Jump to content

Voiced velar plosive

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by 84.120.160.71 (talk) at 14:21, 4 June 2008. The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

IPA number110
Audio sample
Encoding
X-SAMPAg
Image

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. 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.

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.[citation needed] The former is an areal feature (see Voiceless bilabial plosive).[citation needed] Missing [ɡ], on the other hand, is widely scattered around the world.[citation needed] (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].[citation needed] 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.[citation needed] (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][citation needed]). Many Indian languages, such as Hindi, have a two-way contrast between aspirated and plain [g].

Features

Features of the voiced velar plosive:

Varieties of [ɡ]

IPA Description
ɡ plain g
ɡʱ or ɡ̈ breathy voiced or murmured g
ɡʲ palatalized g
ɡʷ labialized g
ɡ̚ unreleased g
ɡ̊ voiceless or slack voice g

Occurrence

Language Word IPA Meaning Notes
Abkhaz ажыга [aˈʐəɡa] 'shovel' See Abkhaz phonology
Arabic[1] Egyptian راجل [ɾˤɑːˈɡil] 'man' See Arabic phonology
Some Yemeni dialects قال [ɡɑːl] 'he said'
Catalan[2] gros [ˈɡɾɔs] 'large' See Catalan phonology
Czech gram [ɡram] 'gramme' See Czech phonology
Dutch[3] zakdoek [ˈzɑɡduk] 'handkerchief' See Dutch phonology
English gash [ˈɡæʃ] 'gash' See English phonology
French[4] gain [ɡɛ̃] 'earnings' See French phonology
Georgian[5] ული [ˈɡuli] 'back'
German ge [ˈlyːɡə] 'lie' See German phonology
Greek γκάρισμα [ˈɡarizma] 'donkey's bray' See Modern Greek phonology
Hindi गाना [ɡɑnɑ] 'song' See Hindi-Urdu phonology
Hungarian engedély [ɛŋɡɛdeːj] 'permission' See Hungarian phonology
Italian[6] gare [ˈɡare] 'competitions' See Italian phonology
Japanese[7] がん•癌/gan [ɡaɴ] 'cancer' See Japanese phonology
Norwegian gull [ɡʉl] 'gull' See Norwegian phonology
Polish[8] gmin [ɡmʲin] 'plebs' See Polish phonology
Portuguese[9] língua [ˈlĩɡwɐ] 'tongue' See Portuguese phonology
Russian[10] голова [ɡəlɐˈva] 'head' See Russian phonology
Somali gaabi [ɡaːbi] 'to shorten' See Somali phonology
Spanish[11] guerra [ˈɡɛra] 'cat' See Spanish phonology
Turkish göl [ɡœl] 'lake' See Turkish phonology

See also

References

  1. ^ Watson (2002:16-17)
  2. ^ Carbonell & Llisterri (1992:53)
  3. ^ Gussenhoven (1992:45)
  4. ^ Fougeron & Smith (1993:73)
  5. ^ Shosted & Chikovani (2006:255)
  6. ^ Rogers & d'Arcangeli (2004:117)
  7. ^ Okada (1991:94)
  8. ^ Jassem (2003:103)
  9. ^ Cruz-Ferreira (1995:91)
  10. ^ Padgett (2003:42)
  11. ^ Martínez-Celdrán et al (2003:255)

Bibliography