of Ancient Greek grammar, which differentiated three series of consonants, voiced β δ γ /b d ɡ/, aspirate φ θ χ /pʰ tʰ kʰ/, and tenuis π τ κ /p˭ t˭ k˭/. These series have analogs in many other languages. The term was widely used in 19th-century philology, and became uncommon in the 20th. However, common replacement words such as "plain", "unvoiced", and "unaspirated" are ambiguous: Besides tenuis [t], the alveolar stops [tʰ] and [tʼ] are also unvoiced, [d] and [tʼ] are also unaspirated, and in the proper context all are "plain", as is the nasal stop [n].

Transcription

In transcription, tenuis consonants are not normally marked explicitly, and consonants written with voiceless IPA letters such as ⟨p, t, ts, tʃ, k⟩ are assumed to be unaspirated and unglottalized unless indicated otherwise. However, there is an explicit diacritic for a lack of aspiration in the Extensions to the IPA, the superscript equal sign: ⟨p˭, t˭, ts˭, tʃ˭, k˭⟩, and this is sometimes seen in phonetic descriptions of languages.^[2]

In Unicode, the symbol is encoded at U+02ED ˭ modifier letter unaspirated (HTML: ˭).

See also

• Grassmann's law
• Spiritus asper
• Spiritus lenis

Notes

References