Lack of Voicing Contrast in Obstruents
Many languages lack a distinction between voiced and voiceless obstruents (stops, affricates, and fricatives). This is nearly universal in Dravidian languages and Australian languages, but is widely found elsewhere, for example in Mandarin Chinese, Korean, Finnish, and the Polynesian languages. Consider Hawaiian, which has a /p/ and /k/, but no /b/ or /ɡ/. In many such languages (though not in Polynesian), obstruents are realized as voiced in voiced environments, such as between vowels or between a vowel and a nasal, and voiceless elsewhere, such as at the beginning or end of the word or next to another obstruent. Usually these sounds are transcribed with the voiceless IPA letters, though in Australia the letters for voiced consonants are sometimes used.
It appears that voicelessness is not a single phenomenon in such languages. In some, such as the Polynesian languages, the vocal cords are required to actively open to allow an unimpeded (silent) airstream. This is sometimes called a breathed (/ˈbrɛθt/) phonation (not to be confused with breathy voice). In others, such as many Australian languages, voicing ceases during the hold of a stop (few Australian languages have any other kind of obstruent) because airflow is insufficient to sustain it, and if the vocal cords open this is due to passive relaxation. Correspondingly, Polynesian stops are reported to be held for longer than Australian stops, and are seldom voiced, whereas Australian stops are prone to having voiced variants (L&M 1996:53), and are often represented as having no phonemically voiceless consonants at all. In Southeast Asia, when stops occur at the end of a word they are voiceless because the glottis is closed, not open, and so these are said to be unphonated (have no phonation) by some phoneticians who considered "breathed" voicelessness to be a phonation.
| Bilabial | Alveolar | Retroflex | Palatal | Velar | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Stop | b | d | ɟ | ɡ | |
| Nasal | m | n | ɲ | ŋ | |
| Lateral | l | ||||
| Rhotic | r | ɽ | |||
| Semivowel | j | w |
Yidiny consonants, with no underlyingly voiceless consonants posited.
Read more about this topic: Voicelessness
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