A stop, plosive, or occlusive is a consonant In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract. Examples are [p], pronounced with the lips; [t], pronounced with the front of the tongue; [k], pronounced with the back of the tongue; [h], pronounced in the throat; [f] and [s], pronounced by forcing air through a sound produced by stopping the airflow in the vocal tract The vocal tract is the cavity in animals where sound that is produced at the sound source is filtered. In birds it consists of the trachea, the syrinx, the oral cavity, the upper part of the esophagus, and the beak. In mammals it consists of the laryngeal cavity, the pharynx, the oral cavity, and the nasal cavity, and in some nonhuman mammals. The terms plosive and stop are usually used interchangeably, but they are not perfect synonyms. Plosives are oral stops with a pulmonic egressive In human speech, egressive sounds are those 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, lingual egressive airstream mechanism In phonetics, the airstream mechanism is the method by which airflow is created in the vocal tract. Along with phonation, it is one of two mandatory aspects of sound production; without these, there can be no speech sound. The term is also used to describe nasal (non-oral) stops (sounds like [n] and [m]). Many use the term nasal continuant A continuant is a sound produced with an incomplete closure of the vocal tract. That is, any sound except a stop . An affricate is considered to be a complex segment, composed of both a stop and a continuant rather than nasal stop to refer to sounds like [n] and [m]. One should be aware that this article treats these "nasal continuants" as nasal stops.
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Common stops
All languages in the world have stops[1] and most have at least [p], [t], [k], [n], and [m]. However, there are exceptions: Colloquial Samoan Sāmoan is the language of the Samoa Islands comprising the independent country of Samoa and the US territory of American Samoa. It is an official language—alongside English—in both jurisdictions. Sāmoan is the first language for most of the Samoa Islands' population of about 246,000. With many Sāmoan people living in other countries, the lacks the coronals Coronal consonants are articulated with the flexible front part of the tongue. Only the coronal consonants can be divided into apical , laminal (using the tongue blade), domed (with the tongue bunched up), or sub-apical (with the tongue curled back), as well as a few rarer orientations, because only the front of the tongue has such dexterity [t] and [n], and several North American languages, such as the northern Iroquoian The Iroquoian languages are a First Nation and Native American language family. The language family, amongst others, includes Mohawk, Huron-Wyandot and Cherokee languages, lack the labials Labial consonants are consonants in which one or both lips are the active articulator. This precludes linguolabials, in which the tip of the tongue reaches for the posterior side of the upper lip and which are considered coronals. The two by far most common labials are bilabials, articulated using both lips, and labiodentals, articulated with the [p] and [m]. In fact, the labial stop 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 Arabic Classical Arabic , also known as Qur'anic or Koranic Arabic, is the form of the Arabic language used in literary texts from Umayyad and Abbasid times (7th to 9th centuries). It is based on the Medieval dialects of Arab tribes. Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) is the direct descendent used today throughout the Arab World in writing and in formal, for instance. Some of the Chimakuan, Salishan The Salishan languages are a group of languages of the Pacific Northwest (the Canadian province of British Columbia and the American states of Washington, Oregon, Idaho and Montana). They are characterised by agglutinativity and astonishing consonant clusters—for instance the Nuxálk word xłp̓x̣ʷłtłpłłskʷc̓ (IPA: [xɬpʼχʷɬtʰɬpʰɬ, and Wakashan languages near Puget Sound Puget Sound is a sound in the U.S. state of Washington. It is a complex estuarine system of interconnected marine waterways and basins, with one major and one minor connection to the Strait of Juan de Fuca and the Pacific Ocean—Admiralty Inlet being the major connection and Deception Pass being the minor. Flow through Deception Pass accounts for lack nasal stops A nasal consonant is produced with a lowered velum in the mouth, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. The oral cavity still acts as a resonance chamber for the sound, but the air does not escape through the mouth as it is blocked by the lips or tongue. Rarely, other types of consonants may be nasalized [m] and [n], as does the Rotokas language of Papua New Guinea Papua New Guinea (pronounced /ˈpæpuːə njuː ˈɡɪni/ PAP-oo-ə new-GIN-ee, also /ˈpɑːpuːə/ PAH-poo-ə or /ˈpæpjuːə/ PAP-yew-ə; Tok Pisin: Papua Niugini) (PNG), officially the Independent State of Papua New Guinea, is a country in Oceania, occupying the eastern half of the island of New Guinea and numerous offshore islands (the. In some African and South American languages, nasal stops occur, but only in the environment of nasal vowels A nasal vowel is a vowel that is produced with a lowering of the velum so that air escapes both through nose as well as the mouth. The term stands in opposition to the term "oral vowel" refers to an ordinary vowel without this nasalisation. Note that these terms can be slightly misleading as the air does not come exclusively out of the, and so are not distinctive. Formal Samoan Sāmoan is the language of the Samoa Islands comprising the independent country of Samoa and the US territory of American Samoa. It is an official language—alongside English—in both jurisdictions. Sāmoan is the first language for most of the Samoa Islands' population of about 246,000. With many Sāmoan people living in other countries, the has only one word with velar Velars are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue against the soft palate, the back part of the roof of the mouth, known also as the velum) [k], but it has a nasal velar stop, [ŋ]. Ni‘ihau Hawaiian The Hawaiian language is a Polynesian language that takes its name from Hawaiʻi, the largest island in the tropical North Pacific archipelago where it developed. Hawaiian, along with English, is an official language of the state of Hawaii. King Kamehameha III established the first Hawaiian-language constitution in 1839 and 1840, which has [t] for /k/ to a greater extent than Standard Hawaiian, but neither distinguish 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.
Stop articulation
In the articulation of the stop, three phases can be distinguished:
- Catch: The airway closes so that no air can escape through the mouth (hence the name stop). With nasal stops, the air escapes through the nose.
- Hold or occlusion: The airway stays closed, causing a pressure difference to build up (hence the name occlusive).
- Release or burst: The closure is opened. In the case of plosives, the released airflow produces a sudden impulse causing an audible sound (hence the name plosive).
In many languages, such as Malay Malay is a major language of the Austronesian family and the official language of Malaysia, Brunei, and Indonesia, where in the latter it is standardized as Indonesian. It is one of four official languages of Singapore, and as Indonesian is a working language of East Timor, a consequence of over twenty years of Indonesian administration. It is and Vietnamese Vietnamese , is the national and official language of Vietnam. It is the mother tongue of 86% of Vietnam's population, and of about three million overseas Vietnamese. It is also spoken as a second language by many ethnic minorities of Vietnam. It is part of the Austroasiatic language family, of which it has the most speakers by a significant, final stops lack a release burst, or have a nasal release. See Unreleased stop.
In affricate stops Affricates are consonants that begin as stops but release as a fricative (such as [s] or [z] or occasionally into a fricative trill) rather than directly into the following vowel, the release is a fricative Fricatives are consonants 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 [f]; the back of the tongue against the soft palate, in the case of German [x], the final consonant of Bach; or the side of the tongue against the molars, in.
Classification of stops
Voice
Voiced Voice or voicing is a term used in phonetics and phonology to characterize speech sounds, with sounds described as either voiceless or voiced. The term, however, is used to refer to two separate concepts. Voicing can refer to the articulatory process in which the vocal cords vibrate. This is its primary use in phonetics to describe phones, which stops are articulated with simultaneous vibration of the vocal cords The vocal folds, also known commonly as vocal cords, are composed of twin infoldings of mucous membrane stretched horizontally across the larynx. They vibrate, modulating the flow of air being expelled from the lungs during phonation, voiceless In linguistics, the term voiceless describes the pronunciation of sounds when the larynx does not vibrate. Phonologically, this is a type of phonation, which contrasts with other states of the larynx, but some object that the word "phonation" implies voicing, and that voicelessness is the lack of phonation stops without. Plosives are commonly voiceless, whereas nasal stops are only rarely so.
Aspiration
In aspirated In phonetics, aspiration is the strong burst of air that accompanies either the release or, in the case of preaspiration, the closure of some obstruents. To feel or see the difference between aspirated and unaspirated sounds, one can put a hand or a lit candle in front of one's mouth, and say tore and then store ([stɔɹ]). One should either feel stops, the voice onset (the time when the vocal cords The vocal folds, also known commonly as vocal cords, are composed of twin infoldings of mucous membrane stretched horizontally across the larynx. They vibrate, modulating the flow of air being expelled from the lungs during phonation begin to vibrate) comes perceivably later than the release of the stop. The duration between the release of the stop and the voice onset is called voice onset time In phonetics, voice onset time, commonly abbreviated VOT, is defined as the length of time that passes between when a stop-consonant is released and when voicing, the vibration of the vocal folds, begins in unvoiced aspirated stops. Some authors allow negative values of VOT to mark voicing that begins during the period of articulatory closure for (VOT). Tenuis Tenuis consonant are not normally marked explicitly, with voiceless IPA letters such as [p, t, ts, tʃ, k] assumed to be unaspirated unless indicated otherwise. However, there is an explicit diacritic for a lack of aspiration in the Extensions to the IPA, the superscript equal sign: [p⁼, t⁼, ts⁼, tʃ⁼, k⁼] stops have a voice onset time close to zero, meaning that voicing begins when the stop is released. Voiced stops have a negative voice onset time, meaning the voicing begins before the stop is released. A stop is called "fully voiced" if it is voiced during the entire occlusion. In English, however, initial voiced plosives like [b] or [d] are only partially voiced, meaning that voicing picks up sometime during the occlusion. Aspirated stops have a voice onset time greater than zero, so that there is a period of voiceless airflow (a phonetic [h] The voiceless glottal transition, commonly called a "fricative", is a type of sound used in some spoken languages which often behaves like a fricative, but sometimes behaves more like an approximant or is indeterminate in its behavior. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is h, and the equivalent X-) before the onset of the vowel.
In most dialects of English, the final g in the word bag is likely to be fully voiced, while the initial b will be only partially voiced. Initial voiceless plosives, like the p in pie, are aspirated, with a palpable puff of air upon release, while a plosive after an s, as in spy, is tenuous. When spoken near a candle flame, the flame will flicker more after the words par, tar, and car are articulated, compared with spar, star, and scar.
In aspirated In phonetics, aspiration is the strong burst of air that accompanies either the release or, in the case of preaspiration, the closure of some obstruents. To feel or see the difference between aspirated and unaspirated sounds, one can put a hand or a lit candle in front of one's mouth, and say tore and then store ([stɔɹ]). One should either feel stops, the vocal cords The vocal folds, also known commonly as vocal cords, are composed of twin infoldings of mucous membrane stretched horizontally across the larynx. They vibrate, modulating the flow of air being expelled from the lungs during phonation (or vocal folds) are abducted at the time of release. In a prevocalic aspirated stop (a stop followed by a vowel or sonorant) the time when the vocal cords begin to vibrate will be delayed until the vocal folds come together enough for voicing to begin, and will usually start with breathy voicing. The duration between the release of the stop and the voice onset is called the aspiration interval or sometimes the voice onset time In phonetics, voice onset time, commonly abbreviated VOT, is defined as the length of time that passes between when a stop-consonant is released and when voicing, the vibration of the vocal folds, begins in unvoiced aspirated stops. Some authors allow negative values of VOT to mark voicing that begins during the period of articulatory closure for (VOT). In Tenuis Tenuis consonant are not normally marked explicitly, with voiceless IPA letters such as [p, t, ts, tʃ, k] assumed to be unaspirated unless indicated otherwise. However, there is an explicit diacritic for a lack of aspiration in the Extensions to the IPA, the superscript equal sign: [p⁼, t⁼, ts⁼, tʃ⁼, k⁼] stops the vocal cords come together for voicing immediately following the release and there is little or no aspiration (a voice onset time close to zero). There may be a brief segment of breathy voice which identifies the stop as voiceless and not voiced. In voiced stops, the vocal folds are set for voice before the release, and the voicing is not initially breathy. Often, but not always, there is voicing during the period of occlusion of a voiced stop. A stop is called "fully voiced" if it is voiced during the entire occlusion. In English, however, initial voiced plosives like [b] or [d] may have no voicing during the period of occlusion, or the voicing may start shortly before the release and continue after release. Highly aspirated stops have a long period of aspiration, so that there is a long period of voiceless airflow (a phonetic [h] The voiceless glottal transition, commonly called a "fricative", is a type of sound used in some spoken languages which often behaves like a fricative, but sometimes behaves more like an approximant or is indeterminate in its behavior. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is h, and the equivalent X-) before the onset of the vowel.
In most dialects of English, the final voiced stop g in the word bag is likely to be fully voiced, while the occlusion for the initial voiced stop b will be only partially voiced. Initial voiceless plosives, like the p in pie, are aspirated, with a palpable puff of air upon release, while a plosive after an s, as in spy, is tenuous (unaspirated). When spoken near a candle flame, the flame will flicker more after the words par, tar, and car are articulated, compared with spar, star, and scar. In the common pronunciation of “papa”, the initial p is aspirated while the medial p is not.
Length
In a geminate In phonetics, gemination happens when a spoken consonant is pronounced for an audibly longer period of time than a short consonant or long stop, the occlusion lasts longer than in normal stops. In languages where stops are only distinguished by length (e.g. Arabic, Ilwana, Icelandic), the long stops may last up to three times as long as the short stops. Italian Italian ( italiano , or lingua italiana) is a Romance language spoken as a native language by about 62 million people in Italy, San Marino and parts of Switzerland, Croatia, Slovenia and France. It is spoken as a first language by many Italian citizens and immigrants abroad, for a total of approximately 70 million native speakers. In addition, it is well known for its geminate stop, as the double t in the name Vittoria takes just as long to say as the ct does in English Victoria. Japanese Japanese (日本語?, [nihoŋɡo] ) is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic (or Japanese-Ryukyuan) language family. There are a number of proposed relationships with other languages, but none of them has gained unanimous acceptance. Japanese is an agglutinative also prominently features the geminate consonant, such as in the minimal pair 来た (kita), meaning came, and 切った (kitta) meaning cut (past).
Note that there are many languages where the features voice, aspiration, and length reinforce each other, and in such cases it may be hard to tell which of these features predominates. In such cases the terms fortis is sometimes used for aspiration or gemination, while lenis In linguistics, fortis and lenis are terms generally used to refer to groups of consonants that are produced with greater and lesser energy, respectively, such as in energy applied, articulation, etc. "Fortis" and "lenis" were coined as less misleading terms to refer to consonantal contrasts in languages that don't employ is used for single, tenuous or voiced stops. Be aware, however, that the terms fortis and lenis are poorly defined, and their meanings vary from source to source.
Nasalization
Further information: Nasalization In phonetics, nasalization is the production of a sound while the velum is lowered, so that some air escapes through the nose during the production of the sound by the mouth. An archetypal nasal sound is [n]Nasal A nasal consonant is produced with a lowered velum in the mouth, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. The oral cavity still acts as a resonance chamber for the sound, but the air does not escape through the mouth as it is blocked by the lips or tongue. Rarely, other types of consonants may be nasalized stops are differentiated from oral stops only by a lowered velum The soft palate is the soft tissue constituting the back of the roof of the mouth. The soft palate is distinguished from the hard palate at the front of the mouth in that it does not contain bone that allows the air to escape through the nose during the occlusion.
Nasal stops are acoustically sonorants In phonetics and phonology, a sonorant is a speech sound that is produced without turbulent airflow in the vocal tract: fricatives and plosives are not sonorants. Vowels are sonorants, as are consonants like /m/ and /l/. Other consonants, like /d/ or /s/, restrict the airflow enough to cause turbulence, and so are non-sonorant. In addition to, as they have a non-turbulent airflow and are nearly always voiced, but they are articulatorily obstruents An obstruent is a consonant sound formed by obstructing airflow, causing increased air pressure in the vocal tract. In phonetics, articulation may be divided into two large classes: obstruents and sonorants, as there is complete blockage of the oral cavity.
A prenasalized stop starts out with a lowered velum that raises during the occlusion. The closest examples in English are consonant clusters such as the [nd] in candy, but many languages have prenasalized stops that function phonologically as single consonants. Swahili Swahili is a Bantu language spoken by various ethnic groups that inhabit several large stretches of the Indian Ocean coastline from northern Kenya to northern Mozambique, including the Comoros Islands. Although only 5-10 million people speak it as their native language, Swahili is a national, or official language, of four nations, namely Tanzania, is well known for having words whose spellings begin with mp or nd, like mtu, though truer prenasalized sounds like [mp] or [nd] do occur word-initially in other Bantu languages.
A postnasalized stop begins with a raised velum that lowers during the occlusion. This causes an audible nasal release, as in English sudden. Russian Russian is the most geographically widespread language of Eurasia, the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages, and the largest native language in Europe. Russian belongs to the family of Indo-European languages and is one of three living members of the East Slavic languages. Written examples of Old East Slavonic are attested from the 10th and other Slavic languages have words that begin with [dn], which can be seen in the name of the Dnieper River The Dnieper River , (Russian: Днепр Dnepr, pronounced [dnʲɛpr]; Belarusian: Дняпро Dniapro, [dnʲaˈpro]; Ukrainian: Днiпро Dnipro, [dnʲiˈpro]; Crimean Tatar: Özü) is one of the major rivers in Europe (fourth by length) that flows from Russia, through Belarus and Ukraine, to the Black Sea. Even though Dnepr considered to be.
Note that the terms prenasalization and postnasalization are normally only used in languages where these sounds are phonemic, that is, not analyzed into sequences of plosive plus nasal stop.
Airstream mechanism
Stops may be made with more than one airstream mechanism In phonetics, the airstream mechanism is the method by which airflow is created in the vocal tract. Along with phonation, it is one of two mandatory aspects of sound production; without these, there can be no speech sound. The normal mechanism is pulmonic egressive In human speech, egressive sounds are those 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, lingual egressive, that is, with air flowing outward from the lungs. All languages have pulmonic stops. Some languages have stops made with other mechanisms as well: ejective stops In phonetics, ejective consonants are voiceless consonants that are pronounced with simultaneous closure of the glottis. In the phonology of a particular language, ejectives may contrast with aspirated or tenuis consonants. Additionally, some languages have sonorants with creaky voice that pattern with ejectives while other languages have (glottalic egressive), implosive stops (glottalic ingressive), or click consonants (velaric ingressive).
Tenseness
Further information: TensenessA fortis stop (in the narrow sense) is produced with more muscular tension than a lenis stop (in the narrow sense). However, this is difficult to measure, and there is usually debate over the actual mechanism of alleged fortis or lenis consonants.
There are a series of stops in Korean, sometimes written with the IPA symbol for ejectives, which are produced using "stiff voice", meaning there is increased contraction of the glottis than for normal production of voiceless stops. The indirect evidence for stiff voice is in the following vowels, which have a higher fundamental frequency than those following other stops. The higher frequency is explained as a result of the glottis being tense. Other such phonation types include breathy voice, or murmur; slack voice; and creaky voice.
Examples
Here are the oral stops (plosives) granted dedicated symbols in the IPA. See also the nasal stops.
- [p] voiceless bilabial plosive
- [b] voiced bilabial plosive
- [t] voiceless alveolar plosive
- [d] voiced alveolar plosive
- [ʈ] voiceless retroflex plosive
- [ɖ] voiced retroflex plosive
- [c] voiceless palatal plosive
- [ɟ] voiced palatal plosive
- [k] voiceless velar plosive
- [ɡ] voiced velar plosive
- [q] voiceless uvular plosive
- [ɢ] voiced uvular plosive
- [ʡ] epiglottal plosive
- [ʔ] glottal stop
English stops
[p], [t], [k] (aspirated word-initially, tenuis in clusters with s)
[b], [d], [ɡ] (in most dialects: partially voiced word-initially, fully voiced intervocally)
[ʔ] (glottal stop, not as a phoneme in most dialects)
See also
- Continuant (the opposite of a stop)
References
- ^ König, W. (ed) dtv Atlas zur deutschen Sprache dtv 1994
- Ladefoged, Peter; Ian Maddieson (1996). The Sounds of the World's Languages. Oxford: Blackwell. ISBN 0-631-19814-8.
- Ian Maddieson, Patterns of Sounds, Cambridge University Press, 1984. ISBN 0-521-26536-3
Categories: Consonants
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