Strident vowel

Strident vowels (also called sphincteric vowels) are strongly pharyngealized vowels accompanied by an (ary)epiglottal trill, with the larynx being raised and the pharynx constricted.[1][2] Either the epiglottis or the arytenoid cartilages thus vibrate instead of the vocal cords. That is, the epiglottal trill is the voice source for such sounds.

Strident vowel
ʢ

Strident vowels are fairly common in Khoisan languages, which contrast them with simple pharyngealized vowels. Stridency is used in onomatopoeia in Zulu and Lamba.[3] Stridency may be a type of phonation called harsh voice. A similar phonation, without the trill, is called ventricular voice; both have been called pressed voice. Bai, of southern China, has a register system that has allophonic strident and pressed vowels.

There is no official symbol for stridency in the IPA, but a superscript ʢ (for a voiced epiglottal trill) is often used. In some literature, a subscript double tilde (≈) is sometimes used,[1] as seen here on the letter a (a):

It has been accepted into Unicode, at code point U+1DFD.

References

  1. The Sounds of the World's Languages, by Peter Ladefoged and Ian Maddieson, Blackwell, 1996, pp. 310–311.
  2. The Phonetics and Phonology of Gutturals: Case Study from Ju/'Hoansi, by Amanda Miller-Ockhuizen, Routledge, 2003, p. 99.
  3. Doke (1936) "An Outline of ǂKhomani Bushman Phonetics", Bantu Studies 10:1, p. 68.

Sources


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