Continuant

In phonetics, a '''continuant''' is a speech sound produced without a complete closure in the oral cavity. By one definition, ''continuant'' is a distinctive feature that refers to any sound produced with an incomplete closure of the vocal tract, thus encompassing all sounds (including vowels) except nasals, plosives and affricates.<ref>"continuant" in Bussamann, ''Routledge dictionary of language and linguistics'', 1996</ref><ref>{{cite book|last=Hayes|first=Bruce|url=https://archive.org/details/introductoryphon00haye/page/78|title=Introductory Phonology|publisher=Blackwell|year=2009|isbn=978-1-4051-8411-3|page=[https://archive.org/details/introductoryphon00haye/page/78 78]|url-access=registration|authorlink=Bruce Hayes (linguist)}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book|last=Chalker, Sylvia.|title=The Oxford dictionary of English grammar|date=1998|publisher=Oxford University Press|others=Weiner, E. S. C., Oxford University Press.|isbn=978-0-19-172767-2|edition=1st rev.|location=Oxford|oclc=49356718}}</ref><ref>"continuant" in Crystal, ''A dictionary of linguistics and phonetics'', 6th ed, 2008</ref><ref>{{Cite book|title=The Concise Oxford English Dictionary of Linguistics (3 ed.)|last=Matthews|first=P.H.|publisher=Oxford University Press|year=2014|isbn=9780191753060}}</ref> By another definition, it refers exclusively to consonantal sounds produced with an incomplete closure of the oral cavity, prototypically approximants and fricatives,<ref>"continuant" in Bussamann, ''Routledge dictionary of language and linguistics'', 1996</ref><ref>{{Cite book|title=The Concise Oxford English Dictionary of Linguistics (3 ed.)|last=Matthews|first=P.H.|publisher=Oxford University Press|year=2014|isbn=9780191753060}}</ref> but sometimes also trills.<ref>{{Citation|last1=Anderson|first1=Catherine|last2=Bjorkman|first2=Bronwyn|last3=Denis|first3=Derek |last4=Doner|first4=Julianne|last5=Grant|first5=Margaret|last6=Sanders|first6=Nathan|last7=Taniguchi|first7=Ai|title=3.4 Describing consonants: Manner|date=2022-02-28|url=https://ecampusontario.pressbooks.pub/essentialsoflinguistics2/chapter/3-4-describing-consonants-manner/|work=Essentials of Linguistics|edition=2nd|publisher=McMaster University|language=en|access-date=2023-08-28}}</ref>

Compare sonorants (resonants), a class of speech sounds which includes vowels, approximants and nasals (but not fricatives), and contrasts with obstruents.

==See also== * List of phonetics topics * Spectromorphology

==References== {{reflist}}

Category:Phonetics Category:Continuants