Voiced velar plosive
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Template:Infobox IPA The voiced velar plosive is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is g.
Of the six plosives that would be expected from the most common pattern world-wide, that is, three places of articulation plus voicing ([p b, t d, k g]), [p] and [g] are the most frequently missing, being absent in about 10% of languages that otherwise have this pattern. The former is an areal feature (see [[Voiceless bilabial plosive|]]). Missing , on the other hand, is widely scattered around the world. (A few languages, such as Ket, are missing both.) It seems that [g] is somewhat more difficult to articulate than the other basic plosives. Ian Maddieson speculates that this may be due to a physical difficulty in voicing velars: voicing requires that air flow into to mouth cavity, and the relatively small space allowed by velar consonants means that it will fill up with air quickly, making voicing difficult to maintain. This could have two effects: [g] and [k] become confused, and the distinction is lost, or [g] is never developed in the first place when a language starts making voicing distinctions. (Note that with uvulars the imbalance is even more extreme: is much rarer than .)
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Features
Features of the voiced velar plosive:
- Its manner of articulation is plosive or stop, which means it is produced by obstructing airflow in the vocal tract.
- Its place of articulation is velar which means it is articulated with the back part of the tongue (the dorsum) against the soft palate (the velum).
- Its phonation type is voiced, which means it is produced while the vocal cords are vibrating.
- It is an oral consonant, which means air is allowed to escape through the mouth.
- It is a central consonant, which means it is produced by allowing the airstream to flow over the middle of the tongue, rather than the sides.
- The airstream mechanism is pulmonic egressive, which means it is articulated by pushing air out of the lungs and through the vocal tract, rather than from the glottis or the mouth.
Varieties of [g]
| IPA | Description |
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| g | plain g |
| gʰ or g̈ | aspirated or breathy voice g |
| gʲ | palatalized g |
| gʷ | labialized g |
| g˺ | unreleased g |
| g̊ | voiceless g |
In English
In English, the sound /g/ is denoted by the letter 'g' as in gum or bag. However, the letter 'g' does not always denote the sound /g/. When followed by 'i' or 'e' or preceded by 'd' it sometimes denotes the affricate /dʒ/, as in gin and judgement. When preceded by 'n' and occurring at the end of a morpheme, it often becomes the digraph 'ng', which denotes the velar nasal, as in singer and rung, but not finger.
In other languages
The [g] sound is a common sound cross-linguistically. Many languages have at least a plain [g], and some distinguish more than variety. Many Indian languages, such as Hindi, have a two-way contrast between aspirated (breathy voice) and plain [g].
See also