Ingressive
Encyclopedia
In human speech, ingressive sounds are sounds by which the air stream
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 lung
s). 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.
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
.
s, which actually use a mixed glottalic ingressive–pulmonic egressive airstream. True pulmonic ingressives, called voiceless implosives or reverse ejectives, are quite rare. (See implosive consonant
.)
s. 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 consonant
s 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."
Tsou
and Damin
have both been claimed to possess an ingressive phoneme, 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.
Airstream mechanism
In phonetics, the airstream mechanism is the method by which airflow is created in the vocal tract. Along with phonation, it is one of two mandatory aspects of sound production; without these, there can be no speech sound....
flows inward through the mouth or nose. The three types of ingressive sounds are lingual ingressive or velaric ingressive (from the tongue
Tongue
The tongue is a muscular hydrostat on the floors of the mouths of most vertebrates which manipulates food for mastication. It is the primary organ of taste , as much of the upper surface of the tongue is covered in papillae and taste buds. It is sensitive and kept moist by saliva, and is richly...
and the velum
Soft palate
The soft palate is the soft tissue constituting the back of the roof of the mouth. The soft palate is distinguished from the hard palate at the front of the mouth in that it does not contain bone....
), glottalic ingressive (from the glottis
Glottis
The glottis is defined as the combination of the vocal folds and the space in between the folds .-Function:...
), and pulmonic ingressive (from the lung
Lung
The lung is the essential respiration organ in many air-breathing animals, including most tetrapods, a few fish and a few snails. In mammals and the more complex life forms, the two lungs are located near the backbone on either side of the heart...
s). 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.
Lingual ingressive
Lingual ingressive, or velaric ingressive, describes an airstream mechanismAirstream mechanism
In phonetics, the airstream mechanism is the method by which airflow is created in the vocal tract. Along with phonation, it is one of two mandatory aspects of sound production; without these, there can be no speech sound....
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
Click consonant
Clicks are speech sounds found as consonants in many languages of southern Africa, and in three languages of East Africa. Examples of these sounds familiar to English speakers are the tsk! tsk! or tut-tut used to express disapproval or pity, the tchick! used to spur on a horse, and the...
.
Glottalic ingressive
This term is generally applied to the implosive consonantImplosive consonant
Implosive consonants are stops with a mixed glottalic ingressive and pulmonic egressive airstream mechanism. That is, the airstream is controlled by moving the glottis downward in addition to expelling air from the lungs. Therefore, unlike the purely glottalic ejective consonants, implosives can...
s, which actually use a mixed glottalic ingressive–pulmonic egressive airstream. True pulmonic ingressives, called voiceless implosives or reverse ejectives, are quite rare. (See implosive consonant
Implosive consonant
Implosive consonants are stops with a mixed glottalic ingressive and pulmonic egressive airstream mechanism. That is, the airstream is controlled by moving the glottis downward in addition to expelling air from the lungs. Therefore, unlike the purely glottalic ejective consonants, implosives can...
.)
Pulmonic ingressive
Pulmonic ingressive sounds are those ingressive sounds in which the airstream is created by the lungLung
The lung is the essential respiration organ in many air-breathing animals, including most tetrapods, a few fish and a few snails. In mammals and the more complex life forms, the two lungs are located near the backbone on either side of the heart...
s. Pulmonic ingressive sounds are generally paralinguistic
Paralanguage
Paralanguage refers to the non-verbal elements of communication used to modify meaning and convey emotion. Paralanguage may be expressed consciously or unconsciously, and it includes the pitch, volume, and, in some cases, intonation of speech. Sometimes the definition is restricted to...
, 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
Damin
Damin was a ceremonial language register used by the advanced initiated men of the Lardil and the Yangkaal tribes in Aboriginal Australia. Both inhabit islands in the Gulf of Carpentaria, the Lardil on Mornington Island, the largest island of the Wesley Group, and the Yangkaal and Forsyth Islands...
, the last speaker of which died in the 1990s. The ǃXóõ language of Botswana has a series of nasalized click consonant
Click consonant
Clicks are speech sounds found as consonants in many languages of southern Africa, and in three languages of East Africa. Examples of these sounds familiar to English speakers are the tsk! tsk! or tut-tut used to express disapproval or pity, the tchick! used to spur on a horse, and the...
s 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."
Ingressive speech
Ingressive speech (IS) is when sounds are articulated with the flow of air in opposition to the flow that would be experienced during normal speech. The air used to voice the speech will be drawn in rather than pushed out. Ingressive speech can be either glottal, veleric or pulmonic.Occurrence
IS occurs in many languages, being frequently associated with the Scandinavian languages, despite it being a common phenomenon. The majority of words that are subject to IS 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 in the animal kingdom, frogs, dogs and cats (purring).Tsou
Tsou language
Tsou is a divergent Austronesian language spoken by the Tsou people of Taiwan.-Classification:Tsou has traditionally been considered part of a Tsouic branch of Austronesian...
and Damin
Damin
Damin was a ceremonial language register used by the advanced initiated men of the Lardil and the Yangkaal tribes in Aboriginal Australia. Both inhabit islands in the Gulf of Carpentaria, the Lardil on Mornington Island, the largest island of the Wesley Group, and the Yangkaal and Forsyth Islands...
have both been claimed to possess an ingressive phoneme, 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
Tohono O'odham
The Tohono O'odham are a group of Native American people who reside primarily in the Sonoran Desert of the southeastern Arizona and northwest Mexico...
women speaking entirely ingressively.
Distribution
Speech technologist Robert Eklund (http://roberteklund.info) 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.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:- Dialects of EnglishEnglish languageEnglish is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
spoken in NewfoundlandNewfoundland and LabradorNewfoundland and Labrador is the easternmost province of Canada. Situated in the country's Atlantic region, it incorporates the island of Newfoundland and mainland Labrador with a combined area of . As of April 2011, the province's estimated population is 508,400...
and the Canadian MaritimesMaritimesThe Maritime provinces, also called the Maritimes or the Canadian Maritimes, is a region of Eastern Canada consisting of three provinces, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island. On the Atlantic coast, the Maritimes are a subregion of Atlantic Canada, which also includes the...
.
- Dialects of English spoken in the state of MaineMaineMaine is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States, bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the east and south, New Hampshire to the west, and the Canadian provinces of Quebec to the northwest and New Brunswick to the northeast. Maine is both the northernmost and easternmost...
. The word is often transcribed as "ayup" and people attempting to imitate Maine dialect rarely use the ingressive form. It is missing in most Maine-dialect TV and HollywoodCinema of the United StatesThe cinema of the United States, also known as Hollywood, has had a profound effect on cinema across the world since the early 20th century. Its history is sometimes separated into four main periods: the silent film era, classical Hollywood cinema, New Hollywood, and the contemporary period...
productions.
- Casual FrenchFrench languageFrench is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
(ouais)
- Hiberno-EnglishHiberno-EnglishHiberno-English is the dialect of English written and spoken in Ireland .English was first brought to Ireland during the Norman invasion of the late 12th century. Initially it was mainly spoken in an area known as the Pale around Dublin, with Irish spoken throughout the rest of the country...
and Highland EnglishHighland EnglishHighland English is the variety of Scottish English spoken by many in the Scottish Highlands. It is more strongly influenced by Gaelic than other forms of Scottish English. Island English is the variety spoken as a second language by native Gaelic speakers in the Outer Hebrides...
, typically used to express agreement and show attentiveness in a phone conversation, for example.
- In FaroeseFaroese languageFaroese , is an Insular Nordic language spoken by 48,000 people in the Faroe Islands and about 25,000 Faroese people in Denmark and elsewhere...
entire phrases are sometimes produced ingressively, as is also the case in IcelandicIcelandic languageIcelandic is a North Germanic language, the main language of Iceland. Its closest relative is Faroese.Icelandic is an Indo-European language belonging to the North Germanic or Nordic branch of the Germanic languages. Historically, it was the westernmost of the Indo-European languages prior to the...
.
- In DanishDanish languageDanish is a North Germanic language spoken by around six million people, principally in the country of Denmark. It is also spoken by 50,000 Germans of Danish ethnicity in the northern parts of Schleswig-Holstein, Germany, where it holds the status of minority language...
, NorwegianNorwegian languageNorwegian is a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Norway, where it is the official language. Together with Swedish and Danish, Norwegian forms a continuum of more or less mutually intelligible local and regional variants .These Scandinavian languages together with the Faroese language...
and SwedishSwedish languageSwedish is a North Germanic language, spoken by approximately 10 million people, predominantly in Sweden and parts of Finland, especially along its coast and on the Åland islands. It is largely mutually intelligible with Norwegian and Danish...
words like "ja" (yes), "nei" (no) etc. are often pronounced with inhaled breath, which can be confusing to foreigners. The main function of inhaled speech seems to be paralinguistic, showing e.g., agreement with a statement and to encourage a speaker to continue on. It is consequently also typical of dialogue.
- In Northern German dialectsLow GermanLow German or Low Saxon is an Ingvaeonic West Germanic language spoken mainly in northern Germany and the eastern part of the Netherlands...
an affirmative "ja" (yes) is often pronounced ingressively, especially in dialogue.
- In Khalkha MongolianMongolian languageThe Mongolian language is the official language of Mongolia and the best-known member of the Mongolic language family. The number of speakers across all its dialects may be 5.2 million, including the vast majority of the residents of Mongolia and many of the Mongolian residents of the Inner...
the words тийм tʰiːm ("that/[yes]"), үгүй [ʊɡʊi] ("no"), and мэдэхгүй [mɛdɛx-ɡʊi] know. ("[I] don't know") are often pronounced in daily conversation with pulmonic ingressive airflow.
- In EweEwe languageEwe is a Niger–Congo language spoken in Ghana, Togo and Benin by approximately six million people. Ewe is part of a cluster of related languages commonly called Gbe, spoken in southeastern Ghana, Togo, and parts of Benin. Other Gbe languages include Fon, Gen, Phla Phera, and Aja...
and other TogoTogoTogo, officially the Togolese Republic , is a country in West Africa bordered by Ghana to the west, Benin to the east and Burkina Faso to the north. It extends south to the Gulf of Guinea, on which the capital Lomé is located. Togo covers an area of approximately with a population of approximately...
lese languages.
- In Austronesian languages such as Tagalog [opo] and more forcefully in Waray Waray and softer in Borongan (Samar Province) [uhuh] or [ohoh] usually spelled in these countries oo and possibly stronger in Oras, Artache, Dolores(all in Samar). The sound is almost guttural and the aspirant is inhaled, not exhaled air. Thus, for an English speaker exhaling this response, the exhaled sound is not understood by native Samar speakers. The American English trouble expression of 'Uh Oh' does not remotely approximate this sound. Eastern, Western and Northern Samar have different accents in the same dialect, and should be studied further to explore this phoneme group.
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.External links
- Robert Eklund's ingressive speech website. Maps, sound files, and spectrograms.
- http://www.mun.ca/marcomm/gazette/2003-2004/mar18/research.html
- http://www.speech.kth.se/prod/publications/files/qpsr/2007/2007_50_1_021-024.pdf