Sonority Hierarchy - Sonority Hierarchy

Sonority Hierarchy

Sonority hierarchies vary somewhat in which sounds are grouped together. The one below is fairly typical:

Sound types are the most sonorous on the left side of the scale, and become progressively less sonorous towards the right (e.g., fricatives are less sonorous than nasals).

The labels on the left refer to distinctive features, and categories of sounds can be grouped together according to whether they share a feature. For instance, as shown in the sonority hierarchy above, vowels are considered, whereas all consonants (including stops, affricates, fricatives, etc.) are all considered . All sound categories falling under are sonorants, whereas those falling under are obstruents. In this way, any contiguous set of sound types may be grouped together on the basis of no more than two features (for instance, glides, liquids, and nasals are ).