Tiểu luận Phonetics Phonology

ACADEMY OF JOURNALISM AND COMMUNICATION
Faculty of Foreign Languages
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A STUDY ON THE AIRSTREAM MECHANISM
(An Assignment on Phonetics and Phonology)

By: Nguyen Xuan Hieu - ETE 40
Supervisor: Luong Ba Phuong PhD

HANOI, 2021


Contents
1. Introduction:........................................................................................................1
1.1. Rationale:..........................................................................................................1
1.2. Aims of the study:.............................................................................................1
1.3. Limitation of the study:....................................................................................1
1.4. Methods of the study:.......................................................................................1
1.5. Design of the study:..........................................................................................2
1. Describing airstreams..........................................................................................3
2. Ingressive and Egressive pulmonic airstream.....................................................3
3. Non-pulmonic airstreams....................................................................................4
3.1. The glottalic ingressive airstream mechanism and implosives........................5
3.2. The glottalic egressive airstream mechanism and ejectives.............................8
3.3. The velaric ingressive airstream mechanism and clicks.................................12
4. Conclusion:........................................................................................................19
5. References:........................................................................................................20
6. Appendix:..........................................................................................................20

1. Introduction:
1.1. Rationale:
In phonetics, the airstream mechanism is the method by which airflow is created
in the vocal tract. Along with phonation, it is one of two mandatory aspects of
sound production; without these, there can be no speech sound. It plays an
important role in every spoken language. All speech sounds are made in this
area. None are made outside of it (such as by stomping, hand clapping, snapping
of fingers, farting, etc.)
Theoretically, any sound could be used as a speech sound provided the human
vocal tract is capable of producing it and the human ear capable of hearing it.
Actually only a few hundred different sounds or types of sounds occur in
languages known to exist today, considerably fewer than the vocal tract is capable
of producing. Thus, I choose this topic to understand more about this phonetic
aspect.
1.2. Aims of the study:
The purpose of this study is to survey the general phonetic categories needed to
describe the airstream mechanisms.
1.3. Limitation of the study:
This study of phonetics and phonology is for people who want to gain further
information about the airstream mechanism. Espeacially for college students in
English major.
1.4. Methods of the study:
The study is designed with some commonly used methods such as analysis,
statistics, illustration, systematization. These methods are such efficient tools
assisting in the research.

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1.5. Design of the study:

The research consists of seven parts. The works is composed of introduction,
Describing airstreams, Ingressive and Egressive pulmonic airstream, Nonpulmonic airstreams (with exercises and comments included), Conclusions give
the finally resutl of the study. The list of references organized in alphabetic
arragement and Appendix.

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1. Describing airstreams
An airstream mechanism is how air is set into motion for speech to occur. By far
the most common airstream mechanism in the languages of the world is the
outward flow of air from the lungs. The technical term for this type of airstream is
pulmonic egressive; ‘pulmonic’ refers to the lungs and ‘egressive’ means that air
flows out of the body. This outward flow happens because muscular activity
contracts the ribcage, thereby compressing the lungs and thorax, which causes the
air inside the lungs to be under higher pressure than in the surrounding air. As
always, air flows from an area of higher pressure to an area of lower pressure.
The other type of airstream mechanism thatIconsidered above is termed pulmonic
ingressive. The lungs are still responsible for the movement of air, but this time
the air flows into the body. This happens because muscular activity lifts the
ribcage, allowing the lungs to expand, and creating a lower pressure inside the
lungs than in the air outside the body.
As you can see, then, there are two things thatIneed to name when describing an
airstream mechanism. Firstly,Ineed to describe the part of the body that causes the
movement of air. This part of the body is called the initiator, which is the lungs in
the two airstreamsIhave looked at so far. Next,Ineed to describe the direction of
airflow in relation to the body, which can be inwards (ingressive) or outwards
(egressive).
2. Ingressive and Egressive pulmonic airstream
Pulmonic airstream which originates in the lungs and produces direct sounds.

Almost every sounds we pronounce is Bengali, all of them are pulmonic
airstream. Another is non-pulmonic airstream, which sounds produces also lungs
but doesn't produce direct sounds. It stay in our vocal tract and trapped for some
time. Then for some movement, the sounds produce. This is the second highest
sounds that people produce in this world. Like, Africans or Scandinavian sounds.
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When the air flows outward than it is said to be egressive. And when the air flow
inward, we can said ingressive airstream. This airstream is not helpful to speech,
but it is used for paralinguistic purposes in various languages. For example,
gesture or sign languages or semi-linguistics things. In Scandinavian languages,
when people wish to signal their empathy with the speaker that time they produce
sounds by ingressive pulmonic airflow. Dutch and French, we also find ingressive
airstream.
3. Non-pulmonic airstreams
It may surprise you to learn that airstreams other than pulmonic airstreams can be
used to produce speech. These can be referred to as non-pulmonic airstreams.
Although they are not used to create meaning in English, they may be used in
other contexts and are used to produce meaningful speech sounds in other
languages. They exist in about 13 per cent of languages and are quite common in
languages in Africa and Asia, although less so in Europe.
Exercise 1: The soundsIwill look at below are produced using the following
airstream mechanisms. Using just what you know already, what do you think are
the initiators and directions of airflow in the following airstream mechanisms?
Glottalic ingressive
Glottalic egressive
Velaric ingressive
Comment: Looking at the names for these airstream mechanisms, you will see
that two are ingressive, so air flows into the body, while one is egressive, so air

flows out of the body. Your knowledge of terminology so far will suggest that the
first two have the glottis (which you may remember fromUnit 3is the space
between the vocal folds) as an initiator, while the last mechanism has the velum

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as the initiator.Iwill now look at each of the airstream mechanisms in turn, to see
how they work, and the type of sounds they produce.
3.1. The glottalic ingressive airstream mechanism and implosives
The glottalic ingressive airstream mechanism produces sounds called implosives. Implosives are not meaningful sounds in English, but can be used to imitate
sounds in the environment, asIwill see in Exercise 2.
Exercise 2: What noise do you make when you imitate someone drinking out of a
bottle (glug-glug), or the sound a chicken makes (bok-bok)?
Comment: These sounds are very hard to describe in writing, and it is possible
that different readers might use a variety of different sounds to imitate drinking
and chickens. Many readers, however, will make velar and bilabial implosives as
part of their imitations of these noises. Implosives have a distinctive ‘gulping’
sound, andIwill describe their production in detail below.
The diagrams and explanations below describe how an implosive is produced.

Figure 1 The first stage of a bilabial implosive

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Figure 2 The second stage of a bilabial implosive

(

)

Figure 3 The third stage of a bilabial implosive

Figure 4 The fourth stage of a bilabial implosive

1.

Firstly, a closure is made in the oral tract. In Figure 1Ihave a bilabial

closure, so the resulting sound will be a bilabial implosive. You also see that the
velum is raised. This is because pressure needs to build in the vocal tract, and this
cannot happen if the velum is open (seeUnit 4on manner of articulation if you
need a reminder about this).
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2.

In the next step (Figure 2), the vocal folds vibrate while the whole larynx,

including the glottis and vocal folds, which are inside the larynx, moves
downwards, as indicated by the downwards arrow in Figure 2. This downwards
movement is achieved by a number of muscles which allow the larynx to be
raised and lowered. The downwards movement of the larynx increases the space
between the bilabial closure and the vocal folds, which, in turn, reduces the
pressure in the oral cavity. Importantly, pulmonic egressive flow continues
throughout the production of the implosive, so that voicing can occur. This is the
case for most implosives, which are usually voiced.
3.

The oral closure, bilabial in this case, is released. As the air outside the

vocal tract is now at a higher pressure than that inside, it flows into the area of
lower pressure inside the vocal tract, as indicated by the arrow in brackets in
Figure 3. As air from the lungs continues to flow throughout, all voiced
implosives are actually produced using two simultaneous airstreams, glottalic
ingressive and pulmonic egressive.
4.

Finally, the larynx returns to its normal position, and, if no other sound

follows, the vocal folds open for normal breathing (see Figure 4).

Exercise 3: Which of the diagrams above (Figures 1 to 4) would look different
ifIwere showing a voiced alveolar implosive? Draw those diagrams as they would
appear.
Comment The final stages of the process will look the same, as the closure has
been released. However, the first two stages will look different, as the place of
articulation has changed, as shown in Figures 5and 6:

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Figure 5 The first stage of an alveolar implosive

Figure 6 The second stage of an alveolar implosive

The symbols for implosives look very similar to the symbols for voiced plosives,
but have a rightwards hook at the top. So, a bilabial implosive is [ɓ] and an

alveolar implosive is [ɗ]. These symbols, and all those explored in this unit can be
seen in the consonants (non-pulmonic) section of the main IPA chart, as shown in
Figure 16 (Appendix) and on the main IPA chart in Appendix.

3.2. The glottalic egressive airstream mechanism and ejectives
In 3.1, I saw that the glottis can be the initiator of an airstream, as its movement
causes pressure changes in the vocal tract.Isaw that, for implosives, the larynx
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moves down, and, of course, the glottis moves down too, as it is inside the larynx.
This movement leads to pressure differences, which, in turn, move air and create
an airstream flowing into the mouth.
NowIwill continue to look at glottalic airstreams, but this timeIwill look at sounds
produced on a glottalic egressive airstream. Sounds produced on a glottalic
egressive airstream are called ejectives. They exist in about 15 per cent of the
world’s languages and are quite common in North American and African
languages. They are not found linguistically in English, so they never make a
meaning difference. However, they can be found as one way of pro- ducing
voiceless plosives (/p t k/) at the end of a phrase, especially if the speaker is being
particularly forceful.
Exercise 4: Bearing in mind what you know about the glottalic ingressive
airstream, what do you think might happen to the glottis to initiate a glottalic
egressive airstream?
Comment: Above,Isaw that the glottis moves down to bring air into the vocal
tract. To move air out of the vocal tract – that is, to produce an egressive airstream
– the glottis moves up, asIshall see shortly.
We now turn our attention to the stages of production for ejectives.Iwill illustrate
this with the velar ejective, which is the most common ejective in the languages
of the world.

Figure 7 The first stage of a velar ejective

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Figure 8 The second stage of a velar ejective

)

Figure 9 The third stage of a velar ejective

Figure 10 The fourth stage of a velar ejective

1.

The first stage when an ejective is produced is for two closures to form

more or less simultaneously, in addition to velic closure. One of these closures
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must be a glottal closure, whereby the vocal folds become tightly shut. This
closure of the glottis is shown by the straight line in the larynx in Figure 7, just as
for a glottal plosive. The other closure is elsewhere in the vocal tract, such as the
velar closure in Figure 7. Air is therefore trapped between these two closures.
2.

The next stage is for the larynx (and the glottis, which is inside the larynx)

to move up, while both closures remain in place. This is shown by the upward
arrow near the larynx in Figure 8. As the glottis is closed, it acts like a piston and
pushes up the air trapped between the two closures. The air cannot escape, so is
squashed into a smaller space, and therefore under higher pressure than before the
larynx rose.
3.

Then the closure in the oral tract is released (see Figure 9), and the

pressurised air flows quickly out of the vocal tract towards the ambient air, which
is of lower pressure. This quick movement of air gives the ejective its distinctive
sharp sound.
4.

Finally, the larynx lowers, and, if no sound follows, the glottis opens to

return to normal breathing (see Figure 10).

Exercise 5: Do you think it is possible to produce voiced ejectives? Why, or why
not? Try it!
Comment:
Voiced ejectives do not exist in the languages of the world. You can give them a
try and hear that you do not get the distinctive ejective sound if the vocal folds are
vibrating. While most voiceless sounds have an open glottis, ejectives have a
firmly shut glottis, like [ʔ]. If the glottis is to act as an efficient piston, it needs to
be tightly closed, and if it is tightly closed, it cannot also be vibrating to produce

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voice. Conversely, if the glottis is not tightly closed, it does not move the air very
efficiently.
Importantly, any voiceless obstruent can be produced as an ejective. So the
languages of the world contain ejective plosives, ejective fricatives and ejective
affricates. There are no new symbols to learn for ejectives, as all ejectives can be
symbolised by adding the symbol [ʼ] to the equivalent pulmonic egressive
symbol. So, the velar ejective plosive from above is symbolised as [kʼ], a bilabial
ejective plosive is [p’] and an alveolar ejective plosive is [t’]. The symbols for
ejectives are shown with the other non-pulmonic sounds on the IPA chart (see
Appendix).

3.3. The velaric ingressive airstream mechanism and clicks
The final airstream mechanismIwill consider is the velaric ingressive air- stream,
which is responsible for the production of click sounds. Clicks only exist in
southern and eastern African languages. Click sounds are not part of the sound
inventory of English, but they occur frequently when English speakers try to
imitate sounds in the environment, or to express certain emotions, so will
probably be familiar to all readers.
Exercise 6: What sounds would you make to do the following?
Blow a kiss
Tut your disapproval
Imitate the sound of horses’ hooves (at a Nativity play, for example)
Tell a horse to giddy-up (this one may be familiar only to those who have learnt
to ride horses).

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Comment:
All of the sounds above are click sounds and therefore have a number of

similarities in their production. I will consider the production of a voiceless
alveolar click below, and then think about the labels for the other clicks:

Figure 11 The first stage of an alveolar click

Figure 12 The second stage of an alveolar click

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Figure 13 The third stage of an alveolar click

Figure 14 The fourth stage of an alveolar click

1.

Firstly, two closures form almost at the same time. One of these closures is

always a velar closure, just as for a /k/, and gives its name to the velaric airstream
mechanism. The other closure is further forwards in the vocal tract, and the
closure shown in Figure 11is alveolar. This traps a pocket of air between the two
closures.
2.

Next, the tongue moves back and down, but both closures are maintained,

so that no air can enter or leave the pocket. As the cavity has changed shape, the
trapped air is now in a larger space, and therefore under lower pressure, than
before. (See Figure 12.)

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3.

Now, the front-most closure is released so that the pocket of air is no longer

trapped. As the pressure inside the vocal tract is lower than that outside, ambient
air is sucked into the vocal tract. (See Figure 13.)
4.

Finally, the velar closure is released, so that, if no other sounds follow, the

articulators return to their resting positions. (See Figure 14.)
Exercise 7: The place of articulation for the ‘tut’ sound is either alveolar, as
illustrated in Figures 11 to 14, or dental. What do you think are the places of
articulation for the other clicks?
a)

Blowing a kiss

b)

Imitating the sound of horses’ hooves

c)

Telling a horse to giddy-up

Comment:

a) Kisses are bilabial clicks. It is important to remember for bilabial clicks that the
tongue is still involved in the articulation. If you make a slow and deliberate
kissing motion, you should feel that you make a velar closure with the back of
your tongue, even though the tip of the tongue is not involved, as it is for many
other clicks. This velar closure is the crucial feature of clicks, and gives its name
to the velaric airstream mechanism, asIhave said above.
b)

The sound used to imitate horses’ hooves is usually a postalveolar click,

with lips spread and then rounded to imitate ‘clip’ and ‘clop’, respectively
(vowels, on to work out why that should make a difference to the sound
produced).

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c)

The giddy-up noise is an alveolar lateral click. So, the head diagram would

look very similar to those in Figures 11 to 14. However, rather than the tongue tip
lowering to produce the click, the sides of the tongue lower, so that air escapes
laterally.
The symbols for these clicks are as follows:
[k⊙] voiceless bilabial click
[k|]

voiceless dental click

[k∥] voiceless alveolar lateral click
[k!]

voiceless alveolar or postalveolar click.

Exercise 8: Why do you think these symbols have two parts? Specifically, why
do you think the symbols contain a [k]?
Comment:
The part on the right of the symbol indicates the place of articulation of the click
– bilabial, alveolar, and so on – and these can be seen on the full IPA chart under
‘Consonants (non-pulmonic)’ (see Appendix). The part on the left, [k], reminds us
about the velar closure that all clicks must have, and also tells us about the
voicing and nasality of the click, asIwill investigate further below. Note that some
transcription systems do not show the leftmost [k] part of the symbol for
voiceless clicks. I will use the two-part symbol throughout this study, however,
for consistency with the symbols used for voiced and nasal clicks, which I will
turn to now.
3.3.1. Click accompaniments

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All the clicks described above are voiceless, as the vocal folds are not vibrating,
and oral, as the velum is raised, sealing off the nasal cavity. However, it is also
possible to produce voiced and nasal clicks.
Exercise 9:
a) Why can clicks be voiced and nasal when ejectives and implosives are much
more restricted?
b) How would our diagrams change to show voiced and nasal clicks? Specifically,
what would the diagram look like for the second stage of a voiced, nasal, alveolar

click?
Comment:
a) As the larynx does not have any involvement in initiating a click, the vocal
folds can either vibrate for voiced clicks or remain open for voiceless clicks.
Importantly, voiced clicks make use of two airstream mechanisms simultaneously. The velaric airstream mechanism takes care of the click part, asIhave
seen above. Voicing, however, occurs when air flows up from the lungs and
through the vibrating glottis, so voiced clicks are actually produced on two
airstreams simultaneously: velaric ingressive and pul- monic egressive.
As you can see from Figures 11 to 14, the nasal cavity is also independent from
the actions of the oral cavity during click production, because all the air is trapped
in front of the velum. Therefore, the velum can be lowered while the click is
produced, without affecting the pressure in the space between the two closures,
and a nasal click will result.
b)Figure 15 shows the second stage of a voiced, nasal, alveolar click.

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Figure 15 The second stage of a voiced nasal alveolar click

Exercise 10:
a) How might our symbols change to symbolise clicks that are voiced or nasal?
b) How wouldIsymbolise:
a voiceless dental click?
a voiced bilabial click?
a voiced nasal postalveolar click?
Tip: Remember the role of [k] in the click symbolsIhave already seen above.
Comment:
a) As you will remember from Exercise 8, the initial part of the symbol indicates
voicing and nasality, while also reminding us about velar closure. This is why a

velar symbol (such as [k]) is used, rather than, say, an alveolar or bilabial symbol.
I can, therefore, use other velar symbols to indicate voiced and nasal clicks.
b) So, while [k] indicates the click is voiceless and oral, [ɡ] indicates it is voiced
and oral, and [˛] indicates it is voiced and nasal. The rightmost part of the symbol
simply indicates the place of articulation (and the manner for laterals) of the click,
as I noted earlier.
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A voiceless dental click [k|]
A voiced bilabial click

[ɡ⊙]

A voiced nasal postalveolar click

[˛!]

3.3.2. The velaric egressive airstream
In order to fully cover all the logical combinations of initiators and
directions,Ishould mention the velaric egressive airstream. While it is possible to
produce sounds (sometimes known as reverse clicks) using this airstream, no such
sounds are found in human languages, soIwill not discuss these further here.
4. Conclusion:
In this study as well as exercises, we have looked at the generation of speech
sounds, and then at those sound-types made with an airstream that is not supplied
by the lungs. These are called non-pulmonic sounds. Sound generation in speech
relies either on the compression of air, giving an outward (egressive) flow or the
rarefaction of air, resulting in inward (ingressive) flow. Three types of nonpulmonic consonants are used in languages. Two of these types use a glottalic
airstream mechanism. Ejectives are produced with an egressive airflow generated

by larynx raising. Implosives are made with an ingressive flow generated by
lowering the larynx. The third types, clicks, use the velaric ingressive airstream
mechanism, produced by rarefying a small volume of air enclosed in mouth. We
have seen that there are sounds that make simultaneous use of pulmonic and nonpulmonic airstreams and have considered various modifications that can be
applied to clicks.

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5. References:
1. Pike, Kenneth (1943). Phonetics. Michigan. pp. 103–5.
2. Ian Maddieson (2008) "Presence of Uncommon Consonants". In: Martin
Haspelmath & Matthew S. Dryer & David Gil & Bernard Comrie
(eds.) The World Atlas of Language Structures Online. Munich: Max
Planck Digital Library, chapter 19. Available online
at o/feature/19. Accessed on 18 January 2011
3. Michael Ashby, John Maidment (2005), Introducing Phonetic Science,
Chapter 7
6. Appendix:

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