Voiced velar plosive: Encyclopedia - Voiced velar plosive

Voiced velar plosive

The voiced velar plosive is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ɡ, and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is g.

Of the six plosives that would be expected from the most common pattern world-wide, that is, three places of articulation plus voicing ([p b, t d, k ɡ]), [p] and [ɡ] are the most frequently missing, being absent in about 10% of languages that otherwise have this pattern. The former is an areal feature (see [p]). Missing [ɡ], on the other hand, is widely scattered around the world. (A few languages, such as Modern Standard Arabic and Ket, are missing both.) It seems that [ɡ] is somewhat more difficult to articulate than the other basic plosives. Ian Maddieson speculates that this may be due to a physical difficulty in voicing velars: Voicing requires that air flow into the mouth cavity, and the relatively small space allowed by the position of velar consonants means that it will fill up with air quickly, making voicing difficult to maintain in [ɡ] for as long as it is in [d] or [b]. This could have two effects: [ɡ] and [k] might become confused, and the distinction is lost, or perhaps a [ɡ] never develops when a language first starts making voicing distinctions. (Note that with uvulars, where there is even less space between the glottis and tongue for airflow, the imbalance is more extreme: Voiced [ɢ] is much rarer than voiceless [q].)

(If in the box IPA-text to the right you see a symbol resembling an upper-case Y rather than a lower-case g, you are experiencing a well-known bug in the font MS Reference Sans Serif; switching to Lucida Sans Unicode or Arial Unicode should fix it.)

Voiced velar plosive - Features

Features of the voiced velar plosive:

• Its manner of articulation is plosive or stop, which means it is produced by obstructing airflow in the vocal tract.
• Its place of articulation is velar which means it is articulated with the back part of the tongue (the dorsum) against the soft palate (the velum).
• Its phonation type is voiced, which means it is produced while the vocal cords are vibrating.
• It is an oral consonant, which means air is allowed to escape through the mouth.
• It is a central consonant, which means it is produced by allowing the airstream to flow over the middle of the tongue, rather than the sides.
• The airstream mechanism is pulmonic egressive, which means it is articulated by pushing air out of the lungs and through the vocal tract, rather than from the glottis or the mouth.

Voiced velar plosive - Varieties of [ɡ]

Voiced velar plosive - In English

In English, the sound [ɡ] is denoted by the letter 'g' as in gum or bag. However, the letter 'g' does not always denote the sound [ɡ]. When followed by 'i' or 'e' or preceded by 'd' it sometimes denotes the affricate [d͡ʒ], as in gin and judgement. When preceded by 'n' and occurring at the end of a morpheme, it often becomes the digraph 'ng', which denotes the velar nasal [ŋ], as in singer and rung, but not finger.

Voiced velar plosive - In other languages

The [ɡ] sound is a common sound cross-linguistically. Many languages have at least a plain [ɡ], and some distinguish more than one variety. Many Indian languages, such as Hindi, have a contrast between breathy voice and modal voice [ɡ].

Voiced velar plosive - The symbol

Strictly, the IPA symbol is the so-called "opentail G" , though the "looptail G" is considered an acceptable alternative. The Unicode character "Latin small letter G" (U+0067) renders as either an opentail G or a looptail G depending on font, while the character "Latin small letter script G" (U+0261) is always an opentail G, but is generally available only in fonts with the IPA Extensions character block.

See also

• List of phonetics topics

Categories: Pages containing IPA | Consonants

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Voiced velar plosive", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki