Dental consonant

1 Dentals cross-linguistically
2 Dental consonants in the world's languages
3 See also
4 References
5 Bibliography

Dentals cross-linguistically

For many languages, such as Albanian or Russian, velarization is generally associated with more dental articulations of coronal consonants so that velarized consonants (such as Albanian /ɫ/) tend to be dental or denti-alveolar while non-velarized consonants tend to be retracted to an alveolar position.

Sanskrit, Hindi and all other Indic languages have an entire set of dental plosives which occur phonemically as voiced and voiceless, and with or without aspiration. The nasal stop /n/ also exists in these languages, but is quite alveolar and apical in articulation.^{[citation needed]} To the Indian speaker, the alveolar /t/ and /d/ of English sound more like the corresponding retroflex consonants of his own language than like the dentals.^{[citation needed]}

Spanish /t/ and /d/ are laminal denti-alveolar while /l/ and /n/ are prototypically alveolar but assimilate to the place of articulation of a following consonant. Likewise, Italian /t/, /d/, /t͡s/, /d͡z/ are denti-alveolar ([t̪], [d̪], [t̪͡s̪], and [d̪͡z̪] respectively) and /l/ and /n/ become denti-alveolar before a following dental consonant.

Although denti-alveolar consonants are often described as dental, it is the rear-most point of contact that is most relevant, for this is what defines the maximum acoustic space of resonance and will give a consonant its characteristic sound. In the case of French, the rear-most contact is alveolar or sometimes slightly pre-alveolar.

Dental consonants in the world's languages

The dental/denti-alveolar consonants as transcribed by the International Phonetic Alphabet are:

IPA Description Example
Language Orthography IPA Meaning

dental nasal Spanish onda [õn̪d̪a] wave

voiceless dental plosive Spanish toro [t̪oɾo] bull

voiced dental plosive Spanish donde [d̪õn̪d̪e] where
s̪ voiceless dental sibilant fricative Polish kosa [kɔs̪a] scythe
z̪ voiced dental sibilant fricative Polish koza [kɔz̪a] goat

voiceless dental nonsibilant fricative
(also often called "interdental") English thing [θɪŋ] thing

voiced dental nonsibilant fricative
(also often called "interdental") English this [ðɪs] this

dental approximant Spanish codo [koð̞o] elbow

dental lateral approximant Spanish alto [al̪t̪o] tall

dental flap Spanish pero [peɾ̪o] but

dental trill Marshallese Ebadon [ebˠɑr̪ˠon̪] Ebadon

dental ejective

voiced dental implosive

dental click release Xhosa ukúcola [ukʼúkǀola] to grind fine

References

^ Recasens & Espinosa (2005:4)
^ Martínez-Celdrán, Fernández-Planas & Carrera-Sabaté (2003:257)
^ Rogers & d'Arcangeli (2004:117)
^ Ladefoged, Peter; Ian Maddieson (1996). The Sounds of the World's Languages. Oxford: Blackwell. ISBN 0-631-19814-8.

Bibliography

Ladefoged, Peter; Ian Maddieson (1996). The Sounds of the World's Languages. Oxford: Blackwell. ISBN 0-631-19814-8.
Martínez-Celdrán, Eugenio; Fernández-Planas, Ana Ma.; Carrera-Sabaté, Josefina (2003), "Castilian Spanish", Journal of the International Phonetic Association 33 (2): 255–259, doi:10.1017/S0025100303001373
Recasens, Daniel; Espinosa, Aina (2005), "Articulatory, positional and coarticulatory characteristics for clear /l/ and dark /l/: evidence from two Catalan dialects", Journal of the International Phonetic Association 35 (1): 1–25, doi:10.1017/S0025100305001878
Rogers, Derek; d'Arcangeli, Luciana (2004), "Italian", Journal of the International Phonetic Association 34 (1): 117–121, doi:10.1017/S0025100304001628