ABSTRACT
OBSTRUENT consonants are all those consonants which involve some kind of physical noise in their production: hissing or exploding, for example. As a collective term it can be used to refer to all plosives, fricatives and affricates. The antonym is SONORANT. This refers collectively to all sounds that give a resonant or sonorant sort of impression, like vowel sounds, with the complete absence of audible friction or plosion. Sonorants include nasals, laterals and approximant consonants (in addition to voiced vowels, of course).
