The occlusion may be made with the tongue tip or blade ([t],[d]), tongue body ([k],[ɡ]), lips ([p],[b]), or glottis ([ʔ]). Plosives contrast withnasals, where the vocal tract is blocked but airflow continues through the nose, as in/m/ and/n/, and withfricatives, where partial occlusion impedes but does not block airflow in the vocal tract.
The termsstop, occlusive, andplosive are often used interchangeably. Linguists who distinguish them may not agree on the distinction being made. Note that "stop" refers to the stopping of the airflow, "occlusive" to the articulation which occludes (blocks) the vocal tract, while "plosive" refers to the plosion (release burst) of the consonant. Some object to the use of "plosive" forinaudibly released stops, which may then instead be called "applosives". TheInternational Phonetic Association and theInternational Clinical Phonetics and Linguistics Association use the term "plosive".
Either "occlusive" or "stop" may be used as a general term covering the other together with nasals. That is, 'occlusive' may be defined asoral occlusive (plosives andaffricates) plus nasal occlusives (nasals such as[m],[n]), or 'stop' may be defined as oral stops (plosives) plus nasal stops (nasals).Ladefoged andMaddieson (1996) prefer to restrict 'stop' to oral non-affricated occlusives. They say,[1]
what we call simply nasals are called nasal stops by some linguists. We avoid this phrase, preferring to reserve the term 'stop' for sounds in which there is a complete interruption of airflow.
If a term such as "plosive" is used for oral non-affricated obstruents, and nasals are not called nasal stops, then astop may mean theglottal stop; "plosive" may even mean non-glottal stop. In other cases, however, it may be the word "plosive" that is restricted to the glottal stop. Generally speaking, plosives do not have plosion (a release burst). In English, for example, there are plosives withno audible release, such as the/p/ inapt. However, English plosives do have plosion in other environments.
InAncient Greek, the term for plosive wasἄφωνον (áphōnon),[3] which means "unpronounceable", "voiceless", or "silent", because plosives could not be pronounced without a vowel. This term wascalqued intoLatin asmūta, and from there borrowed into English asmute.[4]Mute was sometimes used instead for voiceless consonants, whether plosives or fricatives, a usage that was later replaced withsurd, from Latinsurdus "deaf" or "silent",[5] a term still occasionally seen in the literature.[6] For more information on the Ancient Greek terms, seeAncient Greek phonology § Terminology.
A plosive is typically analysed as having up to three phases:
Approach, during which articulators come together
Hold (or "occlusion" or "closure"), during which the articulators are held and block the airstream
Release (or "burst" or "plosion"), when the articulators are separated, releasing the compressed air[7]
Only the hold phase is requisite. A plosive may lack an approach when it is preceded by a consonant that involves an occlusion at the same place of articulation, as in[d] inend orold. In many languages, such asMalay andVietnamese, word-final plosives lack a release burst, even when followed by a vowel, or have anasal release. Seeno audible release.
Inaffricates, the catch and hold are those of a plosive, but the release is that of africative. That is, affricates are plosive–fricativecontours.
All spoken natural languages in the world have plosives,[8] and most have at least the voiceless plosives[p],[t], and[k]. However, there are exceptions: ColloquialSamoan lacks thecoronal[t], and several North American languages, such as theIroquoian languages (e.g.,Mohawk andCherokee), andArabic lack thelabial[p]. In fact, the labial is the least stable of the voiceless plosives 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 ofClassical Japanese,Classical Arabic, andProto-Celtic, for instance. FormalSamoan has only one word withvelar[k]; colloquial Samoan conflates/t/ and/k/ to/k/.Ni‘ihauHawaiian has[t] for/k/ to a greater extent thanStandard 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 plosives than to say they lack one or the other.
Ontena Gadsup has only 1 phonemic plosive/ʔ/.[9][10]Yanyuwa distinguishes plosives in 7 places of articulations/bd̪dḏɖɡ̟ɡ̠/ (it does not have voiceless plosives) which is the most out of all languages.[11]
SeeCommon occlusives for the distribution of both plosives and nasals.
Voiced plosives are pronounced with vibration of thevocal cords,voiceless plosives without. Plosives are commonly voiceless, and many languages, such asMandarin Chinese andHawaiian, have only voiceless plosives. Others, such as mostAustralian languages, are indeterminate: plosives may vary between voiced and voiceless without distinction, some of them likeYanyuwa andYidiny have only voiced plosives.
Inaspirated plosives, thevocal cords (vocal folds) are abducted at the time of release. In a prevocalic aspirated plosive (a plosive 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 plosive and the voice onset is called thevoice onset time (VOT) or theaspiration interval. Highly aspirated plosives have a long period of aspiration, so that there is a long period of voiceless airflow (a phonetic[h]) before the onset of the vowel. Intenuis plosives, 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). In English, there may be a brief segment of breathy voice that identifies the plosive as voiceless and not voiced. In voiced plosives, the vocal folds are set for voice before the release, and often vibrate during the entire hold, and in English, the voicing after release is not breathy. A plosive 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, and word-final plosives tend to be fully devoiced: In most dialects of English, the final /b/, /d/ and /g/ in words likerib,mad anddog are fully devoiced.[12] Initial voiceless plosives, like thep inpie, are aspirated, with a palpable puff of air upon release, whereas a plosive after ans, as inspy, istenuis (unaspirated). When spoken near a candle flame, the flame will flicker more after the wordspar, tar, andcar are articulated, compared withspar, star, andscar. In the common pronunciation ofpapa, the initialp is aspirated whereas the medialp is not.
In ageminate orlong consonant, the occlusion lasts longer than in simple consonants. In languages where plosives are only distinguished by length (e.g., Arabic, Ilwana, Icelandic), the long plosives may be held up to three times as long as the short plosives.Italian is well known for its geminate plosives, as the doublet in the nameVittoria takes just as long to say as thect does in EnglishVictoria.Japanese also prominently features geminate consonants, such as in the minimal pair 来たkita 'came' and 切ったkitta 'cut'.Estonian is unusual for contrasting three lengths, as in the minimal tripletkabi/kɑpi/ 'hoof',kapi/kɑpːi/ 'wardrobe [gen. sg.]', andkappi/kɑpːːi/ 'wardrobe [ill. sg.]'.[13]
There are many languages where the features voice, aspiration, and length reinforce each other, and in such cases it may be hard to determine which of these features predominates. In such cases, the termsfortis is sometimes used for aspiration or gemination, whereaslenis is used for single, tenuous, or voiced plosives. However, the termsfortis andlenis are poorly defined, and their meanings vary from source to source.
Simplenasals are differentiated from plosives only by a loweredvelum that allows the air to escape through the nose during the occlusion. Nasals are acousticallysonorants, as they have a non-turbulent airflow and are nearly always voiced, but they are articulatorilyobstruents, as there is complete blockage of the oral cavity. The termocclusive may be used as a cover term for both nasals and plosives.
Aprenasalized stop starts out with a lowered velum that raises during the occlusion. The closest examples in English are consonant clusters such as the [nd] incandy, but many languages have prenasalized stops that function phonologically as single consonants.Swahili is well known for having words beginning with prenasalized stops, as inndege 'bird', and in many languages of the South Pacific, such asFijian, these are even spelled with single letters:b [mb],d [nd].
Apostnasalized plosive begins with a raised velum that lowers during the occlusion. This causes an audible nasalrelease, as in Englishsudden. This could also be compared to the /dn/ cluster found inRussian and other Slavic languages, which can be seen in the name of theDnieper River.
The termsprenasalization andpostnasalization are normally used only in languages where these sounds are phonemic: that is, not analyzed into sequences of plosive plus nasal.
Afortis plosive is produced with more muscular tension than alenis plosive. 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 plosives in theKorean language, 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 plosives. The indirect evidence for stiff voice is in the following vowels, which have a higher fundamental frequency than those following other plosives. The higher frequency is explained as a result of the glottis being tense. Other suchphonation types includebreathy voice, or murmur;slack voice; andcreaky voice.
^Collins, Beverly; Mees, Inger M. (2013).Practical Phonetics and Phonology: A Resource Book for Students (3rd ed.). Routledge. pp. 85–6.ISBN978-0-415-50650-2.
