Unreleased stop

Unreleased stop
Unreleased
◌̚
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An unreleased stop or unreleased plosive is a plosive consonant without an audible release burst. That is, the oral tract is blocked to pronounce the consonant, and there is no audible indication of when that occlusion ends. In the International Phonetic Alphabet, unreleased consonants are denoted with an upper-right corner diacritic [ ̚ ] (U+031A  ̚ combining left angle above)[1] above the consonant letter: [p̚ ], [t̚ ], [k̚ ].

Contents

In English

In English, a plosive is unreleased (in most accents) before a homorganic nasal, as in catnip [ˈkæt̚nɪp]. Although the first in a cluster of plosives, as in apt or doctor, is also said to be unreleased in the speech of most English speakers, what's actually occurring is cross-articulations from articulatory overlap in consonant clusters that make the release inaudible.[2][3] This can lead to cross-articulations that seem very much like deletions or complete assimilations. For example, hundred pounds may sound like [hʌndɹɛb pʰaundz] but X-ray[4] and electropalatographic[5] studies demonstrate that inaudible and possibly weakened contacts may still be made so that the second /d/ in hundred pounds does not entirely assimilate a labial place of articulation, rather the labial co-occurs with the alveolar one.

The other languages

In most languages of East and Southeast Asia with final stops, such as Chinese (Cantonese[6], Taiwanese,[citation needed] etc.), Korean,[7] Malay,[citation needed] and Thai,[8] the stops are not released: mak [mak̚]. Unreleased final stops lack aspiration, neutralising the aspiration distinction between stop pairs such as p/b, k/g, t/d etc. in languages such as Cantonese. Some languages, such as Vietnamese, which are reported to have unreleased final stops, turn out to have short voiceless nasal releases instead.

Released plosives, on the other hand, are not normally indicated. If a final plosive is aspirated, the aspiration symbol [ʰ] is sufficient to indicate the release. Otherwise, the 'unaspirated' diacritic from the Extended IPA may be employed for this: apt [æp̚t˭].

The Formosan languages

The Formosan languages of Taiwan, such as Tsou and Amis, are unusual in that all obstruents are released, as in Tsou [ˈsip˭tɨ] "four" and [smuˈjuʔ˭tsu] "to pierce", or Amis [tsᵊtsaj] "one" and [sᵊpat˭] "four".

Notes

  1. ^ The International Phonetic Alphabet in Unicode, UCL Division of Psychology & Language Sciences, http://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/wells/ipa-unicode.htm 
  2. ^ Zsiga (2003:404)
  3. ^ Since the IPA diacritic in [p̚] indicates a lack of audible release, it is correctly used for words such as apt.
  4. ^ Browman & Goldstein (1990)
  5. ^ Nolan (1992)
  6. ^ Matthews, Stephen; Yip, Virginia (1994), Cantonese: A Comprehensive Grammar, London: Routledge, pp. 15–6, ISBN 0-415-08945-X 
  7. ^ Choo & O'Grady (2003:26)
  8. ^ Smyth, David (2003), Teach yourself Thai, London: Hodder & Stoughton, p. xii, ISBN 0-340-86857-0 

References

  • Browman, Catherine P.; Goldstein, Louis (1990), "Tiers in articulatory phonology, with some implications for casual speech", in Kingston, John C.; Beckman, Mary E., Papers in laboratory phonology I: Between the grammar and physics of speech, New York: Cambridge University Press, pp. 341–376 
  • Choo, Miho; O'Grady, William D. (2003), The Sounds of Korean: A Pronunciation Guide, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press 
  • Nolan, Francis (1992), "The descriptive role of segments: Evidence from assimilation.", in Docherty, Gerard J.; Ladd, D. Robert, Papers in laboratory phonology II: Gesture, segment, prosody, New York: Cambridge University Press, pp. 261–280 
  • Zsiga, Elizabeth (2003), "Articulatory Timing in a Second Language: Evidence from Russian and English", Studies in Second Language Acquisition 25: 399–432 

External links

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