B07 Sound patterns in Human Language: Airstream mechanisms

Most sounds in speech (and all we have met) arise from movement of air outwards from the lungs. These can be classed together as pulmonic egressive sounds (pulmonic = lung based, egressive = outwards tending). Other ways of moving air are possible.

Pulmonic ingressive

Speak while breathing in. Sounds odd, and is a little hard to control. This is not used regularly in languages, but you can do a pulmonic ingressive uvular trill if you try (that's a snore).

Glottalic egressive sounds: ejectives

The articulatory description of this sounds complex, but when you hear these sounds made, they are easy to imitate. The glottis and velar port are closed, so that no air flows into or out of the lungs or nasal cavity. Then a stop-like occlusion is made. Pressure behind the stop closure is raised by raising the glottis, so that when the stop is released, there is a little plosive burst. Then the glottal stop is released. Because the glottis is closed, these sounds are written with symbols derived from the voiceless stop series by adding an apostrophe: /p',t',k'/. They are called ejectives. Tobacco chewers often make a non-linguistic /t'/ when spitting (do not try this at home....).

Hausa is the principal language of Northern Nigeria. It features regular /k/ and /g/ as well as /k'/. Shona (a Bantu language of Zimbabwe), Amharic (Ethiopia), several native American languages (e.g. Lakhota) and some languages of the Caucasus all have ejectives. Ejective fricatives are possible too, though considerably more rare. You can find several examples in the Sounds of the World's Languages database.

Interested in Lakhota? Here is a list of Native American language resources on the internet

And here is one starting point for finding out about African Languages

Glottal ingressive sounds: implosives

One way to make a noise is to seal off a cavity, increase the pressure in it, then release the obstruction, producing an explosion. This is used in all stops we have looked at so far. An alternative is to reduce the pressure in the sealed cavity, so that there is a little implosion when it is released. This can be done with glotallic sounds, and it requires the speaker to lower the glottis once the velum and oral cavity have been sealed off. This usually causes some air to move between the vocal folds, and so these sounds are voiced. The symbols /, , / are used for the three most common implosives.

A heavily emphasized /b/ in English can turn out as a //. I associate this with a Texas accent, though I have no objective basis for this. Implosives can be either simply allophonic variants of /b,d,g/ (as in Vietnamese) or they may be phonemic (several African and Native American languages).

One language with implosives is Shindi, spoken in India and Pakistan. Here is a resource for Sindhi culture.

If a language has only one implosive, it will be //, with // the next most likely. That is, implosives "like" to have a constriction towards the front of the vocal tract. This contrasts with egressives, where /k'/ is the most common sound, followed by /t'/ and then /p'/.

Velaric airstream mechanism: clicks

A rare class of sound which are rather famous are the clicks, found in some sub-saharan African languages, and brought to popular attention in this country through the film "The Gods Must be Crazy". In these, a small cavity is sealed off in the mouth by raising the back of the tongue to the velum, and closing at the front with the front/blade of the tongue or with the lips. Then the jaw is lowered or the tongue depressed so as to create lowered pressure, and hence an implosion on release. That makes these velaric ingressive sounds. Sound hard, but most of these are familiar.

Dental click: // (vertical bar).
Often transcribed "tut-tut" or "tsk-tsk", this sound is used to mark disapproval in English. The tip of the tongue touches the back of the upper teeth, or protrudes through them.

Lateral click: // (2 vertical bars).
Same tongue position, but the release is at the sides of the tongue. This sound is sometimes used to encourage a horse to speed up.

Alveolar click: /!/
Tongue tip against the alveolar ridge. This click is probably the loudest click-like sound you can make. This might make the horse go even faster:-(

Bilabial click: //
A kiss is but a kiss........ And so is a bilabial click!

Because articulatory definitions like these, or as given in Ladefoged, do not help much in making these sounds, you are strongly encouraged to use the Macintosh software "Sounds of the World's Languages" (and the accompanying "A Course in Phonetics") to listen to these and imitate them. Try the language Xhosa in SWOL for starters. You should be able to produce a simple click-vowel sequence like /!a/ or /o/.

Information on the San minority of Botswana (a.k.a. bushmen) is available here.

Most click languages are in the Khosian family. Here is a small page devoted to Khosian languages.

This page has been developed by Fred Cummins, Department of Linguistics, 2016 Sheridan Road, to whom all questions should be referred.
Copyright (1998) Northwestern University

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