Epiglottal plosive

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The epiglottal plosive is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ⟨ʡ⟩.

[edit] Features

The epiglottis is labelled as "12" in this diagram.

Features of the epiglottal plosive:

Its manner of articulation is stop, or plosive, which means it is produced by obstructing airflow in the vocal tract. (The term plosive contrasts with nasal stops, where the blocked airflow is redirected through the nose.)
Its place of articulation is epiglottal, which means it is articulated with the aryepiglottic folds against the epiglottis.
It has no defined phonation, although it is typically voiceless, which means it is produced without vibrations of the vocal cords. Voiced epiglottal "stops" tend toward being epiglottal flaps.
It is an oral consonant, which means air is allowed to escape through the mouth only.
Because the sound is not produced with airflow over the tongue, the central–lateral dichotomy does not apply.
The airstream mechanism is pulmonic, which means it is articulated by pushing air solely with the lungs and diaphragm, as in most sounds.

Language	Word	IPA	Meaning
Dahalo^[1]	[ndoːʡo]		'floor'
Haida	g̱antl	[ʡʌntɬ]	'water'
Jah Hut^[2]	[ɲhɔːʡ]		'tree'

^ Maddieson et al. (1993)
^ Diffloth, Gerard.1976a. Minor-syllably vocalism in Senoic languages. In Jenner et al., Vol. I, pp 229-2480

Maddieson, Ian; Spajić, Siniša; Sands, Bonny; Ladefoged, Peter (1993), "Phonetic structures of Dahalo", in Maddieson, Ian, UCLA working papers in phonetics: Fieldwork studies of targeted languages, 84, Los Angeles: The UCLA Phonetics Laboratory Group, pp. 25–65