Grave and acute (phonetics)

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Phonemes can be described as grave from both an articulatory or acoustic perspective. In the articulatory perspective, grave refers to peripheral consonants and back vowels. In contrast, acute refers to coronal and palatal consonants, and front vowels. From the acoustic perspective, acute sounds have a concentration of energy in the higher spectrum versus graves which have a concentration of energy in the lower spectrum.

[edit] References

Jacobson, Roman. On Language. Harvard University Press, 1990 p. 260