Dental consonant

Dental
◌̪
IPA Number	408
Encoding
Entity (decimal)	̪
Unicode (hex)	U+032A

A dental consonant is a consonant articulated with the tongue against the upper teeth, such as /θ/, /ð/. In some languages, dentals are distinguished from other groups, such as alveolar consonants, in which the tongue contacts the gum ridge. Dental consonants share acoustic similarity and in the Latin script are generally written with consistent symbols (e.g. t, d, n).

In the International Phonetic Alphabet, the diacritic for dental consonant is U+032A ◌̪ COMBINING BRIDGE BELOW. When there is no room under the letter, it may be placed above, using the character U+0346 ◌͆ COMBINING BRIDGE ABOVE, such as in /p͆/.

Cross-linguistically

For many languages, such as Albanian, Irish and Russian, velarization is generally associated with more dental articulations of coronal consonants. Thus, velarized consonants, such as Albanian /ɫ/, tend to be dental or denti-alveolar, and non-velarized consonants tend to be retracted to an alveolar position.^[1]

Sanskrit, Hindustani and all other Indo-Aryan languages have an entire set of dental stops that occur phonemically as voiced and voiceless and with or without aspiration. The nasal /n/ also exists but is quite alveolar and apical in articulation.^{[citation needed]} To native speakers, the English alveolar /t/ and /d/ sound more like the corresponding retroflex consonants of their languages than like dentals.^{[citation needed]}

Spanish /t/ and /d/ are denti-alveolar,^[2] while /l/ and /n/ are prototypically alveolar but assimilate to the place of articulation of a following consonant. Likewise, Italian /t/, /d/, /t͡s/, /d͡z/ are denti-alveolar ([t̪], [d̪], [t̪͡s̪], and [d̪͡z̪] respectively) and /l/ and /n/ become denti-alveolar before a following dental consonant.^[3][4]

Although denti-alveolar consonants are often described as dental, it is the point of contact farthest to the back that is most relevant, defines the maximum acoustic space of resonance and gives a characteristic sound to a consonant.^[5] In French, the contact that is farthest back is alveolar or sometimes slightly pre-alveolar.

Occurrence

Dental/denti-alveolar consonants as transcribed by the International Phonetic Alphabet include:

IPA	Description	Example
		Language	Orthography	IPA	Meaning
n̪	dental nasal	Russian	банк / bank	[ban̪k]	'bank'
t̪	voiceless dental plosive	Finnish	tutti	[t̪ut̪ːi]	'pacifier'
d̪	voiced dental plosive	Arabic	دين / din	[d̪iːn]	'religion'
s̪	voiceless dental sibilant fricative	Polish	kosa	[kɔs̪a]	'scythe'
z̪	voiced dental sibilant fricative	Polish	koza	[kɔz̪a]	'goat'
θ	voiceless dental nonsibilant fricative (also often called "interdental")	English	thing	[θɪŋ]
ð	voiced dental nonsibilant fricative (also often called "interdental")	English	this	[ðɪs]
ð̞	dental approximant	Spanish	codo	[koð̞o]	'elbow'
l̪	dental lateral approximant	Spanish	alto	[al̪t̪o]	'tall'
t̪ʼ	dental ejective	Dahalo		[t̪ʼat̪t̪a]	'hair'
ɗ̪	voiced dental implosive	Sindhi	ڏسڻي	[ɗ̪əsɪɳiː]	'forefinger'
k͡ǀ q͡ǀ ɡ͡ǀ ɢ͡ǀ ŋ͡ǀ ɴ͡ǀ	dental clicks (many different consonants)	Xhosa	ukúcola	[ukʼúkǀola]	'to grind fine'

See also

• Denti-alveolar consonant
• Place of articulation
• Index of phonetics articles

References

1. Recasens & Espinosa (2005:4)
2. Martínez-Celdrán, Fernández-Planas & Carrera-Sabaté (2003:257)
3. Rogers & d'Arcangeli (2004:117)
4. Real Academia Española (2011)
5. Ladefoged & Maddieson (1996:^{[page needed]})

Sources

• Ladefoged, Peter; Maddieson, Ian (1996). The Sounds of the World's Languages. Oxford: Blackwell. ISBN 0-631-19815-6.
• Martínez-Celdrán, Eugenio; Fernández-Planas, Ana Ma.; Carrera-Sabaté, Josefina (2003), "Castilian Spanish", Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 33 (2): 255–259, doi:10.1017/S0025100303001373
• Recasens, Daniel; Espinosa, Aina (2005), "Articulatory, positional and coarticulatory characteristics for clear /l/ and dark /l/: evidence from two Catalan dialects", Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 35 (1): 1–25, doi:10.1017/S0025100305001878, S2CID 14140079
• Rogers, Derek; d'Arcangeli, Luciana (2004), "Italian", Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 34 (1): 117–121, doi:10.1017/S0025100304001628
• Real Academia Española; Association of Spanish Language Academies (2011), Nueva Gramática de la lengua española (English: New Grammar of the Spanish Language), vol. 3 (Fonética y fonología), Espasa, ISBN 978-84-670-3321-2