A degree of prominence imparted to a syllable by a combination of rhythmic stress and pitch features. The term is usually confined to the phonetic and phonological aspects of a language variety, unlike the term dialect, which may refer to phonetic, phonological, syntactic and lexical aspects. A feature of the acoustic properties of a speech sound, such as formant frequency, voice onset time, burst frequency, which are known to be used by humans to distinguish one speech sound from another. For example, the frequency of a plosive burst is one one the acoustic cues to place of articulation for plosives. For bilabial and glottal articulations, both articulators are active.
Acute sounds have a concentration of energy in the higher frequency regions of the spectrum.
The opposite of acute is grave . The drawing together of the vocal folds. The name of a manner of articulation. Affricates are articulated in a manner similar to plosives in that they are oral stop consonants. The release of an affricate, however, is slower than that for a plosive, giving rise to the perception of a plosive followed by a brief homorganic fricative.