Editing Manner of articulation (section)

==Stricture==
<!-- Stricture is the correct word here, NOT structure -->
From greatest to least stricture, speech sounds may be classified along a [[wikt:cline|cline]] as [[stop consonant]]s (with ''occlusion'', or blocked airflow), [[fricative consonant]]s (with partially blocked and therefore strongly turbulent airflow), [[approximant]]s (with only slight turbulence), tense [[vowel]]s, and finally [[Tenseness|lax]] vowels (with full unimpeded airflow). [[Affricate]]s often behave as if they were intermediate between stops and fricatives, but phonetically they are sequences of a stop and fricative.

Over time, sounds in a language may move along the cline toward less stricture in a process called [[lenition]] or towards more stricture in a process called [[fortition]].