Voiceless glottal affricate

Voiceless glottal affricate
ʔh
IPA number 113 146
Encoding
X-SAMPA ?_h
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The voiceless glottal affricate is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbols in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represent this sound are ⟨ʔ͡h⟩ and ⟨ʔ͜h⟩, and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is ?_h. The tie bar is sometimes omitted, yielding ⟨ʔh⟩ in the IPA and ?h in X-SAMPA. This is potentially problematic in case of at least some affricates, because there are languages that contrast certain affricates with stop-fricative sequences. Polish words czysta ('clean (f.)', pronounced with an affricate /t͡ʂ/) and trzysta ('three hundred', pronounced with a sequence /tʂ/) are an example of a minimal pair based on such a contrast.

Features

Features of the voiceless glottal affricate:

  • Its manner of articulation is affricate, which means it is produced by first stopping the airflow entirely, then allowing air flow through a constricted channel at the place of articulation, causing turbulence.
  • Its phonation is voiceless, which means it is produced without vibrations of the vocal cords. In some languages the vocal cords are actively separated, so it is always voiceless; in others the cords are lax, so that it may take on the voicing of adjacent sounds.
  • It is an oral consonant, which means air is allowed to escape through the mouth only.
  • It is a central consonant, which means it is produced by directing the airstream along the center of the tongue, rather than to the sides.

Occurrence

Language Word IPA Meaning Notes
Chinese Yuxi dialect[1][2] 可 [ʔ͡ho˥˧] 'can, may' Corresponds to /kʰ/ in Standard Chinese.[2][3]
English Received Pronunciation[4] hat [ʔ͡haʔt] 'hat' Possible allophone of /h/, especially in stressed syllables.[4] See English phonology

Notes

  1. ↑ Yang (1969), pp. 393–394.
  2. 1 2 Colarusso (2012), p. 2.
  3. ↑ Yang (1969), p. 394.
  4. 1 2 Collins & Mees (2003), p. 148.

References

  • Colarusso, John (2012), The Typology of the Gutturals (PDF)
  • Collins, Beverley; Mees, Inger M. (2003) [First published 1981], The Phonetics of English and Dutch (PDF) (5th ed.), Leiden: Brill Publishers, ISBN 9004103406
  • Yang, Shifeng (1969), A Report of Investigating Dialects in Yunnan Province [雲南方言調查報告]
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