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

Latin Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...

and ) is a

consonant 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 pronou ...

sound that is articulated in the same

place of articulation In articulatory phonetics, the place of articulation (also point of articulation) of a consonant is an approximate location along the vocal tract where its production occurs. It is a point where a constriction is made between an active and a pa ...

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 field of articulatory phonetics is a subfield of phonetics that studies articulation and ways that humans produce speech. Articulatory phoneticians explain how humans produce speech sounds via the interaction of different physiological struc ...

, 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 t ...

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 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, h ...

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 defi ...

, 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, are said to be homorganic.

Homorganic nasal rule

A homorganic nasal rule is the . An example of the rule is found in Yoruba in which becomes , and becomes .

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 any of the smallest meaningful constituents within a linguistic expression and particularly within a word. Many words are themselves standalone morphemes, while other words contain multiple morphemes; in linguistic terminology, this ...

must be homorganic.

Consonant length

In languages as diverse as

Arabic Arabic (, , or , ) is a Central Semitic languages, Central Semitic language of the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family spoken primarily in the Arab world. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) assigns lang ...

Tamil Tamil may refer to: People, culture and language * Tamils, an ethno-linguistic group native to India, Sri Lanka, and some other parts of Asia **Sri Lankan Tamils, Tamil people native to Sri Lanka ** Myanmar or Burmese Tamils, Tamil people of Ind ...

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 (; from Latin 'doubling', itself from '' gemini'' 'twins'), or consonant lengthening, 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 → and → the digraph , Cyrillic → , 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