زبان و زبانشناسی

2. Manners of Articulation

According to the kind of obstruction, that is, whether we have a complete or partial closure, or the way we have narrowing in the system, we face different manners of articulation listed below:

Stop is a manner of articulation in which the airstream stops behind a complete closure somewhere in the vocal tract. Then the air pushes the closure and releases abruptly with a plosive sound. That’s why the stop sounds are sometimes called ‘plosives’.

Fricative is another manner of articulation in that we have a narrowing in the tract. That is, articulators are somehow close together but not completely stuck together. The air passes through the narrowing producing an audible friction and that is why we call these sounds fricatives.

Affricate is another manner of articulation somehow similar to stops and somehow similar to fricatives. The air is blocked by a closure (similar to stops), then it opens and passes the closure with a form of friction (similar to fricatives).  

Nasal isanothermanner which is somehow different from the above mentioned ones, in that the air passes through the nasal cavity while it normally passes through the oral one. In the production of nasals soft palate moves down and close the entrance way to oral cavity, then the air has no other way to escape except for the nose.

Approximate is another manner in that articulators come close together – they approximate one another – but not enough to create friction. Approximants can be further divided into:

a. Semivowel approximants - /w/, /j/ - The term semivowel is used because they are produced as open as vowels on one hand and they act like consonants - they cannot stand as the core (peak) of a syllable - on the other hand. They are also called Glides due to the gliding movement of the active articulator.

b. Central approximant - /r/ - This consonant is called central approximant because the production includes a central airflow on one hand, and the articulators approximate one another on the other hand. It is also called liquid consonant.

c. Lateral approximant - /l/ - The production includes a closure between the tongue and the roof of the mouth with the air escaping laterally over the sides of the tongue while it blocks the center of the oral cavity.

3.Voicing

To start the discussion we have to know more about the ‘vocal cords’. As we said earlier these organs are placed in Larynx and they may take different gestures:

- Vocal cords might be wide apart so that the passage –glottis- is open and the air can pass without any kind of vibration. 

- Vocal cords might stand by each other loosely so that passing the airstream causes a kind of vibration. More than half of the consonants and all the vowels are produced this way. 

- Cords might stick together so tightly that passing the air produces a kind of plosive sounds.  

 Whether cords vibrate or not during the production is another distinctive feature to differentiate among consonants. So consonants having the cords vibrating during the production are called voiced and those without vibration are voiceless consonants. 

Distinctive features of Vowels

 To distinguish among vowels we may consider three/four factors:

1. the height of the tongue during production,

 Our tongue may stand high, mid or low in the oral cavity in the course of vowel production. According to this potentiality, we may classify vowels to High, Mid and Low vowels. 

2. the part of the tongue which is involved in production,

 Our tongue might be divided into three imaginary parts: Front, Center and Back. Tip and Blade are also important parts of our tongue (the schematic picture will follow this discussion).  In the production of different vowels different parts of the tongue might be involved.

3. shape of the lips, 

 Lips might take different shapes while taking part in vowel production. Lips might be Rounded or Unrounded. Unrounded vowels might be either Spread or Neutral.

4. the degree of tenseness of the vocal tract muscles,

 Muscles might be Tense or Lax during vowel production. This tenseness is a distinctive feature in some languages like English, but not in some others like Farsi for instance. Tense vowels are produced longer than lax ones. That’s why we sometimes call tense vowels as long vowels and lax vowels as short.