Voiceless alveolar implosive

IPA Unicode 0x01AD

Voiceless alveolar implosive is a rare phonetic and phonological feature in spoken languages. It is a type of consonantal sound used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) that represents this sound is ⟨ɗ̥⟩, a combination of the letter for the voiced alveolar implosive, ⟨ɗ⟩, with a diacritic indicating voicelessness.

Characteristics

An implosive is a type of consonant that is produced by inhaling air rather than exhaling, which is the case for most sounds. The voiceless alveolar implosive involves a specific articulatory process:

• It is voiceless, meaning that the vocal cords do not vibrate during the articulation of the sound.
• It is alveolar, indicating that the tongue touches or comes close to the alveolar ridge, the gum ridge behind the upper front teeth, during the sound's articulation.
• Being an implosive, the sound is produced by drawing air inward by lowering the glottis, rather than pushing it out as in most sounds.

Occurrence

The voiceless alveolar implosive is extremely rare among the world's languages. It has been reported in some languages of Africa, where implosive sounds are more commonly found, though even there, the voiceless variants are unusual. The presence of this sound significantly contributes to the phonetic diversity of a language.

Phonetic Description

To produce a voiceless alveolar implosive, the speaker performs the following steps: 1. Lowers the glottis to create a slight vacuum in the mouth. 2. Places the tongue against the alveolar ridge. 3. Rapidly opens the glottis, allowing air to rush in and produce the sound.

This process is the opposite of what occurs during the production of most other sounds, where air is expelled from the lungs.

In Languages

Due to its rarity, the voiceless alveolar implosive is not a phoneme in many languages. Its usage is often limited to very specific linguistic contexts or a handful of words within a language. Documentation and study of this sound are important for linguists interested in phonetic diversity and the limits of human speech sound production.

See Also

• Implosive consonant
• Voiceless consonant
• Alveolar consonant
• International Phonetic Alphabet