Phonetics--10/11/2012

We talked about airstream mechanisms today, which are the many different ways sounds are produced in different languages.

• Pulmonic egressive aistream mechanism is the most common and the only one used in English. As the name suggests, this means that sound is produced by pushing air out of the lungs 
• Pulmonic ingressive mechanism is the opposite, where sound is produced by breathing air into the lungs
• Used very rarely in language
• One example is in Swedish where one takes a sharp intake of breath to indicate "yes", even though there is another word, "ja" for "yes" in Swedish
• Glottalic egressive mechanism
• the glottis acts as a piston and the sounds produced tend to be voiceless
• Appear in some dialects of British and American English at the ends of words
• Glottalic ingressive sounds
• Another name for them is "implosives"
• Used in Hindi and other Indian languages
• Are classified as separate phonemes in these Indian languages
• Velaric airstream mechanism
• Used in languages that have clicks
• Mostly African languages
• Most of the clicks are produced with the tongue tip and the tongue makes a pocket of air
• This pocket causes air to rush in when the tongue is released, which produces the click