spirant
/ˈspʌɪr(ə)nt
/Phonetics
adjective
(Of a consonant) uttered with a continuous expulsion of breath.There are three types of mutations, the nasal mutation, the spirant mutation and lenition....
- Despite this assertion I do not believe the spirant pronunciation is obvious at all.
- All the Welsh grammars say Welsh has 3 types of mutation - soft, nasal and spirant, and 9 consonants that are mutable.
noun
A spirant consonant; a fricative.The shifting of the voiced spirants and explosives did not extend over all the HG. dialects....
- When we extend our analysis to Western and Southern Numic, we are forced to conclude that in no Numic language have the taps ever belonged to a series of spirants.
- That leaves the rest of the ‘spirants’ free and clear.
Derivatives
spirantization
- The constraint which forces spirantization also predicts the distribution of released and unreleased stops.
- This paper presents the results of a first acoustic phonetic investigation into voiceless spirantization in the variety of Tuscan Italian spoken in Siena.
- This study addresses whether or not intervocalic nasal consonants in Spanish undergo spirantization in aerodynamic terms.
spirantize
- As a result, the endings are spirantized since they now follow directly on a vowel sound.
- Since there is no voiced bilabial fricative in English, when you spirantize a [b] in English you often get [v].
- But they did not participate in the later spirantizing and deaffrication processes that characterize the consonant systems of the recorded Iranian languages.
Origin
Mid 19th century: from Latin spirant- 'breathing', from the verb spirare.