Place of articulation

In articulatory phonetics, the place of articulation (also point of articulation) of a consonant is the point of contact where an obstruction occurs in the vocal tract between an articulatory gesture, an active articulator (typically some part of the tongue), and a passive location (typically some part of the roof of the mouth). Along with the manner of articulation and the phonation, it gives the consonant its distinctive sound. The terminology in this article has been developed for precisely describing all the consonants in all the world’s spoken languages. No known language distinguishes all of the places described here so less precision is needed to distinguish the sounds of a particular language.

Place of articulation (passive)
The passive place of articulation is the place on the more stationary part of the vocal tract where the articulation occurs and can be anywhere from the lips, upper teeth, gums, or roof of the mouth to the back of the throat. Although it is a continuum, there are several contrastive areas so languages may distinguish consonants by articulating them in different areas, but few languages contrast two sounds within the same area unless there is some other feature which contrasts as well. The following areas are contrastive: The regions are not strictly separated. For instance, in some sounds in many languages, the surface of the tongue contacts a relatively large area from the back of the upper teeth to the alveolar ridge, which is common enough to have received its own name, denti-alveolar. Likewise, the alveolar and post-alveolar regions merge into each other, as do the hard and soft palate, the soft palate and the uvula, and all adjacent regions. Terms like pre-velar (intermediate between palatal and velar), post-velar (between velar and uvular), and upper vs. lower pharyngeal may be used to specify more precisely where an articulation takes place. However, although a language may contrast pre-velar and post-velar sounds, it does not also contrast them with palatal and uvular sounds (of the same type of consonant) so contrasts are limited to the number above, if not always their exact location.
 * upper lip (labial)
 * 1. exo-labial
 * 2. endo-labial
 * 3. upper teeth, either on the edge of the teeth or inner surface (dental)
 * 4. alveolar ridge, the gum line just behind the teeth (alveolar)
 * 5. back of the alveolar ridge (post-alveolar)
 * 6. pre-palatal
 * 7. hard palate on the roof of the mouth (palatal)
 * 8. soft palate further back on the roof of the mouth (velar)
 * 9. uvula hanging down at the entrance to the throat (uvular)
 * 10. throat itself, a.k.a. the pharynx (pharyngeal)
 * 11. glottal
 * 12. epiglottis at the entrance to the windpipe, above the voice box (epiglottal).

Place of articulation (active)
The articulatory gesture of the active place of articulation involves the more mobile part of the vocal tract, typically some part of the tongue or lips. The following areas are known to be contrastive: In bilabial consonants, both lips move so the articulatory gesture brings the lips together, but by convention, the lower lip is said to be active and the upper lip passive. Similarly, in linguolabial consonants the tongue contacts the upper lip with the upper lip actively moving down to meet the tongue; nonetheless, the tongue is conventionally said to be active and the lip passive if for no other reason than that the parts of the mouth below the vocal tract are typically active, and those above the vocal tract are typically passive. In dorsal gestures, different parts of the body of the tongue contact different parts of the roof of the mouth, but it cannot be independently controlled so they are all subsumed under the term dorsal. That is unlike coronal gestures involving the front of the tongue, which is more flexible.
 * lower lip (labial)
 * 1. exo-labial
 * 2. endo-labial
 * various parts of the front of the tongue (coronal):
 * 18. surface of the tongue under the tip (subapical)
 * 17. tip of the tongue (apical)
 * 16. blade of the tongue (laminal)
 * 15. antero-dorsal
 * body of the tongue (dorsal)
 * 14. postero-dorsal
 * 13. radical
 * base a.k.a. root of the tongue and the throat (laryngeal)
 * 12. epiglottal.

The epiglottis may be active, contacting the pharynx, or passive, being contacted by the aryepiglottal folds. Distinctions made in these laryngeal areas are very difficult to observe and are the subject of ongoing investigation, and several still-unidentified combinations are thought possible. The glottis acts upon itself. There is a sometimes fuzzy line between glottal, aryepiglottal, and epiglottal consonants and phonation, which uses these same areas.

Unlike the passive articulation, which is a continuum, there are five discrete active articulators: the lip (labial consonants), the flexible front of the tongue (coronal consonants: laminal, apical, and subapical), the middle–back of the tongue (dorsal consonants), the root of the tongue together with the epiglottis (pharyngeal or radical consonants), and the glottis (glottal consonants). The articulators are discrete in that they can act independently of each other, and two or more may work together in what is called coarticulation (see below). The distinction, however, between the various coronal articulations, laminal, apical, and subapical is a continuum, without clear boundaries.

Table of gestures and passive articulators and resulting places of articulation
The following table shows the possible combinations of active and passive articulators. The possible locations for sibilants as well as non-sibilants to occur are indicated as a group of header cells within the center of the other content cells around those. For sibilants, there are additional complications involving tongue shape; see the article on sibilants for a chart of possible articulations. A precise vocabulary of compounding the two places of articulation is sometimes seen. However, it is usually reduced to the passive articulation, which is generally sufficient. Thus dorsal–palatal, dorsal–velar, and dorsal–uvular are usually just called “palatal,” “velar,” and “uvular.” If there is ambiguity, additional terms have been invented, so subapical–palatal is more commonly called “retroflex.”

NOTE: Additional shades of passive articulation are sometimes specified using pre- or post-, for example prepalatal (near the border between the postalveolar region and the hard palate); prevelar (at the back of the hard palate, also post-palatal or even medio-palatal for the middle of the hard palate); or postvelar (near the border of the soft palate and the uvula). They can be useful in the precise description of sounds that are articulated somewhat farther forward or back than a prototypical consonant; for this purpose, the “fronted” and “retracted” IPA diacritics can be used.

Homorganic consonants
Consonants that have the same place of articulation, such as the alveolar sounds /n, t, d, s, z, l/ in English, are said to be homorganic. Similarly, labial /p, b, m/ and velar /k, ɡ, ŋ/ are homorganic. A homorganic nasal rule, an instance of assimilation, operates in many languages, where a nasal consonant must be homorganic with a following stop. We see this with English intolerable but implausible; another example is found in Yoruba, where the present tense of ba “hide” is mba “is hiding,” while the present of sun “sleep” is nsun “is sleeping.”

Central and lateral articulation
The tongue contacts the mouth with a surface that has two dimensions: length and width. So far, only points of articulation along its length have been considered. However, articulation varies along its width as well. When the airstream is directed down the center of the tongue, the consonant is said to be central. If, however, it is deflected off to one side, escaping between the side of the tongue and the side teeth, it is said to be lateral. Nonetheless, for simplicity’s sake the place of articulation is assumed to be the point along the length of the tongue, and the consonant may in addition be said to be central or lateral. That is, a consonant may be lateral alveolar, like English /l/ (the tongue contacts the alveolar ridge, but allows air to flow off to the side), or lateral palatal, like Castilian Spanish ll /ʎ/. Some Indigenous Australian languages contrast dental, alveolar, retroflex, and palatal laterals, and many Native American languages have lateral fricatives and affricates as well.

Coarticulation
Some languages have consonants with two simultaneous places of articulation, which is called coarticulation. When these are doubly articulated, the articulators must be independently movable, and therefore there may be only one each from the major categories labial, coronal, dorsal and pharyngeal.

The only common doubly articulated consonants are labial–velar stops like [k͡p], [ɡ͡b] and less commonly [ŋ͡m], which are found throughout Western Africa and Central Africa. Other combinations are rare but include labial–(post)alveolar stops [t͡p d͡b n͡m], found as distinct consonants only in a single language in New Guinea, and a uvular–epiglottal stop, [q͡ʡ], found in Somali.

More commonly, coarticulation involves secondary articulation of an approximantic nature. Then, both articulations can be similar such as labialized labial [mʷ] or palatalized velar [kʲ]. That is the case of English [w], which is a velar consonant with secondary labial articulation.

Common coarticulations include these:
 * Labialization, rounding the lips while producing the obstruction, as in [kʷ] and English [w]
 * Palatalization, raising the body of the tongue toward the hard palate while producing the obstruction, as in Russian [tʲ] and [ɕ]
 * Velarization, raising the back of the tongue toward the soft palate (velum), as in the English dark el, [lˠ] (also transcribed [ɫ])
 * Pharyngealization, constriction of the throat (pharynx), such as Arabic “emphatic” [tˤ]