Voiceless palatal plosive
consonantal sound
A voiceless palatal plosive or stop is a type of consonantal sound used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ⟨c⟩.
If distinction is necessary, a voiceless alveolo-palatal plosive may be transcribed ⟨t̠ʲ⟩ (retracted and palatalized [t]) or ⟨c̟⟩ (advanced [c]), depending on the linguistic analysis of that sound. There is also a para-IPA letter ⟨ȶ⟩ that is used primarily in Sinological phonetic notation.
It is common for the symbol ⟨c⟩ to be used to transcribe a palatalized voiceless velar plosive [kʲ] or, as often in the Indo-Aryan languages, a postalveolar affricate [tʃ] – especially in phonemic notation. The latter may be appropriate when the place of articulation needs to be specified but the distinction between plosive and affricate is not contrastive, or simply for a cleaner transcription.
Features
Features of a voiceless palatal stop:
Its manner of articulation is occlusive, which means it is produced by obstructing airflow in the vocal tract. Since the consonant is also oral, with no nasal outlet, it is a plosive.
Its place of articulation is palatal, which means it is articulated with the middle or back part of the tongue raised to the hard palate.
The otherwise identical post-palatal variant is articulated slightly behind the hard palate, making it sound closer to the velar [k].
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This entry incorporates text from “Voiceless palatal plosive” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.