closant

English

Etymology

Coined by British physician John Antony Michael Martin in 1981 (see quotation). (This etymology is missing or incomplete. Please add to it, or discuss it at the Etymology scriptorium.)

Noun

closant (plural closants)

1. (linguistics, phonology) A consonant-like sound such as uttered by a preverbal infant.

   Coordinate term: vocant

   • [1981, J[ohn] A[ntony] M[ichael] Martin, “Vocal Behaviour and the Origins of Speech” (chapter 4), in Voice, Speech, and Language in the Child: Development and Disorder (Disorders of Human Communication; 4), Wien [Vienna]: Springer-Verlag, →DOI, →ISBN, pages 56–57:

     At an earlier stage still, during the first few months of life, the vowel-like and consonant-like sounds are usually so far removed from normal speech that even this convention is misleading. We will label these sounds vocants and closants and their transcription will be enclosed within double square brackets e.g. [[bə]].]

   • 1992, Clinical Linguistics & Phonetics, Volume 6, Taylor & Francis, page 320,

     The purpose of this study was to test the hypothesis that the PP is an early developmental indicator of increasing phonetic diversity. It was hypothesized that the PP's estimation of increased use of different places of closant and vocant articulation would describe the growth of phonetic diversity early in life.

   • 1995, William P. Smotherman (editor), Developmental Psychobiology, Volume 28, John Wiley & Sons, page 5,

     These syllables consist of a closant (consonant-like element) and a vocant (vowel-like element) with a closant - vocant or vocant - closant transition that has a duration that commonly occurs in natural spoken languages (generally < 120 ms).

   • 2003, Journal of the Indian Statistical Association, Volumes 41-42, Indian Statistical Association, page 342,

     At both the ages, children are found to produce more closant-vocant^[sic] and vocant - closant utterances than closant - closant and vocant - vocant.

Translations

preverbal consonant-like sound

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• German: please add this translation if you can
• Italian: please add this translation if you can

Further reading

• Phonological development on Wikipedia.Wikipedia