Is it because consonants are too fast or too slow that we perceive them as indefinite pitches?
2
-
Try saying a consonant like t or p without a vowel sound. It's impossible. A consonant on its own does not have pitch. A person has to say something for pitch. Also, pitch is not something that is identified with that kind of thing, it's at the level of utterances. learngrammar.net/a/what-is-pitch-explained-with-examples Speed and pitch are not necessarily related. You can have high pitch to your voice and speak slowly.– LambieCommented Mar 3 at 15:57
-
2It's absolutely not impossible to say a consonant without a vowel sound, especially but not exclusively continuants..– LjLCommented Mar 3 at 17:15
Add a comment
|
1 Answer
Well, some of them do. When you're humming, you're producing a [m] sound at a particular pitch. In general, any consonants that involve the vocal cords vibrating will have a pitch.
Some of them don't, though, because pitch is a property of a periodic sound. It measures how quickly a certain pattern repeats. If there's no repeating pattern, the pitch is undefined.
It's the same reason many percussion instruments don't have a definite pitch. When you make a [s] sound, for example, you're producing a lot of aperiodic noise without repeating patterns in it.
