Implosive consonant

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Implosive consonants are a group of stop consonants (and possibly also some affricates) with a mixed glottalic ingressive and pulmonic egressive airstream mechanism. [1] 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% [2] of the world's languages.

Contents

In the International Phonetic Alphabet, implosives are indicated by modifying the top of a letter (voiced stop) with a rightward-facing hook: ⟨ɓ ɗ ᶑ ʄ ɠ ʛ⟩.

Articulation

During the occlusion of the stop, pulling the glottis downward rarefies the air in the vocal tract. The stop is then released. In languages whose implosives are particularly salient, that may result in air rushing into the mouth before it flows out again with the next vowel. To take in air sharply in that way is to implode a sound. [3]

However, probably more typically, there is no movement of air at all, which contrasts with the burst of the pulmonary plosives. This is the case with many of the Kru languages, for example. That means that implosives are phonetically sonorants (not obstruents) as the concept of sonorant is usually defined. However, implosives can phonologically pattern as both; that is, they may be phonological sonorants or obstruents depending on the language.

George N. Clements (2002) actually proposes that implosives are phonologically neither obstruents nor sonorants.

The vast majority of implosive consonants are voiced, so the glottis is only partially closed. Because the airflow required for voicing reduces the vacuum being created in the mouth, implosives are easiest to make with a large oral cavity.[ citation needed ]

Types

Implosives are most often voiced stops, occasionally voiceless stops. Individual tokens of glottalized sonorants (nasals, trills, laterals, etc.) may also be pronounced with a lowering of the glottis by some individuals, occasionally to the extent that they are noticeably implosive, but no language is known where implosion is a general characteristic of such sounds. [4]

Voiced implosives

The attested voiced implosive stops are the following:

There are no IPA symbols for implosive fricatives. Implosive fricatives are unknown, and implosive affricates unlikely.[ why? ] An implosive affricate [ɗʒ] has been reported in Roglai, but more investigation may reveal that it is something different. [5]

Voiceless implosives

Consonants variously called "voiceless implosives," "implosives with glottal closure," [6] or "reverse ejectives" involve a slightly different airstream mechanism, purely glottalic ingressive. [1] The glottis is closed so no pulmonic airstream is possible. The IPA once dedicated symbols ⟨ƥ ƭ 𝼉 ƈ ƙ ʠ ƙ͜ƥ⟩ to such sounds, but they were withdrawn in 1993 and replaced with a voiceless diacritic, ⟨ɓ̥ ɗ̥ ᶑ̥ ʄ̊ ɠ̊ ʛ̥ ɠ̊͜ɓ̥⟩. Some authors disagree with the analysis implied by the voiceless diacritic and retain the dedicated voiceless letters, or, occasionally, transcribe them instead as ⟨pʼ↓ tʼ↓ ʈʼ↓ cʼ↓ kʼ↓ qʼ↓ k͡pʼ↓⟩. The IPA had also suggested the possibility of a superscript left pointer, ⟨p˂ t˂ ʈ˂ c˂ k˂ q˂ k͡p˂⟩, but it was not approved by the membership.

The attested voiceless implosive stops are:

Attested implosive consonants [7]
(excluding secondary phonations and articulations)
Bilabial Dental Alveolar Retroflex Palatal Velar Labial–
velar 		Uvular
Voiceless ƥ ƭ̪ ƭ 𝼉 ƈ ƙ ƙ͜ƥ ʠ
Voiced ɓ ɗ̪ ɗ ᶑ ʄ ɠ ɠ͜ɓ ʛ

Occurrence

In the world's languages, the occurrence of implosives shows a strong cline from front to back points of articulation. Bilabial [ɓ] is the most common implosive. It is very rarely lacking in the inventory of languages which have implosive stops. On the other hand, implosives with a back articulation (such as velar [ɠ]) occur much less frequently; apart from a few exceptions, the presence of the velar implosive [ɠ] goes along with the presence of implosives further forward. [8] One of the few languages with a farther back implosive (specifically the alveolar one [ɗ]), and without the bilabial implosive, is Yali, a Dani language spoken on the Indonesian side of Papua. [9]

Implosives are widespread among the languages of Sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia and are found in a few languages of the Amazon Basin. They are rarely reported elsewhere but occur in scattered languages such as the Mayan languages in North America, Saraiki and Sindhi in the Indian subcontinent. They appear to be entirely absent as phonemes from Europe and northern Asia and from Australia, even from the Australian ceremonial language Damin, which uses every other possible airstream mechanism besides percussives. However, Alpher (1977) reports that the Nhangu language of Australia may actually contain implosives, though more research is needed to determine the true nature of these sounds. Implosives may occasionally occur phonetically in some European languages: For instance, in some northern dialects of Ingrian, intervocalic bilabial stops may be realised as the implosive [ɓ] or [ɓ̥]. [10]

Fully voiced stops are slightly implosive in a number of other languages, but this is not often described explicitly if there is no contrast with modal-voiced plosives. This situation occurs from Maidu to Thai to many Bantu languages, including Swahili.

Sindhi and Saraiki have an unusually large number of contrastive implosives, with /ɓᶑ ʄɠ/. [6] [11] Although Sindhi has a dental–retroflex distinction in its plosives, with /bdɖ ɟɡ/, the contrast is neutralized in the implosives. A contrastive retroflex implosive /ᶑ / may also occur in Ngad'a, a language spoken in Flores, Indonesia, [12] and occurs in Wadiyara Koli, a language spoken in India and Pakistan where it contrasts with the voiced alveolar implosive /ɗ/. [13]

More examples can be found in the articles on individual implosives.

Voiceless implosives are quite rare, but are found in languages as varied as the Owere dialect of Igbo in Nigeria (/ƥ//ƭ/), Krongo in Sudan, the Uzere dialect of Isoko, the closely related Lendu and Ngiti languages in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Serer in Senegal (/ƥƭ ƈ/), and some dialects of the Poqomchi’ and Quiche languages in Guatemala (/ƥƭ/). Owere Igbo has a seven-way contrast among bilabial stops, /pʰpƥbʱbɓm/, and its alveolar stops are similar. The voiceless velar implosive [ ƙ ] occurs marginally in Uspantek [14] and /ʠ/ occurs in Mam, Kaqchikel, and Uspantek. [15] Lendu has been claimed to have voiceless /ƥƭƈ/, but they may actually be creaky-voiced implosives. [6] The voiceless labial–velar implosive [ƙ͜ƥ] also may occur in Central Igbo. [16] [17]

Some English speakers use a voiceless velar implosive [ƙ] to imitate the "glug-glug" sound of liquid being poured from a bottle, but others use a voiced implosive [ɠ]. [18]

Related Research Articles

Approximants are speech sounds that involve the articulators approaching each other but not narrowly enough nor with enough articulatory precision to create turbulent airflow. Therefore, approximants fall between fricatives, which do produce a turbulent airstream, and vowels, which produce no turbulence. This class is composed of sounds like and semivowels like and, as well as lateral approximants like.

A fricative is a consonant produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together. These may be the lower lip against the upper teeth, in the case of ; the back of the tongue against the soft palate in the case of German ; or the side of the tongue against the molars, in the case of Welsh. This turbulent airflow is called frication.

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 based on the research 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.

The term phonation has slightly different meanings depending on the subfield of phonetics. Among some phoneticians, phonation is the process by which the vocal folds produce certain sounds through quasi-periodic vibration. This is the definition used among those who study laryngeal anatomy and physiology and speech production in general. Phoneticians in other subfields, such as linguistic phonetics, call this process voicing, and use the term phonation to refer to any oscillatory state of any part of the larynx that modifies the airstream, of which voicing is just one example. Voiceless and supra-glottal phonations are included under this definition.

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.

An affricate is a consonant that begins as a stop and releases as a fricative, generally with the same place of articulation. It is often difficult to decide if a stop and fricative form a single phoneme or a consonant pair. English has two affricate phonemes, and, often spelled ch and j, respectively.

The field of articulatory phonetics is a subfield of phonetics that studies articulation and ways that humans produce speech. Articulatory phoneticians explain how humans produce speech sounds via the interaction of different physiological structures. Generally, articulatory phonetics is concerned with the transformation of aerodynamic energy into acoustic energy. Aerodynamic energy refers to the airflow through the vocal tract. Its potential form is air pressure; its kinetic form is the actual dynamic airflow. Acoustic energy is variation in the air pressure that can be represented as sound waves, which are then perceived by the human auditory system as sound.

In phonetics, ejective consonants are usually voiceless consonants that are pronounced with a glottalic egressive airstream. In the phonology of a particular language, ejectives may contrast with aspirated, voiced and tenuis consonants. Some languages have glottalized sonorants with creaky voice that pattern with ejectives phonologically, and other languages have ejectives that pattern with implosives, which has led to phonologists positing a phonological class of glottalic consonants, which includes ejectives.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alveolar click</span> Click consonant 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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Voiced bilabial implosive</span> Consonantal sound

A voiced bilabial implosive is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ⟨ɓ⟩, and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is b_<.

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.

In phonetics, a flap or tap is a type of consonantal sound, which is produced with a single contraction of the muscles so that one articulator is thrown against another.

Labial–velar consonants are doubly articulated at the velum and the lips, such as. They are sometimes called "labiovelar consonants", a term that can also refer to labialized velars, such as the stop consonant and the approximant.

In phonetics, a glottalic consonant is a consonant produced with some important contribution of the glottis.

Glottalization is the complete or partial closure of the glottis during the articulation of another sound. Glottalization of vowels and other sonorants is most often realized as creaky voice. Glottalization of obstruent consonants usually involves complete closure of the glottis; another way to describe this phenomenon is to say that a glottal stop is made simultaneously with another consonant. In certain cases, the glottal stop can even wholly replace the voiceless consonant. The term 'glottalized' is also used for ejective and implosive consonants; see glottalic consonant for examples.

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Voiceless velar implosive</span> Consonantal sound represented by ⟨ɠ̊⟩ in IPA

A 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.

Pulmonic-contour clicks, also called sequential linguo-pulmonic consonants, are consonants that transition from a click to an ordinary pulmonic sound, or more precisely, have an audible delay between the front and rear release of the click. All click types have linguo-pulmonic variants, which occur as both stops and affricates, and are attested in four phonations: tenuis, voiced, aspirated, and murmured. At least a voiceless linguo-pulmonic affricate is attested from all Khoisan languages of southern Africa, as well as (reportedly) from the Bantu language Yeyi from the same area, but they are unattested elsewhere.

References

  1. 1 2 Ball, Martin J.; Müller, Nicole (2014-02-04). Phonetics for Communication Disorders. doi:10.4324/9781315805573. ISBN   978-1-315-80557-3.
  2. ↑ Maddieson, Ian. 2008. Glottalized Consonants. In: Haspelmath, Martin & Dryer, Matthew S. & Gil, David & Comrie, Bernard (eds.) The World Atlas of Language Structures Online. Munich: Max Planck Digital Library, chapter 7. Accessed on 2008-03-28 via Wals info.
  3. ↑ "Implode" (2. [with obj.] [phonetic terminology]: utter or pronounce (a consonant) with a sharp intake of air.) New Oxford American Dictionary 3rd ed., 2010
  4. ↑ Esling, John H.; Moisik, Scott R.; Benner, Allison; Crevier-Buchman, Lise (2019). Voice Quality: The Laryngeal Articulator Model. Cambridge University Press.
  5. ↑ As happened with the Gitxsan language, which "[..] does not have voiced implosive stops; rather, it has lax glottalized stops that display a creaky voice quality at the margin of the vowel in pretonic (and syllable-final) environments." — Bruce Rigsby & John Ingram (1990) "Obstruent Voicing and Glottalic Obstruents in Gitksan". International Journal of American Linguistics, vol. 56, no. 2, pp. 251–263.
  6. 1 2 3 Ladefoged, Peter; Maddieson, Ian (1996). The Sounds of the World's Languages. Oxford: Blackwell. ISBN   0-631-19815-6.
  7. ↑ Bickford & Floyd (2006) Articulatory Phonetics, Table 25.1, augmented by sources at the articles on individual consonants
  8. ↑ Greenberg, Joseph H. (1970). "Some Generalizations concerning Glottalic Consonants, Especially Implosives". International Journal of American Linguistics. 36 (2): 123–145. doi:10.1086/465105. JSTOR   1264671. S2CID   143225017.
  9. ↑ Fahner, Christiaan (1979). The Morphology of Yali and Dani: A Descriptive and Comparative Analysis.
  10. ↑ N. V. Kuznetsova (2009). Фонологические системы Ижорских диалектов[The phonological systems of the Ingrian dialects]. Institute for Linguistic Studies (dissertation). p. 181.
  11. ↑ Swahili has a similar /ɓɗʄɠ/, without contrasting with voiced pulmonic stops, unlike in Sindhi.
  12. ↑ Djawanai, Stephanus. (1977). A description of the basic phonology of Nga'da and the treatment of borrowings. NUSA linguistic studies in Indonesian and languages in Indonesia, 5, 10-18
  13. ↑ ZUBAIR, SAEED (April 2016). A Phonological Description of Wadiyara, a Language Spoken in Pakistan (PDF) (MA). Payap University. p. 2. Retrieved 9 October 2020.
  14. ↑ Bennett, Ryan; Harvey, Meg; Henderson, Robert; Méndez López, Tomás Alberto (September 2022). "The phonetics and phonology of Uspanteko (Mayan)". Language and Linguistics Compass. 16 (9). doi: 10.1111/lnc3.12467 . ISSN   1749-818X. S2CID   252453913.
  15. ↑ England, Nora C. (1983). A grammar of Mam, a Mayan language. Austin: University of Texas Press. ISBN   0292729278. OCLC   748935484.
  16. ↑ Bickford & Floyd (2006) Articulatory Phonetics
  17. ↑ Clark, Mary M. (1990). The Tonal System of Igbo. doi:10.1515/9783110869095. ISBN   9783110130416.
  18. ↑ Pike, Phonetics, 1943:40

Bibliography

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