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Voiced | |
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◌̬ | |
Encoding | |
Entity (decimal) | ̬ |
Unicode (hex) | U+032C |
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◌̥ | |
Encoding | |
Entity (decimal) | ̥ |
Unicode (hex) | U+0325 |
Voice or voicing is a term used in phonetics and phonology to characterize speech sounds (usually consonants). Speech sounds can be described as either voiceless (otherwise known as unvoiced) or voiced.
The term, however, is used to refer to two separate concepts:
For example, voicing accounts for the difference between the pair of sounds associated with the English letters ⟨s⟩ and ⟨z⟩. The two sounds are transcribed as [s] and [z] to distinguish them from the English letters, which have several possible pronunciations, depending on the context. If one places the fingers on the voice box (i.e., the location of the Adam's apple in the upper throat), one can feel a vibration while [z] is pronounced but not with [s]. (For a more detailed, technical explanation, see modal voice and phonation.) In most European languages, with a notable exception being Icelandic, vowels and other sonorants (consonants such as m, n, l, and r) are modally voiced.[ citation needed ]
Yidiny has no underlyingly voiceless consonants, only voiced ones. [1]
When used to classify speech sounds, voiced and unvoiced are merely labels used to group phones and phonemes together for the purposes of classification.
The International Phonetic Alphabet has distinct letters for many voiceless and voiced pairs of consonants (the obstruents), such as [pb],[td],[kɡ],[qɢ]. In addition, there is a diacritic for voicedness: ⟨◌̬⟩. Diacritics are typically used with letters for prototypically voiceless sounds.
In Unicode, the symbols are encoded U+032C◌̬COMBINING CARON BELOW and U+0325◌̥COMBINING RING BELOW.
The extensions to the International Phonetic Alphabet have a notation for partial voicing and devoicing as well as for prevoicing:
Partial (de)voicing [2] | |||
---|---|---|---|
₍s̬₎ | partial/central voicing of [s] | ₍z̥₎ | partial/central devoicing of [z] |
₍s̬ | initial voicing | ₍z̥ | initial devoicing |
s̬₎ | final voicing | z̥₎ | final devoicing |
Partial voicing can mean light but continuous voicing, discontinuous voicing, or discontinuities in the degree of voicing. For example, ₍s̬₎ could be an [s] with (some) voicing in the middle and ₍z̥₎ could be [z] with (some) devoicing in the middle.
Partial voicing can also be indicated in the normal IPA with transcriptions like [ᵇb̥iˑ] and [ædᵈ̥]. [3]
The distinction between the articulatory use of voice and the phonological use rests on the distinction between phone (represented between square brackets) and phoneme (represented between slashes). The difference is best illustrated by a rough example.
The English word nods is made up of a sequence of phonemes, represented symbolically as /nɒdz/, or the sequence of /n/, /ɒ/, /d/, and /z/. Each symbol is an abstract representation of a phoneme. That awareness is an inherent part of speakers' mental grammar that allows them to recognise words.
However, phonemes are not sounds in themselves. Rather, phonemes are, in a sense, converted to phones before being spoken. The /z/ phoneme, for instance, can actually be pronounced as either the [s] phone or the [z] phone since /z/ is frequently devoiced, even in fluent speech, especially at the end of an utterance. The sequence of phones for nods might be transcribed as [nɒts] or [nɒdz], depending on the presence or strength of this devoicing. While the [z] phone has articulatory voicing, the [s] phone does not have it.
What complicates the matter is that for English, consonant phonemes are classified as either voiced or voiceless even though it is not the primary distinctive feature between them. Still, the classification is used as a stand-in for phonological processes, such as vowel lengthening that occurs before voiced consonants but not before unvoiced consonants or vowel quality changes (the sound of the vowel) in some dialects of English that occur before unvoiced but not voiced consonants. Such processes allow English speakers to continue to perceive difference between voiced and voiceless consonants when the devoicing of the former would otherwise make them sound identical to the latter.
English has four pairs of fricative phonemes that can be divided into a table by place of articulation and voicing. The voiced fricatives can readily be felt to have voicing throughout the duration of the phone especially when they occur between vowels.
Articulation | Voiceless | Voiced |
---|---|---|
Pronounced with the lower lip against the teeth: | [f] (fan) | [v] (van) |
Pronounced with the tongue against the teeth: | [θ](thin, thigh) | [ð](then, thy) |
Pronounced with the tongue near the gums: | [s] (sip) | [z] (zip) |
Pronounced with the tongue bunched up: | [ʃ](Confucian) | [ʒ](confusion) |
However, in the class of consonants called stops, such as /p,t,k,b,d,ɡ/, the contrast is more complicated for English. The "voiced" sounds do not typically feature articulatory voicing throughout the sound. The difference between the unvoiced stop phonemes and the voiced stop phonemes is not just a matter of whether articulatory voicing is present or not. Rather, it includes when voicing starts (if at all), the presence of aspiration (airflow burst following the release of the closure) and the duration of the closure and aspiration.
English voiceless stops are generally aspirated at the beginning of a stressed syllable, and in the same context, their voiced counterparts are voiced only partway through. In more narrow phonetic transcription, the voiced symbols are maybe used only to represent the presence of articulatory voicing, and aspiration is represented with a superscript h.
Articulation | Unvoiced | Voiced |
---|---|---|
Pronounced with the lips closed: | [p] (pin) | [b] (bin) |
Pronounced with the tongue near the gums: | [t] (ten) | [d] (den) |
Pronounced with the tongue bunched up: | [tʃ] (chin) | [dʒ] (gin) |
Pronounced with the back of the tongue against the palate: | [k] (coat) | [ɡ] (goat) |
When the consonants come at the end of a syllable, however, what distinguishes them is quite different. Voiceless phonemes are typically unaspirated, glottalized and the closure itself may not even be released, making it sometimes difficult to hear the difference between, for example, light and like. However, auditory cues remain to distinguish between voiced and voiceless sounds, such as what has been described above, like the length of the preceding vowel.
Other English sounds, the vowels and sonorants, are normally fully voiced. However, they may be devoiced in certain positions, especially after aspirated consonants, as in coffee, tree, and play in which the voicing is delayed to the extent of missing the sonorant or vowel altogether.
There are two variables to degrees of voicing: intensity (discussed under phonation), and duration (discussed under voice onset time). When a sound is described as "half voiced" or "partially voiced", it is not always clear whether that means that the voicing is weak (low intensity) or if the voicing occurs during only part of the sound (short duration). In the case of English, it is the latter.
Juǀʼhoansi and some of its neighboring languages are typologically unusual in having contrastive partially-voiced consonants. They have aspirate and ejective consonants, which are normally incompatible with voicing, in voiceless and voiced pairs. [4] The consonants start out voiced but become voiceless partway through and allow normal aspiration or ejection. They are [b͡pʰ,d͡tʰ,d͡tsʰ,d͡tʃʰ,ɡ͡kʰ] and [d͡tsʼ,d͡tʃʼ] and a similar series of clicks, Lun Bawang contrasts them with plain voiced and voicelesses like /p, b, b͡p/. [5]
There are languages with two sets of contrasting obstruents that are labelled /ptkfsx…/ vs. /bdɡvzɣ…/ even though there is no involvement of voice (or voice onset time) in that contrast. That happens, for instance, in several Alemannic German dialects. Because voice is not involved, this is explained as a contrast in tenseness, called a fortis and lenis contrast.
There is a hypothesis that the contrast between fortis and lenis consonants is related to the contrast between voiceless and voiced consonants. That relation is based on sound perception as well as on sound production, where consonant voice, tenseness and length are only different manifestations of a common sound feature.
In phonology, an allophone is one of multiple possible spoken sounds – or phones – used to pronounce a single phoneme in a particular language. For example, in English, the voiceless plosive and the aspirated form are allophones for the phoneme, while these two are considered to be different phonemes in some languages such as Central Thai. Similarly, in Spanish, and are allophones for the phoneme, while these two are considered to be different phonemes in English.
In phonetics, aspiration is the strong burst of breath that accompanies either the release or, in the case of preaspiration, the closure of some obstruents. In English, aspirated consonants are allophones in complementary distribution with their unaspirated counterparts, but in some other languages, notably most South Asian languages and East Asian languages, the difference is contrastive.
Breathy voiceBRETH-ee is a phonation in which the vocal folds vibrate, as they do in normal (modal) voicing, but are adjusted to let more air escape which produces a sighing-like sound. A simple breathy phonation,, can sometimes be heard as an allophone of English between vowels, such as in the word behind, for some speakers.
In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract, except for the h sound, which is pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Examples are and [b], pronounced with the lips; and [d], pronounced with the front of the tongue; and [g], pronounced with the back of the tongue;, pronounced throughout the vocal tract;, [v], and, pronounced by forcing air through a narrow channel (fricatives); and and, which have air flowing through the nose (nasals). Most consonants are pulmonic, using air pressure from the lungs to generate a sound. Very few natural languages are non-pulmonic, making use of ejectives, implosives, and clicks. Contrasting with consonants are vowels.
In articulatory phonetics, the manner of articulation is the configuration and interaction of the articulators when making a speech sound. One parameter of manner is stricture, that is, how closely the speech organs approach one another. Others include those involved in the r-like sounds, and the sibilancy of fricatives.
Phonetics is a branch of linguistics that studies how humans produce and perceive sounds or, in the case of sign languages, the equivalent aspects of sign. Linguists who specialize in studying the physical properties of speech are phoneticians. The field of phonetics is traditionally divided into three sub-disciplines on questions involved such as how humans plan and execute movements to produce speech, how various movements affect the properties of the resulting sound or how humans convert sound waves to linguistic information. Traditionally, the minimal linguistic unit of phonetics is the phone—a speech sound in a language which differs from the phonological unit of phoneme; the phoneme is an abstract categorization of phones and it is also defined as the smallest unit that discerns meaning between sounds in any given language.
In phonetics, a plosive, also known as an occlusive or simply a stop, is a pulmonic consonant in which the vocal tract is blocked so that all airflow ceases.
In linguistics, voicelessness is the property of sounds being pronounced without the larynx vibrating. Phonologically, it is a type of phonation, which contrasts with other states of the larynx, but some object that the word phonation implies voicing and that voicelessness is the lack of phonation.
In phonetics and phonology, a sonorant or resonant is a speech sound that is produced with continuous, non-turbulent airflow in the vocal tract; these are the manners of articulation that are most often voiced in the world's languages. Vowels are sonorants, as are semivowels like and, nasal consonants like and, and liquid consonants like and. This set of sounds contrasts with the obstruents.
Implosive consonants are a group of stop consonants with a mixed glottalic ingressive and pulmonic egressive airstream mechanism. That is, the airstream is controlled by moving the glottis downward in addition to expelling air from the lungs. Therefore, unlike the purely glottalic ejective consonants, implosives can be modified by phonation. Contrastive implosives are found in approximately 13% of the world's languages.
In linguistics, fortis and lenis, sometimes identified with 'tense' and 'lax', are pronunciations of consonants with relatively greater and lesser energy, respectively. English has fortis consonants, such as the p in pat, with a corresponding lenis consonant, such as the b in bat. Fortis and lenis consonants may be distinguished by tenseness or other characteristics, such as voicing, aspiration, glottalization, velarization, length, and length of nearby vowels. Fortis and lenis were coined for languages where the contrast between sounds such as 'p' and 'b' does not involve voicing.
In phonetics, voice onset time (VOT) is a feature of the production of stop consonants. It is defined as the length of time that passes between the release of a stop consonant and the onset of voicing, the vibration of the vocal folds, or, according to other authors, periodicity. Some authors allow negative values to mark voicing that begins during the period of articulatory closure for the consonant and continues in the release, for those unaspirated voiced stops in which there is no voicing present at the instant of articulatory closure.
Japanese phonology is the system of sounds used in the pronunciation of the Japanese language. Unless otherwise noted, this article describes the standard variety of Japanese based on the Tokyo dialect.
The phonological system of the Polish language is similar in many ways to those of other Slavic languages, although there are some characteristic features found in only a few other languages of the family, such as contrasting postalveolar and alveolo-palatal fricatives and affricates. The vowel system is relatively simple, with just six oral monophthongs and arguably two nasals in traditional speech, while the consonant system is much more complex.
This article describes those aspects of the phonological history of English which concern consonants.
The Korean language, known for its unique phonetic system, comprises 19 distinct consonant phonemes that exhibit a rich variety of articulatory features. Unlike many languages, Korean consonants are categorized into three main types: plain, tense, and aspirated, each contributing to the language's distinctive soundscape. Also, Korean phonology is characterized by a complex system of classification and pronunciation rules that play a crucial role in the language's phonetic and phonological structure.
Unlike many languages, Icelandic has only very minor dialectal differences in sounds. The language has both monophthongs and diphthongs, and many consonants can be voiced or unvoiced.
This article is about the sound system of the Navajo language. The phonology of Navajo is intimately connected to its morphology. For example, the entire range of contrastive consonants is found only at the beginning of word stems. In stem-final position and in prefixes, the number of contrasts is drastically reduced. Similarly, vowel contrasts found outside of the stem are significantly neutralized. For details about the morphology of Navajo, see Navajo grammar.
In phonology, voicing is a sound change where a voiceless consonant becomes voiced due to the influence of its phonological environment; shift in the opposite direction is referred to as devoicing or surdization. Most commonly, the change is a result of sound assimilation with an adjacent sound of opposite voicing, but it can also occur word-finally or in contact with a specific vowel.
This article aims to describe the phonology and phonetics of central Luxembourgish, which is regarded as the emerging standard.