Features

Features of the dental nasal:

• Its manner of articulation is plosive or stop, which means it is produced by obstructing airflow in the vocal tract.
• Its place of articulation is dental which means it is articulated with the tongue on either the lower or the upper teeth, or both.
• Its phonation type is voiced, which means the vocal cords are vibrating during the articulation.
• It is a nasal consonant, which means air is allowed to escape through the nose.
• It is a central consonant, which means it is produced by allowing the airstream to flow over the center of the tongue, rather than the sides.
• The airstream mechanism is pulmonic egressive, which means it is articulated by pushing air out of the lungs and through the vocal tract, rather than from the glottis or the mouth.

Occurrence

True dental consonants are relatively uncommon. In the Romance languages n is often called dental. However, the rearmost contact (which is what gives a consonant its distinctive sound) is actually alveolar, or perhaps denti-alveolar; the fact that the front of the tongue touches the teeth may be more visible, but is unimportant acoustically. The difference between the Romance languages and English is not so much where the tongue contacts the roof of the mouth, as which part of the tongue makes the contact. In English it is the tip of the tongue (such sounds are termed apical), whereas in the Romance languages it is the flat of the tongue just above the tip (such sounds are called laminal).

However, there are languages with true apical (or less commonly laminal) dental n. It is found in Dravidian languages such as Tamil and Malayalam, and in the South-American Mapudungun. For example, in the Malayalam pronunciation of "Nārāyanan", the first "n" is dental (the second is retroflex and the third alveolar).

[ˈn̪ɔɡa] (help·info)

[xɐn̪ˈʐoj] (help·info)

[nuːd] (help·info)

See also

• List of phonetics topics

References

Bibliography

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• Engstrand, Olle (1999). "Swedish". Handbook of the International Phonetic Association: A Guide to the usage of the International Phonetic Alphabet.. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 140–142. ISBN 0-521-63751-1. 
• Fougeron, Cecile; Smith, Caroline L (1993), "Illustrations of the IPA:French", Journal of the International Phonetic Association 23 (2): 73–76 
• Jassem, Wiktor (2003), "Polish", Journal of the International Phonetic Association 33 (1): 103–107 
• Jones, Daniel; Dennis, Ward (1969). The Phonetics of Russian. Cambridge University Press. 
• Ladefoged, Peter (2005). Vowels and Consonants (Second ed.). Blackwell. 
• Martínez-Celdrán, Eugenio; Fernández-Planas, Ana Ma.; Carrera-Sabaté, Josefina (2003), "Castilian Spanish", Journal of the International Phonetic Association 33 (2): 255–259 
• Remijsen, Bert; Manyang, Caguor Adong (2009), "Luanyjang Dinka", Journal of the International Phonetic Association 39 (1): 113–124