Ingressive sound

For other uses, see Ingress.
Ingressive
◌↓
◌˒
IPA number 661
Encoding
Unicode (hex) U+2193

In phonetics, ingressive sounds are sounds by which the airstream flows inward through the mouth or nose. The three types of ingressive sounds are lingual ingressive or velaric ingressive (from the tongue and the velum), glottalic ingressive (from the glottis), and pulmonic ingressive (from the lungs).

The opposite of an ingressive sound is an egressive sound, by which the air stream is created by pushing air out through the mouth or nose. The majority of sounds in most languages, such as vowels, are both pulmonic and egressive.

Types of ingressive sounds

Lingual ingressive

Lingual ingressive, or velaric ingressive, describes an airstream mechanism whereby a sound is produced by closing the vocal tract at two places of articulation in the mouth, rarifying the air in the enclosed space by lowering the tongue, and then releasing both closures. The sounds made this way are called clicks.

Glottalic ingressive

Further information: Implosive consonant

This term is generally applied to the implosive consonants, which actually use a mixed glottalic ingressive–pulmonic egressive airstream. True glottalic ingressives, called voiceless implosives or reverse ejectives, are quite rare.

Pulmonic ingressive

Pulmonic ingressive sounds are those ingressive sounds in which the airstream is created by the lungs. Pulmonic ingressive sounds are generally paralinguistic, and may be found as phonemes, words, and entire phrases on all continents and in genetically unrelated languages, most frequently in sounds for agreement and backchanneling.

Pulmonic ingressive sounds are extremely rare outside of paralinguistic phenomena. A pulmonic ingressive phoneme was found in the apparently constructed ritual language Damin, the last speaker of which died in the 1990s. The ǃXóõ language of Botswana has a series of nasalized click consonants in which the nasal airstream is pulmonic ingressive. Ladefoged & Maddieson (1996:268) state that "This ǃXóõ click is probably unique among the sounds of the world's languages that, even in the middle of a sentence, it may have ingressive pulmonic airflow."

In the Extensions to the IPA, ingressive sounds are indicated with ⟨↓⟩, so the Norwegian backchanneling particles ja and nei would be transcribed ⟨jɑː↓⟩ and ⟨næɪ↓⟩. Laver[1] uses instead ⟨˒⟩, for ⟨j˒ɑː˒⟩ and ⟨n˒æɪ˒⟩.[2]

Ingressive speech

Ingressive speech (IS) sounds are produced while the speaker breathes in. This is in contrast to most speech sounds, which are produced as the speaker breathes out. The air used to voice the speech is drawn in rather than pushed out. Ingressive speech can be either glottal, veleric or pulmonic.

Occurrence

Ingressive sounds occur in many languages, being frequently associated with the Scandinavian languages, despite it being a common phenomenon. The majority of words that are subject to ingressive speech are feedback words (yes, no) or very short or primal (a cry of pain, sobbing). It also sometimes occurs in rapid counting, in order to maintain a steady air flow throughout a long series of unbroken sounds. It is also very common among animals, frogs, dogs, and cats (purring).

In English, ingressive sounds include when one says "Huh!" (a gasping sound) which is used to express surprise, or "Sss" (an inward hiss) which expresses empathy when another is hurt.

Tsou and Damin have both been claimed to possess an ingressive phoneme, but neither of these claims have been validated to date, and the Tsou claim has been nearly disproved. There are claims of some Tohono O'odham women speaking entirely ingressively.

There are examples of ingressive sounds that belong to paralanguage. Japanese has what has been described an apicoprepalatal fricative approximant, similar to an inbreathed [s], which is used as a response to statements that are upsetting, or as a sign of deference. Japanese speakers also use an ingressive bilateral bidental friction used as a "pre-turn opening in conversation" or when beginning a prayer.[3][4]

Distribution

Speech technologist Robert Eklund has found reports of ingressive speech in around 50 languages worldwide, dating as far back as Cranz's (1765) "Historie von Grönland, enthaltend… " where it is mentioned in female affirmations among the Eskimo.
Norwegian "Ja"
Norwegian spoken ja juxtaposed with ingressive
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Inhaled affirmative 'yeah'

Several languages include an affirmative "yeah", "yah", "yuh" or "yes" made with inhaled breath which sounds something like a gasp. This is an example of a pulmonic ingressive. This feature is found in:

Sound files

Several sound files of Swedish, Scottish English and Faroese ingressive speech can be downloaded from Robert Eklund's Ingressive Speech site: http://ingressivespeech.info. Spectrograms are also found there.

References

  1. ↑ Laver (1994) Principles of Phonetics, p. 169
  2. ↑ The diacritic is acually centered in x-height rather than resting on the baseline.
  3. ↑ "Airstream Mechanisms" (PDF). Department of Linguistics. Archived from the original (PDF) on June 20, 2010. Retrieved July 19, 2016.
  4. ↑ Poyatos, Fernando (2002). Nonverbal Communication across Disciplines: Volume 2: Paralanguage, kinesics, silence, personal and environmental interaction. John Benjamins Publishing. p. 162. ISBN 9789027297112.
  5. ↑ Robert Eklund (2008): Pulmonic ingressive phonation: Diachronic and synchronic characteristics, distribution and function in animal and human sound production and in human speech, Journal of the International Phonetic Association, vol. 38, no. 3, pp. 235–324.
  6. ↑ Bird, Lindsay (Oct 16, 2016). "An Atlantic Canadian speech pattern, explained 'Ingressive pulmonic speech' used only in a few parts of the world". CBC News. Retrieved 17 October 2016.
  7. ↑ Gee, Oliver (8 January 2015). "Is this the strangest sound in Swedish?". TheLocal.se. Retrieved 25 January 2015.
  8. ↑ Cfr. http://www.suomienglantisanakirja.fi/niin third and fourth acceptions

External links

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