Voiced palatal implosive

The voiced palatal implosive is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ⟨ ʄ ⟩, and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is ⟨J\_<⟩. The IPA symbol can be considered to be a lowercase letter esh with a horizontal stroke, a turned lowercase letter f with a rightward hook protruding from the upper left, or a dotless lowercase letter j with a horizontal stroke (the symbol for the voiced palatal plosive) and a rightward hook (the diacritic for implosives). A very similar looking letter, ⟨ƒ⟩ (an ⟨f⟩ with a tail), is used in Ewe for /ɸ/.

Features

Features of the voiced palatal implosive:

• 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 palatal, which means it is articulated with the middle or back part of the tongue raised to the hard palate.
• Its phonation is voiced, which means the vocal cords vibrate during the articulation.
• It is an oral consonant, which means air is allowed to escape through the mouth only.
• It is a central consonant, which means it is produced by directing the airstream along the center of the tongue, rather than to the sides.
• The airstream mechanism is implosive (glottalic ingressive), which means it is produced by pulling air in by pumping the glottis downward. Since it is voiced, the glottis is not completely closed, but allows a pulmonic airstream to escape through it.

Occurrence

See also

• List of phonetics topics
• Voiceless palatal implosive

References

Bibliography

• Connell, Bruce; Ahoua, Firmin; Gibbon, Dafydd (2002), "Ega", Journal of the International Phonetic Association 32 (1): 99–104 
• Keer, Edward (1999), Geminates, The OCP and The Nature of CON, Rutgers University 
• Mc Laughlin, Fiona (2005), "Voiceless implosives in Seereer-Siin", Journal of the International Phonetic Association 35 (2): 201–214, doi:10.1017/S0025100305002215