Continuant

{{short description|Type of speech sound}}

{{For|the mathematical term|Continuant (mathematics)}}

In phonetics, a continuant is a speech sound produced without a complete closure in the oral cavity. By one definition, continuant is a distinctive feature that refers to any sound produced with an incomplete closure of the vocal tract, thus encompassing all sounds (including vowels) except nasals, plosives and affricates."continuant" in Bussamann, Routledge dictionary of language and linguistics, 1996{{cite book|last=Hayes|first=Bruce|url=https://archive.org/details/introductoryphon00haye/page/78|title=Introductory Phonology|publisher=Blackwell|year=2009|isbn=978-1-4051-8411-3|page=[https://archive.org/details/introductoryphon00haye/page/78 78]|url-access=registration|authorlink=Bruce Hayes (linguist)}}{{Cite book|last=Chalker, Sylvia.|url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/49356718|title=The Oxford dictionary of English grammar|date=1998|publisher=Oxford University Press|others=Weiner, E. S. C., Oxford University Press.|isbn=978-0-19-172767-2|edition=1st rev.|location=Oxford|oclc=49356718}}"continuant" in Crystal, A dictionary of linguistics and phonetics, 6th ed, 2008{{Cite book|title=The Concise Oxford English Dictionary of Linguistics (3 ed.)|last=Matthews|first=P.H.|publisher=Oxford University Press|year=2014|isbn=9780191753060}}

By another definition, it refers exclusively to consonantal sounds produced with an incomplete closure of the oral cavity, prototypically approximants and fricatives,"continuant" in Bussamann, Routledge dictionary of language and linguistics, 1996{{Cite book|title=The Concise Oxford English Dictionary of Linguistics (3 ed.)|last=Matthews|first=P.H.|publisher=Oxford University Press|year=2014|isbn=9780191753060}} but sometimes also trills.{{Citation|last=Anderson|first=Catherine|last2=Bjorkman|first2=Bronwyn|last3=Denis|first3=Derek |last4=Doner|first4=Julianne|last5=Grant|first5=Margaret|last6=Sanders|first6=Nathan|last7=Taniguchi|first7=Ai|title=3.4 Describing consonants: Manner|date=2022-02-28|url=https://ecampusontario.pressbooks.pub/essentialsoflinguistics2/chapter/3-4-describing-consonants-manner/|work=Essentials of Linguistics|edition=2nd|publisher=McMaster University|language=en|access-date=2023-08-28}}

Compare sonorants (resonants), a class of speech sounds which includes vowels, approximants and nasals (but not fricatives), and contrasts with obstruents.