Editing Laminal consonant (section)

==Compared to alveolar==
Part of the confusion in naming laminal consonants is quite literally a matter of point of view. When one looks at a person pronouncing a laminal [[alveolar consonant|alveolar]] or denti-alveolar, the tip of the tongue can be seen touching the back of the teeth or even protruding between the teeth, which gives them the common name of [[dental consonant|dental]].

[[Acoustics|Acoustically]], however, the important element is the place of the rearmost occlusion, which is the point that the resonant chamber in the mouth terminates. That determines the size, shape and acoustics of the [[oral cavity]], which produces the harmonics of the vowels. Thus, French coronals are alveolar and differ from English alveolars primarily in being laminal rather than apical (in French, the tongue is flatter).

There are true laminal dentals in some languages with no alveolar contact, such as in [[Hindustani phonology|Hindustani]], which are different from French consonants. Nevertheless, the breadth of contact has some importance; it influences the shape of the tongue farther back and so the shape of the resonant cavity. Also, if the release of a denti-alveolar consonant is not abrupt, the tongue may peel off from the roof of the mouth from back to front and so shift from an alveolar to a dental pronunciation.

In the [[International Phonetic Alphabet|IPA]], the diacritic for laminal consonants is {{unichar|033B|COMBINING SQUARE BELOW|html=|cwith=◌}}.