The voiced alveolar plosive is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents voiced dental, alveolar, and postalveolar plosives is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is d.

Features

Features of the voiced alveolar plosive:

• Its manner of articulation is plosive or stop, which means it is produced by obstructing airflow in the vocal tract.
• Its place of articulation is alveolar, which means it is articulated with either the tip or the blade of the tongue against the alveolar ridge, termed respectively apical and laminal.
• Its phonation type is voiced, which means the vocal cords are vibrating during the articulation.
• It is an oral consonant, which means air is allowed to escape through the mouth.
• It is a central consonant, which means it is produced by allowing the airstream to flow over the middle of the tongue, rather than the sides.
• The airstream mechanism is pulmonic egressive, which means it is articulated by pushing air out of the lungs and through the vocal tract, rather than from the glottis or the mouth.

Varieties of ^*

In English

The voiced alveolar plosive occurs in English, and it is the sound represented by the letter 'd' in dog and bombed. However, in modern English, the letter 'd' does not always denote in the past participle of verbs ending in a voiceless consonant (e.g., washed), 'd' is realized as an unvoiced [t (sometimes written ). Also, in some dialects the sequence /dr/, such as in the word drop, is realized as something close to an affricate, , which sounds quite similar to . Indeed, some linguists transcribe it as , , or .

In other languages

Some languages also distinguish between two or more varieties of In many languages, like English, the letter d is used to represent the [d sound in spellings of words.

Portuguese

In Brazilian Portuguese, the letter d before the sound href="http://articles.gourt.com/en/Close front unrounded vowel">i (spelled as i or non-tonic e) can be pronounced href="http://articles.gourt.com/en/Voiced postalveolar affricate">dʒ, as an allophone of A similar change occurs with [t.

See also

• List of phonetics topics

References

1. Canepari, Luciano, 2005. "English." A Handbook of Pronunciation. Page 61.
2. I. Maddieson, 1984. "Patterns of sound". Camebridge University Press

Alveolar consonants

Oclusiva alveolar sorda | Znělá alveolární ploziva | Stimmhafter alveolarer Plosiv | Consonne occlusive alvéolaire voisée | 有声歯茎破裂音 | Oclusiva alveolar sonora | Consoană oclusivă alveolară sonoră | Tonande alveolar klusil