approximant consonant
Sign in to saveApproximants 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 '''').
Article
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.