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| Aspirated | |
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Inphonetics,aspiration is the strong burst ofbreath that accompanies either the release or, in the case ofpreaspiration, theclosure of someobstruents. In English, aspiratedconsonants areallophones incomplementary distribution with their unaspirated counterparts, but in some other languages, notably mostSouth Asian languages andEast Asian languages, the difference iscontrastive.
In theInternational Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), aspirated consonants are written using the symbols forvoiceless consonants followed by theaspiration modifier letter ⟨◌ʰ⟩, asuperscript form of the symbol for thevoiceless glottal fricative ⟨h⟩. For instance, ⟨p⟩ represents the voicelessbilabial stop, and ⟨pʰ⟩ represents the aspirated bilabial stop.
Voiced consonants are seldom actually aspirated. Symbols forvoiced consonants followed by ⟨◌ʰ⟩, such as ⟨bʰ⟩, typically represent consonants withmurmured voiced release (seebelow). In thegrammatical tradition ofSanskrit, aspirated consonants are calledvoiceless aspirated, and breathy-voiced consonants are calledvoiced 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 ⟨kʰkʰʰ⟩ 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 ortenuis consonants are occasionally marked with the modifier letter for unaspiration ⟨◌˭⟩, asuperscriptequals sign: ⟨t˭⟩. Usually, however, unaspirated consonants are left unmarked: ⟨t⟩.
Voiceless consonants are produced with thevocal folds open (spread) and not vibrating, and voiced consonants are produced when the vocal folds are fractionally closed and vibrating (modal voice). Voiceless aspiration occurs when the vocal folds remain open after a consonant is released. An easy way to measure this is by noting the consonant'svoice onset time, as the voicing of a following vowel cannot begin until the vocal folds close.
In some languages, such asNavajo, 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, inEastern Armenian, aspiration is contrastive even word-finally, and aspirated consonants occur inconsonant clusters. InWahgi, consonants are aspirated only when they are in final position.
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 andCantonese 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. (Seevoice onset time.)
Aspiration varies withplace of articulation. The Spanish voiceless stops/ptk/ have voice onset times (VOTs) of about 5, 10, and 30 milliseconds, and English aspirated/ptk/ have VOTs of about 60, 70, and 80 ms. Voice onset time in Korean has been measured at 20, 25, and 50 ms for/ptk/ and 90, 95, and 125 for/pʰtʰkʰ/.[2]
When aspirated consonants are doubled orgeminated, 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.
Icelandic andFaroese have consonants withpreaspiration[ʰpʰtʰk], and some scholars[who?] interpret them as consonant clusters as well. In Icelandic, preaspirated stopscontrast 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 ofScottish Gaelic:
| Word | IPA | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| cat | [kʰɑʰt] | cat |
Preaspirated stops also occur in mostSami languages. For example, inNorthern Sami, the unvoiced stop and affricate phonemes/p/,/t/,/ts/,/tʃ/,/k/ are pronounced preaspirated ([ʰp],[ʰt][ʰts],[ʰtʃ],[ʰk]) in medial or final position.
Although most aspirated obstruents in the world's languages are stops and affricates,aspirated fricatives such as[sʰ],[ɸʷʰ] and[ɕʰ] have been documented inKorean andXuanzhou Wu, and[xʰ] has been described for Spanish,[3] though these are allophones of other phonemes. Similarly, aspirated fricatives and even aspirated nasals, approximants, and trills occur in a fewTibeto-Burman languages, someOto-Manguean languages, theHmongic languageHmu, theSiouan languageOfo, and theChumashan languagesBarbareño andVentureño. Some languages, such asChoni Tibetan, have as many as four contrastive aspirated fricatives[sʰ][ɕʰ],[ʂʰ] and[xʰ].[4]
True aspirated voiced consonants, as opposed tomurmured (breathy-voice) consonants such as the[bʱ],[dʱ],[ɡʱ] that are common among thelanguages of India, are extremely rare. They have been documented inKelabit.[5]
Aspiration has varying significance in different languages. It is either allophonic or phonemic, and may be analyzed as anunderlying consonant cluster.
In some languages, stops are distinguished primarily byvoicing,[citation needed] and voiceless stops are sometimes aspirated, while voiced stops are usually unaspirated.
Englishvoicelessstops are aspirated for most native speakers when they are word-initial or begin astressed syllable. Pronouncing them as unaspirated in these positions, as is done by manyIndian English speakers, may make them get confused with the corresponding voiced stop by other English-speakers.[citation needed] Conversely, this confusion does not happen with the native speakers of languages which have aspirated and unaspirated but not voiced stops, such asMandarin Chinese.
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 inPashto are slightly aspirated prevocalically in a stressed syllable.
In many languages, such asHindi, tenuis and aspirated consonants arephonemic. Unaspirated consonants like[p˭s˭] and aspirated consonants like[pʰʰpsʰ] are separate phonemes, and wordsare distinguished by whether they have one or the other.
Alemannic German dialects have unaspirated[p˭t˭k˭] as well as aspirated[pʰtʰkʰ]; the latter series are usually viewed asconsonant clusters.
French,[6]Standard Dutch,[7]Afrikaans,Tamil,Finnish,Portuguese,Italian,Spanish,Russian,Polish,Latvian andModern Greek are languages that do not have phonetic aspirated consonants.
Standard Chinese (Mandarin) has stops and affricates distinguished by aspiration: for instance,/ttʰ/,/t͡st͡sʰ/. Inpinyin, tenuis stops are written with letters that represent voiced consonants in English, and aspirated stops with letters that represent voiceless consonants. Thusd represents/t/, andt represents/tʰ/.
Wu Chinese andSouthern Min has a three-way distinction in stops and affricates:/ppʰb/. In addition to aspirated and unaspirated consonants, there is a series ofmuddy consonants, like/b/. These are pronounced withslack orbreathy voice: that is, they are weakly voiced. Muddy consonants asinitial cause a syllable to be pronounced with low pitch orlight (陽yáng) tone.
ManyIndo-Aryan languages have aspirated stops.Sanskrit,Hindustani,Bengali,Marathi, andGujarati have a four-way distinction in stops: voiceless, aspirated, voiced, and voiced aspirated, such as/ppʰbbʱ/.Punjabi has lost voiced aspirated consonants, which resulted in atone system, and therefore has a distinction between voiceless, aspirated, and voiced:/ppʰb/.
Other languages such asTelugu,Malayalam, andKannada, 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.
Most dialects ofArmenian have aspirated stops, and some have breathy-voiced stops.
Classical andEastern Armenian have a three-way distinction between voiceless, aspirated, and voiced, such as/ttʰd/.
Western Armenian has a two-way distinction between aspirated and voiced:/tʰd/. Western Armenian aspirated/tʰ/ corresponds to Eastern Armenian aspirated/tʰ/ and voiced/d/, and Western voiced/d/ corresponds to Eastern voiceless/t/.
Ancient Greek, including theClassical Attic andKoine Greek dialects, had a three-way distinction in stops like Eastern Armenian:/ttʰd/. These series were calledψιλά,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/pʰtʰkʰ/. Earlier Greek, represented byMycenaean 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, andArcadocypriot, 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/tʰd/ of Attic Greeklenited to voiceless and voiced fricatives, yielding/θð/ inMedieval andModern 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]
The termaspiration sometimes refers to the sound change ofdebuccalization, in which a consonant islenited (weakened) to become aglottal stop orfricative[ʔhɦ].
So-called voiced aspirated consonants are nearly always pronounced instead withbreathy voice, a type ofphonation or vibration of thevocal folds. The modifier letter ⟨◌ʰ⟩ after a voiced consonant actually represents a breathy-voiced or murmured consonant, as with the "voiced aspirated" bilabial stop ⟨bʰ⟩ in theIndo-Aryan languages. This consonant is therefore more accurately transcribed as ⟨b̤⟩, with the diacritic for breathy voice, or with the modifier letter ⟨bʱ⟩, a superscript form of the symbol for thevoiced glottal fricative ⟨ɦ⟩.
Some linguists restrict the double-dot subscript ⟨◌̤⟩ to murmuredsonorants, such asvowels andnasals, which are murmured throughout their duration, and use the superscript hook-aitch ⟨◌ʱ⟩ for the breathy-voiced release of obstruents.
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