Talk:Sonorant

Sonorous, the ability of a metal to 'ring' when dropped or struck with a hammer.

Is a tap really a sonorant?

The page says that "a sound is sonorant if it can be voiced continuously at the same pitch." But it also lists taps as sonorants. How can a tap be voiced continuously? I don't think this makes sense.

Fricatives can also be voiced continuously at the same pitch, and are important to exclude from sonorants. It looks like Dog.o.matic's "more accessible definition" is simply false. I'll try to fix it, but I'm not so good with "accessible", so this is a stopgap. 76.88.68.174 (talk) 08:38, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

Er, I wasn't logged in. Darekun (talk) 09:03, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

The class of sounds that description is referring to is continuants. --Trɔpʏliʊm • blah 21:16, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

Conflicting information

Are the nasal consonants /m/ and /n/ sonorants or stops? I have two conflicting answers from two pages: Sonorant and Nasal consonants.LakeKayak (talk) 22:24, 24 April 2017 (UTC)

@LakeKayak: Nasal stops are not the same as oral stops. The former can be elongated (as long as physically possible), but in the case of the latter you can only delay their release (see e.g. Italian) or quickly re-articulate them. This seems to agree with the lead of his article. I see no conflict. You could say that nasal stops sound like strongly articulated approximants (which are sonorants). Mr KEBAB (talk) 15:11, 25 April 2017 (UTC)

@Mr KEBAB: I was only confused. Thanks for clearing me up.LakeKayak (talk) 19:14, 25 April 2017 (UTC)

Voiceless sonorants in English?

Words beginning with "wh" in English, such as "whence", "whither", "where", used to be pronounced with a soft start sounding a bit like "hw" in which the "h" is almost an unvoiced short blow of air. Would "wh" in that case be a voiceless sonorant? Bermicourt (talk) 08:08, 1 May 2023 (UTC)

Maybe uvular fricatives do contrast with the uvular rhotic in Dutch

The current article text contains:

”Thus, uvular, pharyngeal, and glottal fricatives never contrast with approximants.”

While I have no definite knowledge about any such contrast in any particular variant of Dutch, I do wish to point out that both an uvular trill realization of the rhotic and an uvular fricative realization of both the voiceless and voiced dorsal fricative (cf. Dutch phonology) occur in variants of Dutch.

{Begin intermezzo} It may be added that some variants seem to have (partly) lost the voiceless-voiced distinction of the dorsal fricatives in the realization in certain positions, while retaining this distinction in morphological elements whose voicing depends on the voiceless-voiced distinction of - among others - these dorsal fricatives. For example, the “correct” voiced past tense suffix -de(n) (rather then the partly voiceless -te(n)) is still selected, whether or not the preceding stem-final dorsal fricative has an otherwise voiceless realization. Compare the two verbs lachen (to laugh) and vlaggen (to put out the flag), whose past tense singular forms read lachte and vlagde, respectively, irrespective of whether in the infinitive the voiceless-voiced distinction is realized or not. {End intermezzo}

It could well be the case - but I am not fully sure about this - that in some variants with an uvular realization of the dorsal fricatives the one (voiced) rhotic has an uvular realization as well and still contrasts with the fricatives.

The statement quoted from the article is absolute in the sense that it does not refer to any (simultaneous) voiceless-voiced distinction. In any variant of Dutch that distinguishes between (the) uvular fricative(s) and the uvular rhotic, this distinction may be aided by voicing of the rhotic and devoicing of (both variants of) the fricatives.

If such variant(s) of Dutch exist(s), the statement quoted from the article is not fully correct.Redav (talk) 09:22, 29 September 2024 (UTC)