In phonetics, ingressive sounds are sounds by which the airstream flows inward through the mouth or nose. The three types of ingressive sounds are lingual ingressive or velaric ingressive (from the tongue and the velum), glottalic ingressive (from the glottis), and pulmonic ingressive (from the lungs).
The opposite of an ingressive sound is an egressive sound, by which the air stream is created by pushing air out through the mouth or nose. The majority of sounds in most languages, such as /b/, are both pulmonic and egressive.
Lingual ingressive
Lingual ingressive, or velaric ingressive, describes an airstream mechanism in which a sound is produced by closing the vocal tract at two places of articulation in the mouth. This rarefies the air in the enclosed space by lowering the tongue and then releasing both closures. Such sounds are called "clicks".
Glottal ingressive is the term generally applied to the implosive consonants, which actually use a mixed glottalic ingressive–pulmonic egressive airstream. True glottalic ingressives are quite rare and are called "voiceless implosives" or "reverse ejectives".
Pulmonic ingressive
Pulmonic ingressive describes ingressive sounds in which the airstream is created by the lungs. These are generally considered paralinguistic. They may be found as phonemes, words, and entire phrases on all continents and in genetically-unrelated languages, most frequently in sounds for agreement and backchanneling. Some pulmonic ingressive sounds do not have egressive counterparts. For example, the cell for a velar trill in the IPA chart is greyed out as not being possible, but an ingressive velar (or velic) trill is a snort; this has been jocularly transcribed ⟨ꙫ⟩, intended to resemble the snout of a pig.[1][2]
Pulmonic ingressive sounds are extremely rare outside paralinguistics. A pulmonic ingressive phoneme was found in the ritual language Damin; its last speaker died in the 1990s. ǃXóõ has a series of nasalized click consonants in which the nasal airstream is pulmonic ingressive. Ladefoged & Maddieson (1996:268) state, "This ǃXóõ click is probably unique among the sounds of the world's languages that, even in the middle of a sentence, it may have ingressive pulmonic airflow."
Laver[3] uses ⟨˒⟩ instead for ⟨j˒ɑː˒⟩ and ⟨n˒æɪ˒⟩.[4]
Ingressive speech
Ingressive speech sounds are produced while the speaker breathes in, in contrast to most speech sounds, which are produced as the speaker breathes out. The air that is used to voice the speech is drawn in rather than pushed out. Ingressive speech can be glottalic, velaric, or pulmonic.
Occurrence
Ingressive sounds occur in many languages. Despite being a common phenomenon, they are frequently associated with Scandinavian languages. Most words that are subject to ingressive speech are feedback words ("yes, no") or very short or primal (a cry of pain or sobbing). It sometimes occurs in rapid counting to maintain a steady airflow throughout a long series of unbroken sounds. It is also very common in animals, frogs, dogs, and cats (purring). In English, ingressive sounds include when one says "Huh!" (a gasping sound) to express surprise or "Sss" (an inward hiss) to express empathy when another is hurt.
Tsou and Damin have both been claimed to possess an ingressive phoneme. Neither claim has been validated to date however, and the Tsou claim has been nearly disproved. There are claims of Tohono Oʼodham women speaking entirely ingressively.[5]
There are examples of ingressive sounds that belong to paralanguage. Japanese has what has been described an apicoprepalatal fricative approximant. This sound is similar to an inbreathed [s]. It is used as a response to statements that are upsetting or as a sign of deference. Japanese-speakers also use an ingressive bilateral bidental friction as a "pre-turn opening in conversation" or to begin a prayer.[6][7]
Distribution
Speech technologist Robert Eklund has found reports of ingressive speech in around 50 languages worldwide, dating as far back as Cranz's (1765) "Historie von Grönland" which mentions it in female affirmations among the Eskimo.
Several languages include an affirmative "yeah", "yah", "yuh", or "yes" that is made with inhaled breath, which sounds something like a gasp. That is an example of a pulmonic ingressive and is found as follows:
Dialects of English spoken in the US state of Maine. The word is often transcribed as "ayup", and people attempting to imitate Maine accent rarely use the ingressive form. It is missing in most Maine-dialect television and Hollywood productions.
In Faroese and Icelandic, entire phrases are sometimes produced ingressively.
In Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish, words like "ja", "jo" (yes), "nei/nej" (no) are often pronounced with inhaled breath. The main function of inhaled speech can be paralinguistic, showing agreement with a statement and encouraging a speaker to continue, but in northern Sweden, "Yes" can be replaced with an inhalation alone.[10] It is consequently also typical of dialogue.
In Low German and northern German varieties of standard German, an affirmative "ja" (yes) is sometimes pronounced ingressively, especially for backchanneling.
In Estonian "jah" (yes) or informally also "jep" (yep).
In Khalkha Mongolian, the words тийм[tʰiːm] ("that/[yes]"), үгүй[uɡui] ("no"), and мэдэхгүй[mɛdɛx-ɡui] know.INF-NEG ("[I] don't know") are often pronounced in daily conversation with pulmonic ingressive airflow.
In Philippine languages such as Tagalog[opo] and more forcefully in Waray and softer in Borongan (Samar Province) [uhuh] or [ohoh] usually spelled in these countries oo and possibly stronger in Oras, Arteche, Dolores (all in Samar). The sound is almost guttural and the aspirant is inhaled, not exhaled, air. Thus, for an English-speaker exhaling the response, the exhaled sound is not understood by native Samar-speakers. The American English trouble expression "uh-oh" does not approximate it. Eastern, Western, and Northern Samar have different accents in the same dialect.
Citations
↑ University of Hawaii Working Papers in Linguistics, 1969, Volume 1, Parts 4–6, Page 115.
↑ Robert Eklund (2008): Pulmonic ingressive phonation: Diachronic and synchronic characteristics, distribution and function in animal and human sound production and in human speech, Journal of the International Phonetic Association, vol. 38, no. 3, pp. 235–324.
Click consonants, or clicks, are speech sounds that occur as consonants in many languages of Southern Africa and in three languages of East Africa. Examples familiar to English-speakers are the tut-tut or tsk! tsk! used to express disapproval or pity, the tchick! used to spur on a horse, and the clip-clop! sound children make with their tongue to imitate a horse trotting. However, these paralinguistic sounds in English are not full click consonants, as they only involve the front of the tongue, without the release of the back of the tongue that is required for clicks to combine with vowels and form syllables.
In articulatory phonetics, the manner of articulation is the configuration and interaction of the articulators when making a speech sound. One parameter of manner is stricture, that is, how closely the speech organs approach one another. Others include those involved in the r-like sounds, and the sibilancy of fricatives.
Phonetics is a branch of linguistics that studies how humans produce and perceive sounds or, in the case of sign languages, the equivalent aspects of sign. Linguists who specialize in studying the physical properties of speech are phoneticians. The field of phonetics is traditionally divided into three sub-disciplines on questions involved such as how humans plan and execute movements to produce speech, how various movements affect the properties of the resulting sound or how humans convert sound waves to linguistic information. Traditionally, the minimal linguistic unit of phonetics is the phone—a speech sound in a language which differs from the phonological unit of phoneme; the phoneme is an abstract categorization of phones and it is also defined as the smallest unit that discerns meaning between sounds in any given language.
In phonetics, a plosive, also known as an occlusive or simply a stop, is a pulmonic consonant in which the vocal tract is blocked so that all airflow ceases.
Taa, also known as ǃXóõ, is a Tuu language notable for its large number of phonemes, perhaps the largest in the world. It is also notable for having perhaps the heaviest functional load of click consonants, with one count finding that 82% of basic vocabulary items started with a click. Most speakers live in Botswana, but a few hundred live in Namibia. The people call themselves ǃXoon or ʼNǀohan, depending on the dialect they speak. The Tuu languages are one of the three traditional language families that make up the Khoisan languages. In 2011, there were around 2,500 speakers of Taa.
The bilabial clicks are a family of click consonants that sound like a smack of the lips. They are found as phonemes only in the small Tuu language family, in the ǂ’Amkoe language of Botswana, and in the extinct Damin ritual jargon of Australia. However, bilabial clicks are found paralinguistically for a kiss in various languages, including integrated into a greeting in the Hadza language of Tanzania, and as allophones of labial–velar stops in some West African languages, as of /mw/ in some of the languages neighboring Shona, such as Ndau and Tonga.
Dentalclicks are a family of click consonants found, as constituents of words, only in Africa and in the Damin ritual jargon of Australia.
The lateral clicks are a family of click consonants found only in African languages. The clicking sound used by equestrians to urge on their horses is a lateral click, although it is not a speech sound in that context. Lateral clicks are found throughout southern Africa, for example in Zulu, and in some languages in Tanzania and Namibia. The place of articulation is not known to be contrastive in any language, and typically varies from alveolar to palatal.
The palatal or palato-alveolar clicks are a family of click consonants found, as components of words, only in southern Africa. The tongue is nearly flat, and is pulled back rather than down as in the postalveolar clicks, making a sharper sound than those consonants. The tongue makes an extremely broad contact across the roof of the mouth, making correlation with the places of articulation of non-clicks difficult, but Ladefoged & Traill (1984:18) find that the primary place of articulation is the palate, and say that "there is no doubt that should be described as a palatal sound".
The alveolar or postalveolar clicks are a family of click consonants found only in Africa and in the Damin ritual jargon of Australia. The tongue is more or less concave, and is pulled down rather than back as in the palatal clicks, making a hollower sound than those consonants.
The voiced velar implosive is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ⟨ɠ ⟩, and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is g_<. It is familiar to English speakers as the sound made when mimicking the 'gulping' of water.
In phonetics, the airstream mechanism is the method by which airflow is created in the vocal tract. Along with phonation and articulation, it is one of three main components of speech production. The airstream mechanism is mandatory for most sound production and constitutes the first part of this process, which is called initiation.
In phonetics, a trill is a consonantal sound produced by vibrations between the active articulator and passive articulator. Standard Spanish ⟨rr⟩ as in perro, for example, is an alveolar trill.
Implosive consonants are a group of stop consonants with a mixed glottalic ingressive and pulmonic egressive airstream mechanism. That is, the airstream is controlled by moving the glottis downward in addition to expelling air from the lungs. Therefore, unlike the purely glottalic ejective consonants, implosives can be modified by phonation. Contrastive implosives are found in approximately 13% of the world's languages.
Damin was a ceremonial language register used by the advanced initiated men of the aboriginal Lardil and Yangkaal peoples of northern Australia. Both inhabit islands in the Gulf of Carpentaria, the Lardil on Mornington Island, the largest island of the Wesley Group, and the Yangkaal on the Forsyth Islands. Their languages belong to the same family, the Tangkic languages. Lardil is the most divergent of the Tangkic languages, while the others are mutually comprehensible with Yangkaal.
The retroflex clicks are a family of click consonants known only from the Central ǃKung language or dialect of Namibia. They are sub-apical retroflex and should not be confused with the more widespread postalveolar clicks, which are sometimes mistakenly called "retroflex" due to their concave tongue shape.
In human speech, egressive sounds are sounds in which the air stream is created by pushing air out through the mouth or nose. The three types of egressive sounds are pulmonic egressive, glottalic egressive, and lingual (velaric) egressive. The opposite of an egressive sound is an ingressive sound, in which the airstream flows inward through the mouth or nose.
The voiceless velar implosive is a very rare consonantal sound. The symbol for this sound in the International Phonetic Alphabet is ⟨ɠ̊⟩ or ⟨kʼ↓⟩. A dedicated IPA letter, ⟨ƙ⟩, was withdrawn in 1993.
Ejective-contour clicks, also called sequential linguo-glottalic consonants, are consonants that transition from a click to an ejective sound, or more precisely, have an audible delay between the front and rear release of the click. All click types have linguo-glottalic variants, which occur as both stops and affricates, and may be voiced. At least a voiceless linguo-glottalic affricate is attested from all Khoisan languages of southern Africa, as well as from the Bantu language Yeyi from the same area, but they are unattested elsewhere.
The voiced bilabial click is a click consonant found in some of the languages of southern Africa. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet for a voiced bilabial click with a velar rear articulation is ⟨ɡ͡ʘ⟩ or ⟨ɡ͜ʘ⟩, commonly abbreviated to ⟨ɡʘ⟩, ⟨ᶢʘ⟩ or ⟨ʘ̬⟩. For a click with a uvular rear articulation, the equivalents are ⟨ɢ͡ʘ,ɢ͜ʘ,ɢʘ,𐞒ʘ⟩. Sometimes the accompanying letter comes after the click letter, e.g. ⟨ʘɡ⟩ or ⟨ʘᶢ⟩; this may be a simple orthographic choice, or it may imply a difference in the relative timing of the releases.
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