Manners of Articulation of Consonant Sounds

Manners of Articulation of Consonant Sounds

            Based on the manner of articulation, consonants can be classified as follows.

Plosives:

         When the articulators are suddenly seperated and the oral closure released, the air escapes with a small explosive noise. Sounds thus produced with a stricture of complete closure and sudden release are called plosives.

Affricates:

        An affricate is a consonant that begins as a stop and releases as a fricative. In the production of affricates there is complete closure, the oral and nasal passage of air is completely blocked.

Fricatives: 

        In the production of fricatives the articulators are brought so close together that the air is escaping through the narrow space between them producing an audible fiction or a hissing sound.

Nasals:

        In the production of nasals the airstream passes through the nose as a result of the lowering of the soft palate (velum) at the back of the mouth. In the case of nasal consonants, such as m, n, and ŋ, the mouth is occluded at some point by the lips or tongue and the airstream is expelled entirely through the nose. Sounds in which the airstream is expelled partly through the nose and partly through the mouth are classified as nasal sound.

Frictionless Continuants:

        These are consonants which can be prolonged for a long time without any audible friction. The soft palate is raised, closing the nasal passage and the articulators are brought near each other but not close enough to produce friction.

Lateral:

        A Lateral  consonant is produced with the oral passage blocked at the centre,but open at the sides. For its production, the tip of the tongue is raised to the alveolar ridge, blocking the oral passage at the centre. The sides of the tongue are lowered allowing air to escape freely through the sides.    

        

Trill or Roll:

        A trill consonant is a consonant that is made by vibrating an articulator, or hitting it many times against something else, where the tongue is hit many times against the alveolar ridge, or the place just behind the teeth. 

Semi-Vowels:

        Semi-Vowels are gliding sounds in which the speech organs glide from one vowel position to another. They function like consonants in the structure of the syllable, despite their vocalic quality.    

        The different strictures involved during the articulation of the consonant sounds of English and their manners of articulation are given below.

The Three term descriptions of the Consonants:

                 The first term refers to the state of the glottis during the articulation of the consonants, the second term refers to its place of articulation and the third term refers to its manner of articulation of consonants.