Glottal consonant
| Places of articulation |
|---|
|
Labial |
| Bilabial |
| Labial–velar |
| Labial–coronal |
| Labiodental |
| Dentolabial |
|
Bidental |
|
Coronal |
| Linguolabial |
| Interdental |
| Dental |
| Denti-alveolar |
| Alveolar |
| Postalveolar |
| Palato-alveolar |
| Alveolo-palatal |
| Retroflex |
|
Dorsal |
| Palatal |
| Labial–palatal |
| Velar |
| Uvular |
| Uvular–epiglottal |
|
Radical |
| Pharyngeal |
| Epiglotto-pharyngeal |
| Epiglottal |
|
Glottal |
| Tongue shape |
|
Apical |
| Laminal |
| Subapical |
|
Lateral |
| Sulcal |
|
Palatal |
| Pharyngeal |
|
See also: Manner of articulation |
| This page contains phonetic information in IPA, which may not display correctly in some browsers. [Help] |
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Glottal consonants, also called laryngeal consonants, are consonants articulated with the glottis. Many phoneticians consider them, or at least the so-called fricative, to be transitional states of the glottis without a point of articulation as other consonants have; in fact, some do not consider them to be consonants at all. However, glottal consonants behave as typical consonants in many languages. For example, in Arabic, most words are formed from a root C-C-C consisting of three consonants, which are inserted into templates such as /CaːCiC/ or /maCCuːC/. The glottal consonants /h/ and /ʔ/ can occupy any of the three root consonant slots, just like "normal" consonants such as /k/ or /n/.
Contents |
[edit] Glottal consonant in IPA
Glottal consonants in the International Phonetic Alphabet:
| IPA | Description | Example | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Language | Orthography | IPA | Meaning | ||
 |
voiceless glottal stop | Hawaiian | ‘okina | [ʔo.ˈki.na] | ‘okina |
 |
breathy voiced glottal "fricative" | Czech | Praha | [ˈpra.ɦa] | Prague |
 |
voiceless glottal "fricative" | English | hat | [ˈhæt] | hat |
[edit] Characteristics
The "fricatives" are not true fricatives. This is a historical usage of the word. They instead represent transitional states of the glottis (phonation) without a specific place of articulation. [h] is a voiceless transition. [ɦ] is a breathy-voiced transition, and could be transcribed as [h̤].
The glottal stop occurs in many languages. Often all vocalic onsets are preceded by a glottal stop, for example in German. The Hawaiian language writes the glottal stop as an opening single quote ‘. Some alphabets use diacritics for the glottal stop, such as hamza <ء> in the Arabic alphabet; in many languages of Mesoamerica, the Latin letter <h> is used for glottal stop, while in Maltese, the letter <q> is used instead.
Because the glottis is necessarily closed for the glottal stop, it cannot be voiced.
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- Ladefoged, Peter; Maddieson, Ian (1996). The Sounds of the World's Languages. Oxford: Blackwell. ISBN 0-631-19814-8.
