Dentalization

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. The articulation of a sound produced by placing the tongue against the teeth
2. A speech sound made by touching the tongue to the teeth during pronunciation
3. The phonetic process where consonants are pronounced with the tongue contacting the upper teeth

Etymology: Dentalization is a technical coinage from phonetics, built from the Latin "dens" (tooth), which gave English "dental," plus the suffix "-ization," meaning the process of making or becoming something. The word therefore literally names the process of making a sound dental, which is to say articulated with the tongue against the teeth. Its formation follows the same pattern as "palatalization" and "velarization," which describe sounds shifted toward the palate or the soft palate. Because the term belongs to the modern vocabulary of phonetics, it was coined by linguists rather than inherited from ancient speakers, and it appears in English only in the 19th or 20th century, once scholars needed names for precise distinctions in articulation. Its meaning stays close to its parts: a sound is dentalized when the tongue is pressed against or near the upper teeth, as with the "t" and "d" of many languages, and a dentalized sound contrasts with the same sound pronounced further back, on the alveolar ridge behind the teeth.

Synonyms: dental articulation, dental sound formation