The voiceless glottal affricate is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbols in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represent this sound are ⟨ʔ͡h⟩ and ⟨ʔ͜h⟩, and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is ?_h. The tie bar may be omitted, yielding ⟨ʔh⟩ in the IPA and ?h in X-SAMPA.
Features
Features of the voiceless glottal affricate:
Its manner of articulation is affricate, which means it is produced by first stopping the airflow entirely, then allowing air flow through a constricted channel at the place of articulation, causing turbulence.
Its place of articulation is glottal, which means it is articulated at and by the vocal cords (vocal folds).
Its phonation is voiceless, which means it is produced without vibrations of the vocal cords. In some languages the vocal cords are actively separated, so it is always voiceless; in others the cords are lax, so that it may take on the voicing of adjacent sounds.
It is an oral consonant, which means air is allowed to escape through the mouth only.
It is a central consonant, which means it is produced by directing the airstream along the center of the tongue, rather than to the sides.
The airstream mechanism is pulmonic, which means it is articulated by pushing air solely with the intercostal muscles and abdominal muscles, as in most sounds.
^Hostetler, Roman and Hostetler, Carolyn. 1975. A Tentative Description of Tinputz Phonology. In Loving, Richard (ed.), Workers in Papua New Guinea Languages: Phonologies of Five Austronesian Languages. Summer Institute of Linguistics.
^Kaufman, Terrence. 1971. Tzeltal Phonology and Morphology. Berkeley / Los Angeles: University of California Press.
Collins, Beverley; Mees, Inger M. (2003) [First published 1981], The Phonetics of English and Dutch (5th ed.), Leiden: Brill Publishers, ISBN 9004103406
Yang, Shifeng (1969), A Report of Investigating Dialects in Yunnan Province [雲南方言調查報告]
