A palatogram for a voiced palatal nasal [ɲ]
 

Michael Ashby & John Maidment

Introducing Phonetic Science

Chapter 4: Manner of Articulation

Chapter Summary

In this chapter we continue our survey of articulation and look at some of the details of how the articulators constrict the airstream in various ways.  We see that manner of articulation is not a simple feature, but comprises a number of different and largely independent dimensions.  First the articulators may constrict the airstream to different degrees: either blocking it completely, or constricting enough to cause air turbulence, or leaving a considerable gap for the air to pass without turbulence.  Secondly, the soft palate may be raised, preventing nasal airflow, or lowered, allowing such flow.  Thirdly, a closure may be made on the midline of the oral cavity with or without a lateral opening allowing air to escape over the rims of the tongue.  The rate of release of a closure is the fourth factor distinguishing speech sounds.  A further aspect of manner of articulation concerns the speed of the whole gesture for the articulation; for taps, the articulators are in contact for only a very brief period.

A very important distinction among manners of articulation is also introduced: the sonorant - obstruent distinction will be referred to again and again in the coming chapters. Plosives, fricatives and affricates, the obstruents, are articulated with a constriction that causes air pressure to rise inside the vocal tract.  Other consonants, together with all vowels, are sonorants and are made with a configuration of the articulators which allows the pressure inside the vocal tract to be approximately equal to the pressure outside.

The manner of articulation labels that we introduce are: plosive, affricate, nasal, fricative (lateral and median), approximant (lateral and median), tap, flap and trill.  These labels complete a very frequently used method of specifying consonants known as Voice, Place, Manner (VPM) labels.