Nonexplosive stop

In phonetics and phonology, nonexplosive stops are posited class of non-pulmonic ("non-obstruent") stop consonants that lack the pressure build-up and burst release associated with pulmonic stops, but also the laryngeal lowering of implosive stops. They are reported to occur in Ikwere, an Igboid (Niger–Congo) language of Nigeria.

Ikwere's two nonexplosive stops, transcribed as voiced ⟨ḅ⟩ and pre-glottalized ⟨ʼḅ⟩, are reflexes of labial-velars /k͡p/ and /ɡ͡b/, respectively, in most other Igboid languages, and to implosives /ɓ̥/ and /ɓ/ in some varieties of Igbo. Ikwere's stops resemble both, in that they are velarized and have a non-pulmonic airstream mechanism.

References

• Clements, George N.; Osu, Sylvester (2002). "Explosives, implosives, and nonexplosives: Some linguistic effects of air pressure differences in stops". In Carlos Gussenhoven and Natasha Warner (ed.). Laboratory Phonology 7. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. pp. 299–350.
• Clements, George N.; Osu, Sylvester (2005). "Nasal harmony in Ikwere, a language with no phonemic nasal consonants". Journal of African Languages and Linguistics. 26 (2): 165–200. doi:10.1515/jall.2005.26.2.165.