Obstruents

Lack of voicing contrast in obstruents Many languages lack a distinction between voiced and voiceless obstruents (stops, affricates, and fricatives).

All voiced obstruents are devoiced at the end of words unless immediately followed by a word beginning with a vowel or a voiced consonant.

Behaviour in consonant clusters When two obstruents occurred in a pair, the first was changed according to Grimm's law, if possible, while the second was not.

Examples English main There are many allophonic processes in English, like lack of plosion, nasal plosion, partial devoicing of sonorants, complete devoicing of sonorants, partial devoicing of obstruents, lengthening and shortening vowels, and retraction.

However, English allows syllabic obstruents in a few para-verbal utterances such as shh (used to command silence) and psst (used to attract attention).

In languages without the distinction between voiceless and voiced obstruents, it is often found that they are realized as voiced in voiced environments such as between vowels, and voiceless elsewhere.

In many such languages, obstruents are realized as voiced in voiced environments, such as between vowels or between a vowel and a nasal, and voiceless elsewhere, such as at the beginning or end of the word or next to another obstruent.

Nearly all languages with such lateral obstruents also have the approximant.

There is some uncertainty as to actual pronunciation of some of the letters, particularly those representing palatalized obstruents (see below).

These are prototypically voiceless, but voiced obstruents are extremely common as well.

Tlingit is usually described as having an unusual, perhaps unique lack of /l/ despite having five lateral obstruents ; the older generation could be argued to have /l/ but at the expense of having no nasals.