Definition & Meaning of "sonority"

What is "sonority"?

Sonority refers to the relative loudness or resonance of a speech sound in relation to other sounds. It is based on how open the vocal tract is during the production of a sound, with more open sounds, like vowels, being more sonorous than less open sounds, like voiceless consonants. In phonetics, sonority plays a key role in determining the organization of sounds within syllables. For example, in a syllable, sounds typically follow a sonority hierarchy, where less sonorous sounds, like voiceless stops, come before more sonorous sounds, like vowels. Understanding sonority is important in linguistics because it helps explain patterns in syllable structure and sound organization across different languages.