front (adj./v.)

In PHONETICS, classifications of front speech sounds are of two types: (a) those ARTICULATED in the front part of the mouth (as opposed to the BACK); (b) those articulated by the front part (or BLADE) of the TONGUE. Front sounds which satisfy both criteria would be front VOWELS, as in see, bit, pet, cap, and such front CONSONANTS as the initial sound of two, do, see, zoo, this, thin. Consonants such as those in pay and bay are, however, front in sense (a) only. Front vowels, it should be noted, are in traditional phonetic classification contrasted with CENTRAL and BACK vowels. In DISTINCTIVE FEATURE analyses of sound SYSTEMS, front in sense (a) is referred to as ANTERIOR, in sense (b) is referred to as CORONAL.

In some analyses of sound patterns, it is useful to talk about fronting, a process common in historical sound change, and when children are learning to speak, whereby a sound (or group of sounds) may come to be articulated further forward in the mouth than the accepted adult norms. It is also often useful to analyze one sound as being fronted when compared with a back variant of the same PHONEME: for example the /k/ phoneme in English has both front and back VARIANTS (as in key and car respectively) owing to the influence of the following vowel. The analogous terms ‘backing’/‘backed’, are not commonly used.