Tense in Phonetics (definition)

A tense sound is one that involves a tension in the articulators and is often characterized by a +[ATR] feature. These sounds require greater exertion from the muscles than their lax counterparts. The contrast is exemplified by English vowels /i/ (tense) and /ɪ/ (lax).

Scottish Gaelic distinguishes between tense and lax sonorants (e.g. /l/ vs /L/). See the discussion in fortis for a better look at the contrast.

See Also

• Advanced Tongue Root (definition)
• Lax (definition)
• Fortis (definition)
• Sonorant (definition)
• Sounds of Scottish Gaelic

External Links

• http://akerbeltz.org/index.php?title=Vowels_before_rr_ll_nn

The link below takes you away from the Gaelic Wiki to Wikipedia. Since wikipedia pages can be edited by anyone, they often contain inaccurate information. So be careful!

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenseness

References

• Matthews, P. H. (1997) The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Linguistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.