Putting consonants in a chart

1. active articulator
2. passive articulator
3. constriction degree
4. state of glottis
5. nasality
6. laterality
7. airstream mechanism

If we want to list consonants in a chart, there's an immediate problem: there are seven dimensions in which consonants can differ from each other, but only two dimensions in which a printed chart can arrange them.

There's a traditional way of dealing drawing consonant charts that deals with the problem relatively well. The general approach is used in the official IPA consonant chart and in the charts in the textbook.

• The horizontal dimension is place of articulation -- each column has a common combination of active and passive articulators.
• Whenever two symbols occupy the same cell of the table, they differ only in voicing. The voiceless consonant is always the one to the left. E.g., the bilabial plosive cell has "p b".
• All other "manner of articulation" parameters are squeezed into the vertical dimension, not always elegantly. You will find rows for, among other things:
  • plosives (i.e., oral stops)
  • nasals (i.e., nasal stops)
  • fricatives
  • (central) approximants
  • lateral approximants
  Some charts have a row for affricates (e.g., the chart below based on page 21 of the textbook). The IPA consonant chart doesn't -- you can always get the affricate symbol by putting together the stop and the fricative symbols in the relevant column.

	bilabial	labio-dental	dental	alveolar	postalveolar	retroflex	palatal	velar
stop
fricative
nasal
approximant	()							()
affricate