Aspirated consonant
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| Aspirated | |
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| ◌ʰ | |
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| Entity (decimal) | ʰ |
| Unicode (hex) | U+02B0 |
In
Transcription
In the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), aspirated consonants are written using the symbols for voiceless consonants followed by the aspiration modifier letter ⟨◌ʰ⟩, a superscript form of the symbol for the voiceless glottal fricative ⟨h⟩. For instance, ⟨p⟩ represents the voiceless bilabial stop, and ⟨pʰ⟩ represents the aspirated bilabial stop.
, aspirated consonants are called voiceless aspirated, and breathy-voiced consonants are called voiced aspirated.There are no dedicated IPA symbols for degrees of aspiration and typically only two degrees are marked: unaspirated ⟨k⟩ and aspirated ⟨kʰ⟩. An old symbol for light aspiration was ⟨ʻ⟩, but this is now obsolete. The aspiration modifier letter may be doubled to indicate especially strong or long aspiration. Hence, the two degrees of aspiration in Korean stops are sometimes transcribed ⟨kʰ kʰʰ⟩ or ⟨kʻ⟩ and ⟨kʰ⟩, but they are usually transcribed [k] and [kʰ],[1] with the details of voice onset time given numerically.
Preaspirated consonants are marked by placing the aspiration modifier letter before the consonant symbol: ⟨ʰp⟩ represents the preaspirated bilabial stop.
Unaspirated or tenuis consonants are occasionally marked with the modifier letter for unaspiration ⟨◌˭⟩, a superscript equals sign: ⟨t˭⟩. Usually, however, unaspirated consonants are left unmarked: ⟨t⟩.
Phonetics
In some languages, such as Navajo, aspiration of stops tends to be phonetically realised as voiceless velar airflow; aspiration of affricates is realised as an extended length of the frication.
Aspirated consonants are not always followed by vowels or other voiced sounds. For example, in Eastern Armenian, aspiration is contrastive even word-finally, and aspirated consonants occur in consonant clusters. In Wahgi, consonants are aspirated only when they are in final position.
Degree
The degree of aspiration varies: the voice onset time of aspirated stops is longer or shorter depending on the language or the place of articulation.
Armenian and Cantonese have aspiration that lasts about as long as English aspirated stops, in addition to unaspirated stops. Korean has lightly aspirated stops that fall between the Armenian and Cantonese unaspirated and aspirated stops as well as strongly-aspirated stops whose aspiration lasts longer than that of Armenian or Cantonese. (See voice onset time.)
Aspiration varies with place of articulation. The Spanish voiceless stops /p t k/ have voice onset times (VOTs) of about 5, 10, and 30 milliseconds, and English aspirated /p t k/ have VOTs of about 60, 70, and 80 ms. Voice onset time in Korean has been measured at 20, 25, and 50 ms for /p t k/ and 90, 95, and 125 for /pʰ tʰ kʰ/.[2]
Doubling
When aspirated consonants are doubled or geminated, the stop is held longer and then has an aspirated release. An aspirated affricate consists of a stop, fricative, and aspirated release. A doubled aspirated affricate has a longer hold in the stop portion and then has a release consisting of the fricative and aspiration.
Preaspiration
Icelandic and Faroese have consonants with preaspiration [ʰp ʰt ʰk], and some scholars[who?] interpret them as consonant clusters as well. In Icelandic, preaspirated stops contrast with double stops and single stops:
| Word | IPA | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| kapp | [kʰɑʰp] or [kʰɑhp] | zeal |
| gabb | [kɑpp] | hoax |
| gap | [kɑːp] | opening |
Preaspiration is also a feature of Scottish Gaelic:
| Word | IPA | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| cat | [kʰɑʰt] | cat |
Preaspirated stops also occur in most
Fricatives and sonorants
Although most aspirated obstruents in the world's languages are stops and affricates,
Voiced consonants with voiceless aspiration
True aspirated voiced consonants, as opposed to
Phonology
Aspiration has varying significance in different languages. It is either allophonic or phonemic, and may be analyzed as an underlying consonant cluster.
Allophonic
In some languages, stops are distinguished primarily by voicing,[citation needed] and voiceless stops are sometimes aspirated, while voiced stops are usually unaspirated.
S+consonant clusters can vary between aspirated and unaspirated forms depending on whether the cluster crosses a morpheme boundary. For example, distend features an unaspirated [t] because it is not analyzed as comprising two morphemes. In contrast, distaste includes an aspirated middle [tʰ] since it is analyzed as dis- + taste, and the word taste begins with an aspirated [t].
Word-final voiceless stops are sometimes aspirated.
Voiceless stops in Pashto are slightly aspirated prevocalically in a stressed syllable.
Phonemic
In many languages, such as
Consonant cluster
Alemannic German dialects have unaspirated [p˭ t˭ k˭] as well as aspirated [pʰ tʰ kʰ]; the latter series are usually viewed as consonant clusters.
Absence
French,[6] Standard Dutch,[7] Afrikaans, Tamil, Finnish, Portuguese, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Polish, Latvian and Modern Greek are languages that do not have phonetic aspirated consonants.
Examples
Chinese
Standard Chinese (Mandarin) has stops and affricates distinguished by aspiration: for instance, /t tʰ/, /t͡s t͡sʰ/. In pinyin, tenuis stops are written with letters that represent voiced consonants in English, and aspirated stops with letters that represent voiceless consonants. Thus d represents /t/, and t represents /tʰ/.
Wu Chinese and Southern Min has a three-way distinction in stops and affricates: /p pʰ b/. In addition to aspirated and unaspirated consonants, there is a series of muddy consonants, like /b/. These are pronounced with slack or breathy voice: that is, they are weakly voiced. Muddy consonants as initial cause a syllable to be pronounced with low pitch or light (陽 yáng) tone.
Indian languages
Many Indo-Aryan languages have aspirated stops. Sanskrit, Hindustani, Bengali, Marathi, and Gujarati have a four-way distinction in stops: voiceless, aspirated, voiced, and voiced aspirated, such as /p pʰ b bʱ/. Punjabi has lost voiced aspirated consonants, which resulted in a tone system, and therefore has a distinction between voiceless, aspirated, and voiced: /p pʰ b/.
Other languages such as Telugu, Malayalam, and Kannada, have a distinction between voiced and voiceless, aspirated and unaspirated. However, in all of these languages, aspirated consonant occur (mostly) in borrowed words, and commonly substituted with their unaspirated counterparts.
Armenian
Most dialects of Armenian have aspirated stops, and some have breathy-voiced stops.
Classical and Eastern Armenian have a three-way distinction between voiceless, aspirated, and voiced, such as /t tʰ d/.
Western Armenian has a two-way distinction between aspirated and voiced: /tʰ d/. Western Armenian aspirated /tʰ/ corresponds to Eastern Armenian aspirated /tʰ/ and voiced /d/, and Western voiced /d/ corresponds to Eastern voiceless /t/.
Greek
Ancient Greek, including the Classical Attic and Koine Greek dialects, had a three-way distinction in stops like Eastern Armenian: /t tʰ d/. These series were called ψιλά, δασέα, μέσα (psilá, daséa, mésa) "smooth, rough, intermediate", respectively, by Koine Greek grammarians.
There were aspirated stops at three places of articulation: labial, coronal, and velar /pʰ tʰ kʰ/. Earlier Greek, represented by Mycenaean Greek, likely had a labialized velar aspirated stop /kʷʰ/, which later became labial, coronal, or velar depending on dialect and phonetic environment.
The other Ancient Greek dialects, Ionic, Doric, Aeolic, and Arcadocypriot, likely had the same three-way distinction at one point, but Doric seems to have had a fricative in place of /tʰ/ in the Classical period.
Later, during the Koine and Medieval Greek periods, the aspirated and voiced stops /tʰ d/ of Attic Greek lenited to voiceless and voiced fricatives, yielding /θ ð/ in Medieval and Modern Greek. Cypriot Greek is notable for aspirating its inherited (and developed across word-boundaries) voiceless geminate stops, yielding the series /pʰː tʰː cʰː kʰː/.[8]
Other uses
Debuccalization
The term aspiration sometimes refers to the sound change of debuccalization, in which a consonant is lenited (weakened) to become a glottal stop or fricative [ʔ h ɦ].
Breathy-voiced release
So-called voiced aspirated consonants are nearly always pronounced instead with
Some linguists restrict the double-dot subscript ⟨◌̤⟩ to murmured sonorants, such as vowels and nasals, which are murmured throughout their duration, and use the superscript hook-aitch ⟨◌ʱ⟩ for the breathy-voiced release of obstruents.
See also
- Aspirated h
- Breathy voice
- Implosive consonant
- List of phonetic topics
- Phonation
- Preaspiration
- Rough breathing
- Smooth breathing
- Tenuis consonant (Unaspirated consonant)
- Voice onset time
Notes
- ^ Ladefoged, Peter; Barbara Blankenship; Russell G. Schuh, eds. (21 April 2009). "Korean". UCLA Phonetics Archive. Retrieved 20 February 2015. word lists from 1977, 1966, 1975.
- .
- ^ Schwegler, Kempff & Ameal-Guerra (2010) Fonética y fonología españolas. John Wiley, 4th ed.
- ^ Guillaume Jacques 2011. A panchronic study of aspirated fricatives, with new evidence from Pumi, Lingua 121.9:1518–1538 [1]
- ^ Robert Blust, 2006, "The Origin of the Kelabit Voiced Aspirates: A Historical Hypothesis Revisited", Oceanic Linguistics 45:311
- ISBN 0-521-31510-7.
- ^ Frans Hinskens, Johan Taeldeman, Language and space: Dutch, Walter de Gruyter 2014. 3110261332, 9783110261332, p.66
- ^ Loukina, Anastassia (2005). "Phonetics and Phonology of Cypriot Geminates in Spontaneous Speech" (PDF). CamLing: 263–270.
References
- Cho, T., & Ladefoged, P., "Variations and universals in VOT". In Fieldwork Studies of Targeted Languages V: UCLA Working Papers in Phonetics vol. 95. 1997.
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