Jump to content

Main menu Navigation ●Main page ●Contents ●Current events ●Random article ●About Wikipedia ●Contact us ●Donate Contribute ●Help ●Learn to edit ●Community portal ●Recent changes ●Upload file

●Create account ●Log in ●Create account ● Log in Pages for logged out editors learn more ●Contributions ●Talk

(Top) 1 Subclasses 2 Voicing 3 See also 4 References

Obstruent

●Asturianu ●Boarisch ●Català ●Deutsch ●Español ●Esperanto ●Euskara ●فارسی ●Français ●한국어 ●Հայերեն ●Bahasa Indonesia ●Italiano ●עברית ●Latina ●Latviešu ●Македонски ●മലയാളം ●Nederlands ●日本語 ●Norsk bokmål ●Norsk nynorsk ●Polski ●Português ●Română ●Русский ●Slovenščina ●Suomi ●Svenska ●Українська ●中文 Edit links ●Article ●Talk ●Read ●Edit ●View history Tools Actions ●Read ●Edit ●View history General ●What links here ●Related changes ●Upload file ●Special pages ●Permanent link ●Page information ●Cite this page ●Get shortened URL ●Download QR code ●Wikidata item Print/export ●Download as PDF ●Printable version In other projects ●Wikimedia Commons Appearance From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Anobstruent (/ˈɒbstruːənt/ OB-stroo-ənt) is a speech sound such as [k], [d͡ʒ], or [f] that is formedbyobstructing airflow. Obstruents contrast with sonorants, which have no such obstruction and so resonate.^[1] All obstruents are consonants, but sonorants include vowels as well as consonants.

Subclasses[edit]

Obstruents are subdivided into:

plosives (oral stops), such as [p, t, k, b, d, ɡ], with complete occlusion of the vocal tract, often followed by a release burst;
fricatives, such as [f, ɸ, θ, s, ʃ, x, v, β, z, ʒ, ɣ], with limited closure, not stopping airflow but making it turbulent;
affricates, which begin with complete occlusion but then release into a fricative-like release, such as [t͡ʃ] and [d͡ʒ].^[2]

Voicing[edit]

Obstruents are often prototypically voiceless, but voiced obstruents are common. This contrasts with sonorants, which are prototypically voiced and only rarely phonemically voiceless.^[3]

References[edit]

^ Gussenhoven, Carlos; Haike, Jacobs. Understanding Phonology, Fourth Edition, Routledge, 2017

^ Zsiga, Elizabeth. The Sounds of Language: An Introduction to Phonetics and Phonology. Wiley-Blackwell, 2013.

^ Blevins, Juliette (2018). "Evolutionary phonology and the life cycle of voiceless sonorants". Typological Studies in Language. 121: 31–58. doi:10.1075/tsl.121.01ble.