Dental_consonant - by SriLankaNewsWeb.com

In linguistics, a dental consonant or dental is a consonant that is articulated with the tongue against the upper teeth, such as /t/, /d/, /n/, and /l/ in some languages. Dentals are primarily distinguished from sounds in which contact is made with the tongue and the gum ridge, as in English (see Alveolar consonant), due to the acoustic similarity of the sounds and the fact that in the Roman alphabet they are generally written using the same symbols (t, d, n, and so on).

1 Dentals cross-linguistically
2 Dental consonants in the world's languages
3 See also
4 References
5 Bibliography

Dentals cross-linguistically

For many languages, such as Albanian or Russian, velarization is generally associated with more dental articulations of coronal consonants so that velarized consonants (such as Albanian /ɫ/) tend to be dental or denti-alveolar while non-velarized consonants tend to be retracted to an alveolar position.¹

Sanskrit, Hindi and all other Indic languages have an entire set of dental plosives which occur phonemically as voiced and voiceless, and with or without aspiration. The nasal stop /n/ also exists in these languages, but is quite alveolar and apical in articulation.^{citation needed} To the Indian speaker, the alveolar /t/ and /d/ of English sound more like the corresponding retroflex consonants of his own language than like the dentals.^{citation needed}

Spanish /t/ and /d/ are laminal denti-alveolar² while /l/ and /n/ are prototypically alveolar but assimilate to the place of articulation of a following consonant. Likewise, Italian /t/, /d/, /t͡s/, /d͡z/ are denti-alveolar ([t̪], [d̪], [t̪͡s̪], and [d̪͡z̪] respectively) and /l/ and /n/ become denti-alveolar before a following dental consonant.³

Although denti-alveolar consonants are often described as dental, it is the rear-most point of contact that is most relevant, for this is what defines the maximum acoustic space of resonance and will give a consonant its characteristic sound.⁴ In the case of French, the rear-most contact is alveolar or sometimes slightly pre-alveolar.

Dental consonants in the world's languages

The dental/denti-alveolar consonants as transcribed by the International Phonetic Alphabet are:

IPA	Description	Example
IPA	Description	Language	Orthography	IPA	Meaning
	dental nasal	Spanish	onda	[õn̪d̪a]	wave
	voiceless dental plosive	Spanish	toro	t̪oɾo]	bull
	voiced dental plosive	Spanish	donde	d̪õn̪d̪e]	where
s̪	voiceless dental sibilant fricative	Polish	kosa	[kɔs̪a]	scythe
z̪	voiced dental sibilant fricative	Polish	koza	[kɔz̪a]	goat
	voiceless dental nonsibilant fricative (also often called "interdental")	English	thing	θɪŋ]	thing
	voiced dental nonsibilant fricative (also often called "interdental")	English	this	ðɪs]	this
	dental approximant	Spanish	codo	[koð̞o]	elbow
	dental lateral approximant	Spanish	alto	[al̪t̪o]	tall
	dental flap	Spanish	pero	[peɾ̪o]	but
	dental trill	Marshallese	Ebadon	[ebˠɑr̪ˠon̪]	Ebadon
	dental ejective
	voiced dental implosive
	dental click release	Xhosa	ukúcola	[ukʼúkǀola]	to grind fine

References

^ Recasens & Espinosa (2005:4)
^ Martínez-Celdrán, Fernández-Planas & Carrera-Sabaté (2003:257)
^ Rogers & d'Arcangeli (2004:117)
^ Ladefoged, Peter; Ian Maddieson (1996). The Sounds of the World's Languages. Oxford: Blackwell. ISBN 0-631-19814-8.

Bibliography

Ladefoged, Peter; Ian Maddieson (1996). The Sounds of the World's Languages. Oxford: Blackwell. ISBN 0-631-19814-8.
Martínez-Celdrán, Eugenio; Fernández-Planas, Ana Ma.; Carrera-Sabaté, Josefina (2003), "Castilian Spanish", Journal of the International Phonetic Association 33 (2): 255–259
Recasens, Daniel; Espinosa, Aina (2005), "Articulatory, positional and coarticulatory characteristics for clear /l/ and dark /l/: evidence from two Catalan dialects", Journal of the International Phonetic Association 35 (1): 1–25
Rogers, Derek; d'Arcangeli, Luciana (2004), "Italian", Journal of the International Phonetic Association 34 (1): 117–121

Consonants

List · Table

Pulmonics

Dental

	Non-pulmonics and other symbols • talk
Clicks		ʘ		ǀ		ǃ		ǂ		ǁ
Impl.		ɓ		ɗ		ʄ		ɠ		ʛ
Eject.		pʼ		tʼ		kʼ		qʼ		sʼ
Affr.	p̪͡f	t͡s	d͡z	t͡ʃ	d͡ʒ	t͡ɕ	d͡ʑ	ʈ͡ʂ	ɖ͡ʐ	t͡ɬ	d͡ɮ
Other laterals								ɺ	•	ɫ
Co-art. fricatives								ɕ	ʑ	ɧ
Co-art. approxim.								ʍ	w	ɥ
Co-articulated stops								k͡p	ɡ͡b	ŋ͡m

This table contains phonetic information in IPA, which may not display correctly in some browsers. [Help]
Where symbols appear in pairs, the one to the right represents a voiced consonant. Shaded areas denote pulmonic articulations judged to be impossible.

Contents

Dentals cross-linguistically

Dental consonants in the world's languages

See also

References

Bibliography