Occlusive

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In phonetics, an occlusive, sometimes known as a stop, is a consonant sound produced by occluding (i.e. blocking) airflow in the vocal tract, but not necessarily in the nasal tract. The duration of the block is the occlusion of the consonant. An occlusive may refer to one or more of the following, depending on the author:

Examples in English are (voiced) /b/, /d/, /ɡ/ and (voiceless) /p/, /t/, /k/.
Examples in English are /m/, /n/, and /ŋ/.

Oral occlusive may mean any of the above apart from nasal occlusives, but typically means stop/plosive. Nasal occlusive may be used to distinguish the simple nasal sounds from other nasal consonants.

The terms 'stop' and 'occlusive' are used inconsistently in the literature. They may be synonyms, or they may distinguish nasality as here. However, some authors use them in the opposite sense to here, with 'stop' being the generic term (oral stop, nasal stop), and 'occlusive' being restricted to oral consonants. Ladefoged and Maddieson (1996) prefer to distinguish 'stop' from 'nasal'. They say,

Note that what we call simply nasals are called nasal stops by some linguists. We avoid this phrase, preferring to reserve the term 'stop' for sounds in which there is a complete interruption of airflow. [1]

Common occlusives

All languages in the world have occlusives [2] and most have at least the voiceless stops [p], [t], [k] and the nasals [n], and [m]. However, there are exceptions.

Colloquial Samoan lacks the coronals [t] and [n], and several North American languages, such as the northern Iroquoian languages, lack the labials [p] and [m]. In fact, the labial plosive is the least stable of the voiceless stops in the languages of the world, as the unconditioned sound change [p][f] (→ [h] → Ø) is quite common in unrelated languages, having occurred in the history of Classical Japanese, Classical Arabic and Proto-Celtic, for instance.

Some of the Chimakuan, Salishan, and Wakashan languages near Puget Sound lack nasal occlusives [m] and [n], as does the Rotokas language of Papua New Guinea. In some African and South American languages, nasal occlusives occur only in the environment of nasal vowels and so are not distinctive.

Formal Samoan has nasals /nŋ/ and /t/ but only one word with velar [k]; colloquial Samoan conflates these to k/. Ni‘ihau Hawaiian has [t] for /k/ to a greater extent than Standard Hawaiian, but neither distinguishes a /k/ from a /t/. It may be more accurate to say that Hawaiian and colloquial Samoan do not distinguish velar and coronal stops than to say they lack one or the other.

Yanyuwa distinguishes nasals and plosives in seven places of articulations /m n̪ n ṉ ɳ ŋ̟ ŋ̠/ and /b d̪ d ḏ ɖ ɡ̟ ɡ̠/ (it does not have voiceless plosives) which is the most out of all languages. [3]

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The alveolar and dental ejective stops are types of consonantal sound, usually described as voiceless, that are pronounced with a glottalic egressive airstream. In the International Phonetic Alphabet, ejectives are indicated with a "modifier letter apostrophe" ⟨ʼ⟩, as in this article. A reversed apostrophe is sometimes used to represent light aspiration, as in Armenian linguistics ⟨p‘ t‘ k‘⟩; this usage is obsolete in the IPA. In other transcription traditions, the apostrophe represents palatalization: ⟨pʼ⟩ = IPA ⟨pʲ⟩. In some Americanist traditions, an apostrophe indicates weak ejection and an exclamation mark strong ejection: ⟨k̓, k!⟩. In the IPA, the distinction might be written ⟨kʼ, kʼʼ⟩, but it seems that no language distinguishes degrees of ejection.

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The voiced palatal plosive or stop is a type of consonantal sound in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ⟨ɟ⟩, a barred dotless ⟨j⟩ that was initially created by turning the type for a lowercase letter ⟨f⟩. The equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is J\.

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The voiced uvular plosive or stop is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ⟨ɢ⟩, a small capital version of the Latin letter g, and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is G\.

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Epiglottal plosive</span> Consonantal sound represented by ⟨ʡ⟩ in IPA

The epiglottal or pharyngeal plosive is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ⟨ʡ⟩.

In phonetics and phonology, a sonorant or resonant is a speech sound that is produced with continuous, non-turbulent airflow in the vocal tract; these are the manners of articulation that are most often voiced in the world's languages. Vowels are sonorants, as are semivowels like and, nasal consonants like and, and liquid consonants like and. This set of sounds contrasts with the obstruents.

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.

An obstruent is a speech sound such as, , or that is formed by obstructing airflow. Obstruents contrast with sonorants, which have no such obstruction and so resonate. All obstruents are consonants, but sonorants include vowels as well as consonants.

The voiceless labial–velar plosive or stop is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. It is a and pronounced simultaneously and is considered a double articulation. To make this sound, one can say Coe but with the lips closed as if one were saying Poe; the lips are to be released at the same time as or a fraction of a second after the C of Coe. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ⟨k͡p⟩.

Doubly articulated consonants are consonants with two simultaneous primary places of articulation of the same manner. They are a subset of co-articulated consonants. They are to be distinguished from co-articulated consonants with secondary articulation; that is, a second articulation not of the same manner. An example of a doubly articulated consonant is the voiceless labial–velar plosive, which is a and a pronounced simultaneously. On the other hand, the voiceless labialized velar plosive has only a single stop articulation, velar, with a simultaneous approximant-like rounding of the lips. In some dialects of Arabic, the voiceless velar fricative has a simultaneous uvular trill, but this is not considered double articulation either.

The voiceless labiodental plosive or stop is a consonant sound produced like a [p], but with the lower lip contacting the upper teeth, as in [f]. This can be represented in the IPA as ⟨⟩. A separate symbol not recognized by the IPA that was occasionally seen, especially in Bantu linguistics, is the qp ligature⟨ȹ⟩.

The voiceless velar nasal is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ⟨ŋ̊⟩, a combination of the letter for the voiced velar nasal and a diacritic indicating voicelessness.. The equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is N_0.

The voiceless linguolabial plosive is a rare consonantal sound used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents it is ⟨⟩ or ⟨⟩.

References

  1. Ladefoged, Peter; Maddieson, Ian (1996). The Sounds of the World's Languages. Oxford: Blackwell. p. 102. ISBN   0-631-19815-6.
  2. König, W. (ed) dtv Atlas zur deutschen Sprache dtv 1994 (in German)
  3. "Yanuyuwa".