Airstream mechanism

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This article contains phonetic transcriptions in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA. For the distinction between [ ], / / and ⟨ ⟩, see IPA § Brackets and transcription delimiters.

In

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.

The organ generating the airstream is called the initiator and there are three initiators used phonemically in non-disordered human oral languages:

  • the diaphragm together with the ribs and lungs (pulmonic mechanisms),
  • the glottis (glottalic mechanisms), and
  • the tongue (lingual or "velaric" mechanisms).

There are also methods of making sounds that do not require the glottis. These mechanisms are collectively called alaryngeal speech mechanisms (none of these speech mechanisms are used in non-disordered speech):

Percussive consonants are produced without any airstream mechanism.[4]

Types of airstream mechanism

ingressive
respectively.

Of these six resulting airstream mechanisms, four are found lexically around the world, alongside the percussive sounds produced without an airstream mechanism, for a total of five:

That leaves pulmonic ingressive and lingual (velaric) egressive as the only two airstream mechanisms produced by the three main initiators that are not found lexically in the world.

These mechanisms may be combined into airstream contours, such as clicks which release into ejectives.

In normal vocabulary, the various Khoisan languages have pulmonic, ejective, and click consonants; the Chadic languages, some Mayan languages, and scattered Nilo-Saharan languages such as Gumuz, Uduk and Meʼen have pulmonic, implosive, and ejective consonants, and the Nguni languages of the Bantu family utilize all four, – pulmonic, click, implosive, and ejective, – as does the Dahalo language of Kenya. Most other languages utilize at most two airstream mechanisms.

In interjections, the other two mechanisms may be employed. For example, in countries as diverse as Sweden, Turkey, and Togo, a pulmonic ingressive ("gasped" or "inhaled") vowel is used for back-channeling or to express agreement, and in France a lingual egressive (a "spurt") is used to express dismissal. The only language where such sounds are known to be contrastive in normal vocabulary is the extinct ritual language Damin (also the only language outside Africa with clicks); however, Damin appears to have been intentionally designed to differ from normal speech.

Pulmonic initiation

Initiation by means of the

pulmonic egressives. In most languages, including all the languages of Europe (excluding the Caucasus), all phonemes
are pulmonic egressives.

The only attested use of a phonemic pulmonic ingressive is a lateral fricative in

!Xóõ has ingression as a phonetic detail in one series of its clicks, which are ingressive voiceless nasals with delayed aspiration, [↓ŋ̊ʘʰ ↓ŋ̊ǀʰ ↓ŋ̊ǁʰ ↓ŋ̊!ʰ ↓ŋ̊ǂʰ]. Peter Ladefoged considers these to be among the most difficult sounds in the world. Other languages, for example in Taiwan
, have been claimed to have pulmonic ingressives, but these claims have either proven to be spurious or to be occasional phonetic detail.

In

Amharic, entire phrases may be uttered with an ingressive airstream. (See ingressive sound
.)

Glottalic initiation

It is possible to initiate airflow in the upper vocal tract by means of the vocal cords or glottis. This is known as glottalic initiation.

For egressive glottalic initiation, one lowers the glottis (as if to sing a low note), closes it as for a

intonation units.[8]

For ingressive glottalic initiation, the sequence of actions performed in glottalic pressure initiation is reversed:  one raises the glottis (as if to sing a high note), closes it, and then lowers it to create suction in the upper trachea and oral cavity. Glottalic ingressives are called implosives, although they may involve zero airflow rather than actual inflow. Because the air column would flow forwards over the descending glottis, it is not necessary to fully close it, and implosives may be voiced; indeed, voiceless implosives are exceedingly rare.

It is usual for implosives to be voiced. Instead of keeping the glottis tightly closed, it is tensed but left slightly open to allow a thin stream of air through. Unlike pulmonic voiced sounds, in which a stream of air passes through a usually-fixed glottis, in voiced implosives a mobile glottis passes over a nearly motionless air column to cause vibration of the vocal cords. Phonations that are more open than modal voice, such as breathy voice, are not conducive to glottalic sounds because in these the glottis is held relatively open, allowing air to readily flow through and preventing a significant pressure difference from building up behind the articulator.

Because the oral cavity is so much smaller than the lungs, vowels and approximants cannot be pronounced with glottalic initiation. So-called glottalized vowels and other sonorants use the more common pulmonic egressive airstream mechanism.

There is no clear divide between pulmonic and glottalic sounds. Some languages may have consonants which are intermediate. For example, glottalized consonants in London English, such as the t in rat [ˈɹæʔt], may be weakly ejective. Similarly, fully voiced stops in languages such as Thai, Zulu, and Maidu are weakly implosive. This ambiguity does not occur with the next airstream mechanism, lingual, which is clearly distinct from pulmonic sounds.[9]

Lingual (velaric) initiation

The third form of initiation in human language is lingual or velaric initiation, where a sound is produced by a closure at two places of articulation, and the airstream is formed by movement of the body of the tongue. Lingual stops are more commonly known as clicks, and are almost universally ingressive. The word lingual is derived from Latin lingua, which means tongue.

To produce a

lateral click
).

Lingual egressive initiation is performed by reversing the sequence of a lingual ingressive: the front and back of the tongue (or lips and back of the tongue) seal off the vocal cavity, and the cheeks and middle of the tongue move inward and upward to increase oral pressure. The only attested use of a lingual egressive is a bilabial nasal egressive click in Damin. Transcribing this also requires the use of the Extended IPA, [ŋʘ↑].

Since the air pocket used to initiate lingual consonants is so small, it is not thought to be possible to produce lingual

fricatives,[citation needed
] vowels, or other sounds which require continuous airflow.

Clicks may be

voiced, but they are more easily nasalized
. This may be because the vocal cavity behind the rearmost closure, behind which the air passing through the glottis for voicing must be contained, is so small that clicks cannot be voiced for long. Allowing the airstream to pass through the nose enables a longer production.

Nasal clicks involve a combination of lingual and pulmonic mechanisms. The velum is lowered so as to direct pulmonic airflow through the nasal cavity during the lingual initiation. This nasal airflow may itself be egressive or ingressive, independently of the lingual initiation of the click. Nasal clicks may be voiced, but are very commonly unvoiced and even aspirated, which is rare for purely pulmonic nasals.

Airstream contours

In some treatments, complex clicks are posited to have airstream

linguo-glottalic
consonants, where the rear release is an ejective such as [qʼ] or [qχʼ].

Not only are simultaneous (rather than contour) implosive clicks possible, i.e. velar (e.g. [ɠ͡ǀ]), uvular ([ʛ͡ǀ]), and de facto front-closed palatal ([ʄ͡ǀ]), but velar implosive clicks are easier to produce than modally voiced clicks. However, they are not attested in any language.[10]

Percussive consonants

Consonants may be pronounced without any airstream mechanism. These are percussive consonants, where the sound is generated by one organ striking another. Percussive consonants are not phonemic in any known language, though the

sublingual percussive [¡] (a tongue slap) that appears allophonically in the release of alveolar clicks in the Sandawe language of Tanzania.[11]

Percussive consonants
Bilabial Bidental
Sublingual
ʬ ʭ ¡ⓘ

See also

References

  1. doi:10.3109/00016484809122642
  2. OCLC 347249
  3. PMID 4698378
  4. ^ a b Pike, Kenneth (1943). Phonetics. Michigan. pp. 103–5.
  5. ^ Ian Maddieson (2008) "Presence of Uncommon Consonants". In: Martin Haspelmath & Matthew S. Dryer & David Gil & Bernard Comrie (eds.) The World Atlas of Language Structures Online. Munich: Max Planck Digital Library, chapter 19. Available online at http://wals.info/feature/19. Accessed on 18 January 2011
  6. ^ Robert Eklund
  7. ^ Ogden (2009) An Introduction to English Phonetics, p. 9, 164.
  8. ^ Ogden p. 164
  9. ISBN 0-631-19815-6
    .
  10. ^ Kenneth Pike, ed. Ruth Brend (1972) Selected Writings: To Commemorate the 60th Birthday of Kenneth Lee Pike. p. 226
  11. ^ Wright, Richard, Ian Maddieson, Peter Ladefoged, Bonny Sands (1995). "A phonetic study of Sandawe clicks", UCLA Working Papers in Phonetics, No. 91: Fieldwork Studies in Targeted Languages III.

External links

  • Eating the Wind: a satirical, but illustrative example of sound symbolism and iconicity of airstream mechanisms.
  • [1]: 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.
  • [2]: Robert Eklund's website devoted to ingressive speech. Maps, sound files, and spectrograms.
  • [3]: Samples of ingressive pulmonic interjections from Northern Sweden
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