consonantvoicing

Consonant voicing is the feature that distinguishes consonants by whether the vocal folds vibrate during their articulation. Voiced consonants involve periodic vibration of the glottis throughout the consonant or part of it, while voiceless consonants are produced without vocal fold vibration.

This contrast applies to many manners of articulation, including stops, fricatives, affricates, nasals, liquids, and glides. In many languages it is phonemic for one or more manners of articulation; in others the contrast is limited or absent for certain sounds. Some languages also exhibit additional laryngeal phenomena, such as breathy or creaky voice, that interact with the basic voicing distinction or cause context-dependent variation like devoicing in certain positions.

Acoustically, voicing is signaled by the presence of periodic glottal pulses during the consonant, which affects the energy distribution and waveform. In stops, the timing of voicing relative to the release—known as voice onset time (VOT)—is a key cue: voiced stops tend to have shorter or even prevoicing, while voiceless stops have longer positive VOT. Fricatives and affricates show porosity of noise with or without a vocal-tract vibration during the noisy interval. Final obstruents in many languages may become devoiced in coda position.

In practice, voicing patterns vary cross-linguistically. English, for example, contrasts many voiced and voiceless stops and fricatives, such as b versus p and z versus s. Other languages may have weaker or no phonemic voicing contrasts for certain sounds. In transcription and phonological analysis, voicing is treated as a binary feature in combination with other articulatory parameters.