Structure of English: Phonetics
Structure of English | Morphology | Latin and Greek | New Words
See also Pronunciation of ch as k
Phonetics: the science of sounds
All words are, at the their most basic, collections of different
sounds. Phonetics is the branch of linguistics that deals with the
sounds of speech and their production, combination, description, and
representation by written symbols. Sounds are generally categorized by
place of articulation, method of articulation, and voicing. While these
individual sounds are the most basic elements of language, they do not
have meaning in of themselves (apart from some sounds which can be
considered sound symbolic).
Phonetics terms and their etymologies
Parsings/etymologies of articulatory terminology for English consonants. Most of the following terms come from Latin. The exceptions are glottal, glottis which are based on a Greek root.
Places of articulation
| bilabial | |
'produced with the two lips' |
| interdental | |
'produced with tongue between the teeth' |
| alveolar | |
'produced at the alveolus, i.e. the alveolar ridge' (so called because it abuts on the tooth sockets, or alveoli 'little hollows') |
| |
'produced starting at the alveolar ridge then immediately afterwards at the palate' ( alveol is from alveol-us, the diminutive form of alveus 'a cavity, hollow') | |
| palatal | |
'produced at
the palate' (palate has an uncertain etymology; possibly Latin borrowed it from Etruscan) |
| velar | |
'produced at the velum, or soft palate' |
| glottal | |
'produced at
the glottis' (the vocal chord part of tongue, the upper larynx) |
Manners of articulation
The adjective endings -ive and -al below are in these articulatory terms being used as noun endings, via leaving out the nouns they modify (e.g. 'plosive sounds' > 'plosives' etc.) We can think of this as a zero-derivation of nouns from adjectives. I gloss them here as adjective endings because that is their primary use and these terms are still easily used as adjectives.
| stop | |
'sound produced with total stoppage of airflow in the mouth' same as: |
| plosive | |
(see above) |
| fricative | |
'sound produced with partial occlusion of vocal tract, producing audible friction' (e.g. /f/, /s/) |
| |
'sound produced by stopping airflow and then partial release into a fricative at or near same point of articulation' (e.g. /ch/) | |
| nasal | |
'sound produced by stopping airflow in mouth, but allowing it to continue flowing through nasal tract' |
| liquid | |
'/l/ and /r/ sounds' (so called because they give acoustic impression sounding like water flowing) |
| lateral | |
'sound produced by touching tongue to roof of mouth and letting air pass at one or both sides of the tongue' (/l/ is the only lateral in English) |
| approximant | |
'consonant produced with relatively wide opening between articulators; an in-between sound that approximates or comes near to a vowel sound' (/y/ and /w/ are the main English approximants; sometimes /l/ is called a lateral approximant) |