phonetics 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. ...

, a homorganic consonant (from ''homo-'' "same" and ''organ'' "(speech) organ") is a

consonant In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract. Examples are and pronounced with the lips; and pronounced with the front of the tongue; and pronounced w ...

sound that is articulated in the same place of articulation as another. For example, , and are homorganic consonants of one another since they share the bilabial place of articulation. Consonants that are not articulated in the same place are called heterorganic.

Articulatory position

Descriptive phonetic classification relies on the relationships between a number of technical terms that describe the way sounds are made; and one of the relevant elements involves that place at which a specific sound is formed and voiced. In articulatory phonetics, the specific "place of articulation" or "point of articulation" of a

is that point of contact where an obstruction occurs in the

vocal tract The vocal tract is the cavity in human bodies and in animals where the sound produced at the sound source ( larynx in mammals; syrinx in birds) is filtered. In birds it consists of the trachea, the syrinx, the oral cavity, the upper part of th ...

between an active (moving) articulator (typically some part of the tongue) and a passive (stationary) articulator (typically some part of the roof of the mouth). Along with the

manner of articulation In articulatory phonetics, the manner of articulation is the configuration and interaction of the articulators ( speech organs such as the tongue, lips, and palate) when making a speech sound. One parameter of manner is ''stricture,'' that is ...

and

phonation The term phonation has slightly different meanings depending on the subfield of phonetics. Among some phoneticians, ''phonation'' is the process by which the vocal folds produce certain sounds through quasi-periodic vibration. This is the defin ...

, this gives the consonant its distinctive sound.

Similar articulatory position

Consonants that have a similar or the same place of articulation, such as the alveolar sounds (n, t, d, s, z, l) in

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ...

, are said to be homorganic.

Homorganic nasal rule

A homorganic nasal rule is the . An example of the rule is found in

Yoruba The Yoruba people (, , ) are a West African ethnic group that mainly inhabit parts of Nigeria, Benin, and Togo. The areas of these countries primarily inhabited by Yoruba are often collectively referred to as Yorubaland. The Yoruba constitute ...

in which ''ba'' "meet" becomes ''mba'' "is meeting", and ''sun'', "sleep" becomes ''nsun'' "is sleeping".

Consonant clustering

Two or more consonant sounds may appear sequentially linked or clustered as either identical consonants or homorganic consonants that differ slightly in the manner of articulation, as when the first consonant is a

fricative A fricative is a consonant produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together. These may be the lower lip against the upper teeth, in the case of ; the back of the tongue against the soft palate in ...

and the second is a stop. In some languages, a syllable-initial homorganic sequence of a stop and a nasal is quite uncontroversially treated as a sequence of two separate segments; and the separate status of the stop and the nasal is quite clear. In Russian, the stop + nasal sequences are just one of the possible types amongst many different syllable-initial consonant sequences that occur. In English, nasal + stop sequences within a

morpheme A morpheme is the smallest meaningful Constituent (linguistics), constituent of a linguistic expression. The field of linguistics, linguistic study dedicated to morphemes is called morphology (linguistics), morphology. In English, morphemes are ...

must be homorganic.

Consonant length

In languages as diverse as

Arabic Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C. E.Watson; Walter ...

Tamil Tamil may refer to: * Tamils, an ethnic group native to India and some other parts of Asia ** Sri Lankan Tamils, Tamil people native to Sri Lanka also called ilankai tamils **Tamil Malaysians, Tamil people native to Malaysia * Tamil language, na ...

and Icelandic, there is a phonological contrast between long and short consonants,Ladefoged
p. 92.
/ref> which are distinguishable from consonant clusters. In

gemination In phonetics and phonology, gemination (), or consonant lengthening (from Latin 'doubling', itself from '' gemini'' 'twins'), is an articulation of a consonant for a longer period of time than that of a singleton consonant. It is distinct from ...

happens when a spoken

is pronounced for an audibly longer period of time than a short

. Consonant length is distinctive in some languages. In Japanese, for example, 来た (kita) means 'came; arrived', while 切った (kitta) means 'cut; sliced'. The romanization or

transliteration Transliteration is a type of conversion of a text from one script to another that involves swapping letters (thus ''trans-'' + '' liter-'') in predictable ways, such as Greek → , Cyrillic → , Greek → the digraph , Armenian → or L ...

of the sound of each Japanese word produces the misleading impression of a doubled consonant.

Notes

References

* Aronoff, Mark and Janie Rees-Miller. (2003)
''The Handbook of Linguistics.''
Malden, Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishing.
OCLC 185384910
* * Ravid, Dorit Diskin, Hava Bat-Zeev Shyldkrot and Ruth Aronson Berman. (2005)
''Perspectives on Language and Language Development: Essays in Honor of Ruth A. Berman.''
Dordrecht: Springer (Kulwer Academic). {{ISBN, 978-1-4020-7903-0
OCLC 55220212

External links

Consonants