The document introduces the linguistic terms "contoid" and "vocoid", which were coined by American linguist Kenneth Pike. A contoid refers to a sound made with closure of the vocal tract, producing audible friction, and has potential to be analyzed as a consonant phonologically. A vocoid refers to a sound made with an open vocal tract and little audible friction, with potential to be analyzed as a vowel phonologically. Pike introduced these terms to distinguish between phonetic and phonological definitions of vowels and consonants, as some sounds are phonetically vowel-like but used as consonants in some language systems.
The document introduces the linguistic terms "contoid" and "vocoid", which were coined by American linguist Kenneth Pike. A contoid refers to a sound made with closure of the vocal tract, producing audible friction, and has potential to be analyzed as a consonant phonologically. A vocoid refers to a sound made with an open vocal tract and little audible friction, with potential to be analyzed as a vowel phonologically. Pike introduced these terms to distinguish between phonetic and phonological definitions of vowels and consonants, as some sounds are phonetically vowel-like but used as consonants in some language systems.
The document introduces the linguistic terms "contoid" and "vocoid", which were coined by American linguist Kenneth Pike. A contoid refers to a sound made with closure of the vocal tract, producing audible friction, and has potential to be analyzed as a consonant phonologically. A vocoid refers to a sound made with an open vocal tract and little audible friction, with potential to be analyzed as a vowel phonologically. Pike introduced these terms to distinguish between phonetic and phonological definitions of vowels and consonants, as some sounds are phonetically vowel-like but used as consonants in some language systems.
The document introduces the linguistic terms "contoid" and "vocoid", which were coined by American linguist Kenneth Pike. A contoid refers to a sound made with closure of the vocal tract, producing audible friction, and has potential to be analyzed as a consonant phonologically. A vocoid refers to a sound made with an open vocal tract and little audible friction, with potential to be analyzed as a vowel phonologically. Pike introduced these terms to distinguish between phonetic and phonological definitions of vowels and consonants, as some sounds are phonetically vowel-like but used as consonants in some language systems.
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Contoid and Vocoid/// Vowel and Consonant
Vowel and Consonant
Phonetically, it is easy to give definitions: a vowel is any sound with no audible noise produced by constriction in the vocal tract, and consonant is a sound with audible noise produced by a constriction. Contoid
A contoid is a sound made with enough closure of the oral cavity to produce audible friction in the mouth. It has the potential to be analyzed phonemically as a consonant.
Vocoid
A vocoid is a sound made with an open oral cavity such that there is little audible friction in the mouth.
It has the potential to be analyzed phonemically as a vowel.
Contoid and Vocoid
- Coined by Kenneth Pike, American linguist (1912-2000).
Terms introduced by Kenneth Pike. Contoid acts as the phonetic equivalent of the term consonant. Contoids are sounds articulated with a complete closure in the vocal tract or with a stricture narrow enough to cause friction.
vocoid, which is the opposite of contoid. It is a phonetic vowel, as opposed to a phonological one.
The rationale behind the introduction of these terms was to avoid confusion between the phonological use of the term consonant and its use as a phonetic term. Certain sounds, for example,
w j are phonetically vowel-like, but are used as consonants in the phonological systems of many languages. Using Pike’s terminology, we can say that these sounds are vocoids and not contoids, but are consonants in a particular language (English, for example). Thus vowels and semi-vowels function as vocoids.
