Voiceless dental plosive
Encyclopedia : V : VO : VOI : Voiceless dental plosive
| IPA – number | 103 + 408 |
| IPA – text | t̪ |
| IPA – image |
|
| Entity | t̪ |
| X-SAMPA | t_d |
| Kirshenbaum | |
| [Sound sample] | |
|---|---|
Features
Features of the voiceless dental plosive:
- 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 voiceless, which means it is produced without vibrations of the vocal cords.
- It is an oral consonant, which means air is allowed to escape through the mouth.
- 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.
Varieties of the voiceless dental plosive
| IPA | Description |
|---|---|
| t̪ | |
| t̪ʰ | |
| t̪ʲ | |
| t̪ʷ | labialized |
| t̪̚ | |
| t̪ʼ | ejective {{IPA |
Found in
True dental consonants are relatively uncommon. In the Romance languages t 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 t.
In
The voiceless dental plosive does not occur in English, at least as spoken by native speakers, but is similar to the sound of the letter 't', except the tongue is touching the back of the teeth and not the alveolar ridge. However, speakers of many Romance languages (such as Spanish) who speak English as an additional language may pronounce a voiceless dental plosive instead of /t/. This is readily recognized as /t/ by English speakers and may even go unnoticed.
In other languages
The voiceless dental plosive is a common sound cross-linguistically. It is the sound used for the letter 't' in most Romance languages. Many Indian languages, such as Hindi, have a two-way contrast between aspirated and plain [t̪]. In Finnish, the dental plosive 't' contrasts with the alveolar plosive 'd', although the latter is typically voiced or tapped as a secondary cue; moreover, in native words, the alveolar plosive appears only as a lenition of the dental plosive.
See also
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