Practice question · Put in order
Arrange these manners of articulation from the most complete obstruction of the airstream to the least.
- Plosive: complete closure
- Approximant: a narrowing too wide for turbulence
- Fricative: a gap narrow enough for turbulence
- Affricate: closure released into friction
Hints
- Start with the manner that stops the airflow entirely.
- The affricate begins as a closure, so it sits above the fricative.
Show the answer
- Plosive: complete closure
- Affricate: closure released into friction
- Fricative: a gap narrow enough for turbulence
- Approximant: a narrowing too wide for turbulence
Why
Manner is a scale of obstruction, and setting it out in order makes that explicit. The nasals sit outside the scale, since they combine a complete oral closure with entirely free nasal airflow, which is why they pattern with the sonorants rather than with the stops.
Practise Classifying Consonants
The app has 5 more questions on this lesson, and keeps your place in the course. Languages I is free to start.
More questions on Classifying Consonants
- Why is the label "voiceless alveolar plosive" a set of instructions rather than a name?
- How many places of articulation does English use for its consonants?
- Roughly what percentage of the world's languages have dental fricatives like the two th sounds of English?
- Which are true of approximants?
- Complete the classification.
- A student assumes that because /m/ and /p/ are both bilabial consonants, the vocal tract is closed entirely…
- Match each place of articulation to the articulators involved.