Talk:Dental consonant

I'm a native Italian speaker and I hardly ever pronounce L as dental, and pronounce N more often alveolar than dental.

dental vs laminal

I had a *** of a time with French front rounded vowels until I came across the teachers' edition of some 1950s highschool French textbook that described a laminal alveolar articulation for the "dental" consonants (while still calling them "dental", I believe). Within minutes my problem with the vowels disappeared. I've since corroborated this description with Ladefoged and with linguists who know French.

Can't comment on Italian. But without front rounded vowels, I'd think that minor mispronounciation of the alveolar consonants isn't likely to garble your speech the way it can in French. kwami 00:02, 2005 May 21 (UTC)

Could someone explain the articulatory basis for this? Perhaps because my native language happily combines front rounded vowels and apico-dental consonants, I fail to see the problem, still less how the solution applies. Orcoteuthis 17:18, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

Spanish?

If the Spanish t, d, n, and l are not actually dental, then why are four of the examples of dentals from Spanish?

This needs to be cleaned up. Some day. Most sounds described as dental are laminal, and usually contact the front of the alveolar ridge. However, there are also true laminal alveolars further back on the ridge, as well as (e.g. in Australia) true laminal dentals, where the tip of the tongue may be against the lower teeth. The Romance languages are of the intermediate articulation that Ladefoged calls denti-alveolar. This are much more common than the other two articulations, and provides the most familiar examples. kwami 07:01, 2005 August 7 (UTC)

I don't know that "Romance Stops" qualifies one consistent classification. I have heard of the traditional description of French stops as "Lamino-dental" while they are actually "lamino-alveolar," but in Spanish the oral stops are apico-dental while the nasal stop (and lateral approximant) are apico-alveolar. The difference is highly evident when listening to a French accent, where English alveolar stops can sound almost affricated with the laminal articulation, whereas this is in no way characteristic of a Spanish accent. --Coyne025 03:55, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

The Wikipedia entry on Spanish phonology states that Spanish t's, d's are laminal denti-alveolar, and it's got a citation. Either this page is wrong or that source, which is used extensively throughout the whole page, says something wrong. I'm guessing the former is the case.石川 (talk) 09:38, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

"D" is a dental approximant between vowels and an apical consonant (n r l s) becomes laminal denti-alveolar before a laminal denti-alveolar consonant (t d). I will try to provide a reference, but I, as a native speaker, am pretty sure these consonants are not dental because the place of articulation is fairly different from that of "d" between vowels. At least the first example is correct. --Farru ES (talk) 21:56, 2 December 2014 (UTC)

What happens is explained in the article. When <d> is not an approximant, it is a denti-alveolar consonant, which is usually considered a subclass of dentals. --JorisvS (talk) 23:03, 2 December 2014 (UTC)

I have included a new reference. According to it, the denti-alveolar flap has not been attested in any Spanish speaking community, so I have deleted the example. It is true that <r> and <s> are slighty advanced before <t d>, but this is most likeky a coarticulation phenomenon rather than a true allophone.--Farru ES (talk) 21:46, 5 December 2014 (UTC)

The phenomenon is really just simple assimilation. This is very much an allophonic variation. --JorisvS (talk) 22:00, 5 December 2014 (UTC)

Disambiguation

I reverted the change to the disambiguation note, because when we try to make the term "Dental" point *only* to "Dental consonant", the robots start making some very bizarre auto changes throughout the system (for example, Dental assistant gets redirected to Dental consonant). It is my belief that keeping the disambiguation note the way that it is, is the best way to avoid confusion. --Elonka 17:12, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

Advice: voiceless dental sibilant

A wikipedia article about voiceless and voiced dental sibilant is still needed

Edits

I made some overall edits to the article, since I felt that it had a strong Francophilic bias, calling the coronal stops of French "Romance Stops," while the stops in French are something of a peculiarity among the Romance languages. The older article had a overtone that seemed to express that since they don't occur in French, true dental sounds are therefore quite rare ("Nevertheless, apical dentals occur in some languages" while an article discussing their existence shouldn't make them seem less favorable than laminals), while my edit cites their existence both phonemically and alophonically in Spanish. A lot of the article referred to French examples, much of which I left, since it is a good way to show the difference between true dentals and the comparable sounds in English. It seemed odd to leave the old examples since the point is that these French stops are actually NOT good examples of dental consonants. I didn't wait for discussing since this particular article doesn't seem to get a lot of traffic, but I'd be happy to explain any changes I made.--Coyne025 19:37, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

confused

How exactly can someone claim that the English 'd/t/n/l' is articulated differently from the Italian 'd/t/n/l'? Can the difference be heard over a noisy phone line? If an English and an Italian had a child, would his/her pronunciation of 'd/t/n/l' be French (denti-alevolar, as the article claims)? 219.77.98.166 04:09, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

English and Italian /t/ and /d/ are articulated differently in that in English these sounds are produced by touching the tongue to the alveolar ridge just behind the top teeth and in Italian these sounds are produced by touching the tongue to the top row of teeth. I would imagine that the difference would be perceptible over a phone line. As for the child, it would be very unlikely for him to "merge" these sounds since children have a remarkable ability for hearing and distinguishing between sounds. The child would produce the stops as Dental while speaking Italian and as Alveolar when speaking English. /n/ and /l/ are generally alveolar in both languages, although they would generally be dentalized before a dental consonant in both languages as well. Coyne025 23:00, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

Fricatives

If dentals are to be distinguished from a sound in which contact is made with the tongue then why is Theta which is listed in the table considered a dental?

Cakeandicecream 20:46, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

I'm afraid I don't really understand your question... all sounds discussed in this article are articulated using the tongue. If you're referring to the difference between dentals in a language like Spanish and what are called "dentals" in French, the difference is not only what part of the tongue makes contact (tip in Spanish, blade in French) and where (teeth in Spanish, alveolar ridge in French). The tongue can also touch the teeth using either the tip or the blade, which illustrates the difference between the realizations of /ð/ in English (in a word such as father, where the fricative is lamino-dental or interdental) and a language like Spanish (in a word such as hada, fairy, where the d is articulated as an apico-dental fricative). Have I cleared anything up? Coyne025 23:09, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

Reorganization

I reorganized the sections of this page, mainly because I thought it very weird that the whole discussion of why French stops are not dental was given such emphasis before everything else. That section is now at the end, with the discussion of dentals first and the chart of dentals after that. Coyne025 23:17, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

Dento-alveolar redirect

Is it correct that Dento-alveolar and Dentoalveolar redirect here? Dentoalveolar is an adj meaning:

1. Relating to a tooth and the part of the alveolar bone that immediately surrounds it.
2. Relating to the functional unity of the teeth and the alveolar bone.

--BMF81 14:56, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

I'm gonna redirect it to Alveolar process of maxilla.--BMF81 15:13, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

Comment by Edward Sapir about dental consonants

I remember very distinctly reading the book Language by Edward Sapir where he says that every language has a dental consonant. During my class on Linguistics at the University of Chicago, the U of C linguistics professor, Gerald Sadock, commented that this was incorrect since Hawaiian does not have a dental consonant. I would have liked to include this comment in this article, but when I went back to the original work by Edward Sapir, I could not find the quote. Am I mistaken about the author, the book, the quote, or the whole thing? If anyone knows where they can find that quote, please include it or mention it here. In any case, a quick look at the Hawaiian language website confirms that there is no dental consonant. This has also been confirmed by a Hawaiian friend of mine who is fluent in Hawaiian.--Beezer137 (talk) 01:35, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

There are many languages that have no dental consonants. German is one of them, I believe. English /d/ is alveolar, not dental (though English does have dental fricatives). If we are to include dental and alveolar consonants in one group then there probably are no languages that don't have one of such consonants. Hawaiian /l/ would count as a dental/alveolar. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 01:40, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

Actually, German /t, d, n, l/ can be either alveolar or denti-alveolar - see German phonology#Consonants. — Peter238 (v̥ɪˑzɪʔ mɑˑɪ̯ tˢʰoˑk̚ pʰɛˑɪ̯d̥ʒ̊) 00:32, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

Apico-dental

Romanian phonology § Consonants uses the term apico-dental. This term should be defined on this page. What does it mean? Laminal alveolar, denti-alveolar, or interdental? — Eru·tuon 23:37, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

I don't have a source for this, but AFAIK only /r/ is apical dental in Romanian. /t, d, n/ are laminal denti-alveolar, while /s, z, t͡s/ are laminal post-dental. While I can see the logic behind calling laminal denti-alveolar consonants "apical dental", an incomplete description which ignores the alveolar tongue blade contact, I'm 99% sure there's nothing apical about Romanian sibilants. — Peter238 (v̥ɪˑzɪʔ mɑˑɪ̯ tˢʰoˑk̚ pʰɛˑɪ̯d̥ʒ̊) 00:31, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

That helps. Seems like we need a lot more description in this article and in Coronal consonant of varying terminology, synonyms, and similar sounds. — Eru·tuon 01:16, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

Yep. SOWL (e.g. pp. 9-15, but not only these) provides an in-depth coverage of coronals, so if you want to improve Coronal consonant, you probably should use it as a source. Write me an e-mail if you have trouble accessing it. — Peter238 (v̥ɪˑzɪʔ mɑˑɪ̯ tˢʰoˑk̚ pʰɛˑɪ̯d̥ʒ̊) 16:15, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

Dental stops simply do not exist

There are probably tens of thousands of books on language or phonetics which refer to "dental" versions of [t], [d], [n], and [l]. As the last writer asks, the more precise term would be "apico-dental", "apico-" referring to the tip of the tongue.

No such sound exists in any language. The whole idea is a bizarre mistake which no-one seems to question.

Such sounds cannot exist because contact between tongue and teeth cannot obstruct airflow. One can attempt to make such a sound, but air hisses out through spaces between one's teeth.

This idea is not, however, devoid of meaning.

Dental [t] is in fact a type of alveolar [t]. However it differs from the [t] in «tea» by the fact that the tongue is shifted forward, so that the tongue tip may possibly be touching the upper teeth.

The difference between the two lies with the part of the tongue used. In the so-called alveolar [t] it is the tip of the tongue which touches the alveolar ridge. With the "dental" [t] it is the blade of the tongue which touches the alveolar ridge.

One can produce a perfectly good "dental" [t] with the tip of the tongue touching the lower teeth, or touching nothing at all. Children who have lost their upper teeth can still produce an excellent "dental" [t].

The hard sharp sound of "dental" [t] has become linked in people's minds, due to the hard, sharp nature of our teeth. I hope there are readers who will see the humour in this error, and that they will come to suspect that phonetics and linguistics are both full of errors like this.

I have spent much of my life devoted to the study of phonology. I have been successful, I believe, because in my first year of university I often overheard a highly enthusiastic student of linguistics speak about his subject. I felt that what he said was so very wrong, that I vowed never to study linguistics.

This vow has been the basis of my career as a student of language.

I would urge all students of linguistics to be highly sceptical of everything that they are taught. Such notions as "dental" [t] should, I hope, make everyone aware of problems which lie in linguistics.

PS That man is now a professor at one of the world's most famous universities. I am not!!Luo Shanlian (talk) 07:58, 3 December 2019 (UTC)

Such sounds do exist, you may want to check out Hindi and Indian languages. As a matter of fact I use apico-dental sounds a lot of time 2409:408C:8019:30FB:62D7:5D6D:E6B3:F442 (talk) 02:32, 6 March 2024 (UTC)