Consonant Consonant In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract. Examples are , pronounced with the lips; , pronounced with the front of the tongue; , pronounced with the back of the tongue; , pronounced in the throat; and , pronounced by forcing air through a narrow channel (fricatives); and and , which have air flowing through the nose (nasals). Contrasting with consonants are vowels. Since the number of possible sounds in all of the world's languages is much greater than the number of letters in any one
Speech perception been called vocal tract normalization (see Figure 3 for an example). Similarly, listeners are believed to adjust the perception of duration to the current tempo of the speech they are listening to – this has been referred to as speech rate normalization. Whether or not normalization actually takes place and what is its exact nature is a matter of theoretical controversy (see theories below). Perceptual constancy is a phenomenon not specific to speech perception only; it exists in other types of perception too. Categorical perception is involved in processes of perceptual differentiation. People perceive speech sounds categorically, that is to