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In linguistics, voicelessness is the property of sounds being pronounced without the larynx vibrating. Phonologically, it is a type of phonation, which contrasts with other states of the larynx, but some object that the word phonation implies voicing and that voicelessness is the lack of phonation.
There is a hypothesis that the contrast between fortis and lenis consonants is related to the contrast between voiceless and voiced consonants. That relation is based on sound perception as well as on sound production, where consonant voice, tenseness and length are only different manifestations of a common sound feature.
The myoelastic theory states that when the vocal cords are brought together and breath pressure is applied to them, the cords remain closed until the pressure beneath them, the subglottic pressure, is sufficient to push them apart, allowing air to escape and reducing the pressure enough for the muscle tension recoil to pull the folds back together again.
This anomalous feature of voiceless speech sounds is better understood if it is realized that it is the change in the spectral qualities of the voice as abduction proceeds that is the primary acoustic attribute that the listener attends to when identifying a voiceless speech sound, and not simply the presence or absence of voice (periodic energy).
The following table shows the 24 consonant phonemes found in most dialects of English, plus /x/, whose distribution is more limited. Fortis consonants are always voiceless, aspirated in syllable onset (except in clusters beginning with /s/ or /ʃ/), and sometimes also glottalized to an extent in syllable coda (most likely to occur with /t/, see T-glottalization), while lenis consonants are ...
Traditionally, the minimal linguistic unit of phonetics is the phone—a speech sound in a language which differs from the phonological unit of phoneme; the phoneme is an abstract categorization of phones and it is also defined as the smallest unit that discerns meaning between sounds in any given language. [2]
Each of the four main components has several key attributes. Source and receiver share the same four attributes: communication skills, attitudes, knowledge, and social-cultural system. Communication skills determine how good the communicators are at encoding and decoding messages. Attitudes affect whether they like or dislike the topic and each ...
Before voiceless consonants such as [t], the diphthong / aɪ / is raised to sound more like [ʌɪ], so the word write is pronounced [rʌɪt]. In some contexts between vowels, / t / is replaced by the (voiced) flap [ɾ], so (for example) patting is pronounced [pæɾɪŋ], similar to padding.