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approximant consonant
Sign in to saveAlso known as approximant, frictionless continuant
Approximants are speech sounds that involve the articulators approaching each other but not narrowly enough, nor with enough articulatory precision, to create turbulent airflow. Therefore, approximants fall between fricatives, which produce a turbulent airstream, and vowels, which produce no turbulence. This class is composed of sounds like (as in ) and semivowels like and (as in ' and ', respectively), as well as lateral approximants like (as in '''').
In the Vinony graph
Within Vinony's link graph, approximant consonant is referenced by 3,406 other articles, and connects out to voiced alveolar lateral approximant, voiced velar lateral approximant and voiced dental fricative.
It is catalogued under topics including Approximant consonants and Manner of articulation.
Its subject is documented across 48 Wikipedia language editions.
~13 min read
Encyclopedic overview
15 sectionsContents
- Terminology
- Semivowels
- Approximants versus fricatives
- Central approximants
- Glottal approximants
- Lateral approximants
- Coarticulated approximants
- Voiceless approximants
- Phonetic characteristics
- Distinctiveness
- Disagreement over use of the term
- Occurrence in Western American English
- See also
- Notes
- References
Approximants are speech sounds that involve the articulators approaching each other but not narrowly enough, nor with enough articulatory precision, to create turbulent airflow. Therefore, approximants fall between fricatives, which produce a turbulent airstream, and vowels, which produce no turbulence. This class is composed of sounds like (as in ) and semivowels like and (as in ' and ', respectively), as well as lateral approximants like (as in '').
==Terminology== Before Peter Ladefoged coined the term approximant in the 1960s, the terms frictionless continuant and semivowel were used to refer to non-lateral approximants.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “approximant consonant” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.