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 , 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 and are the most frequently missing, being absent in about 10% of languages that otherwise have this pattern. The former is an
areal feature (see
). Missing , 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 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 for as long as it is in or . This could have two effects: and might become confused, and the distinction is lost, or perhaps a 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 is much rarer than voiceless .)
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.
In English, the sound is denoted by the letter 'g' as in
gum or
bag. However, the letter 'g' does not always denote the sound When followed by 'i' or 'e' or preceded by 'd' it sometimes denotes the
affricate 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 , as in
singer and
rung, but not
finger.
The sound is a common sound cross-linguistically. Many languages have at least a plain , and some distinguish more than one variety. Many
Indian languages, such as
Hindi, have a contrast between
breathy voice and modal voice .
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.
*
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