The voiced uvular plosive or stop is a type of
consonant
In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract. Examples are and pronounced with the lips; and pronounced with the front of the tongue; and pronounced wi ...
al sound, used in some
spoken language
Language is a structured system of communication. The structure of a language is its grammar and the free components are its vocabulary. Languages are the primary means by which humans communicate, and may be conveyed through a variety of ...
s. The symbol in the
International Phonetic Alphabet
The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is an alphabetic system of phonetic notation based primarily on the Latin script. It was devised by the International Phonetic Association in the late 19th century as a standardized representation ...
that represents this sound is , and the equivalent
X-SAMPA
The Extended Speech Assessment Methods Phonetic Alphabet (X-SAMPA) is a variant of SAMPA developed in 1995 by John C. Wells, professor of phonetics at University College London. It is designed to unify the individual language SAMPA alphabets, a ...
symbol is
G\
.
is a rare sound, even compared to other uvulars. Vaux (1999)
proposes a phonological explanation: uvular consonants normally involve a neutral or a
retracted tongue root, whereas voiced stops often involve an
advanced tongue root: two articulations that cannot physically co-occur. This leads many languages of the world to have a
voiced uvular fricative
The voiced uvular fricative is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , an inverted small uppercase letter , or in broad transcription if rhot ...
instead as the voiced counterpart of the
voiceless uvular plosive
The voiceless uvular plosive or stop is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. It is pronounced like a voiceless velar plosive , except that the tongue makes contact not on the soft palate but on the uvula. The symbol in th ...
. Examples are
Inuit; several
Turkic languages such as
Uyghur and
Yakut; several
Northwest Caucasian languages such as
Abkhaz; several Mongolic languages such as
Mongolian language and
Kalmyk language as well as several
Northeast Caucasian languages
The Northeast Caucasian languages, also called East Caucasian, Nakh-Daghestani or ''Vainakh-Daghestani'', is a family of languages spoken in the Russian republics of Dagestan, Chechnya and Ingushetia and in Northern Azerbaijan as well as in ...
such as
Ingush.
There is also the voiced pre-uvular plosive
[Instead of "pre-uvular", it can be called "advanced uvular", "fronted uvular", "post-velar", "retracted velar" or "backed velar". For simplicity, this article uses only the term "pre-uvular".] in some languages, which is articulated slightly more front compared with the place of articulation of the prototypical uvular plosive, though not as front as the prototypical
velar plosive. The International Phonetic Alphabet does not have a separate symbol for that sound, though it can be transcribed as (
advanced ), or (both symbols denote a
retracted ). The equivalent X-SAMPA symbols are
G\_+
and
g_-
, respectively.
Features
Features of the voiced uvular stop:
Occurrence
See also
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Index of phonetics articles
Notes
References
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External links
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Voiced Uvular stop
Uvular consonants
Pulmonic consonants
Voiced oral consonants
Central consonants