Voiceless palatal plosive

The voiceless palatal plosive or stop is a type of consonantal sound used in some vocal languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ⟨c⟩, and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is.

If distinction is necessary, the voiceless alveolo-palatal plosive may be transcribed as ⟨c̟⟩ (advanced ⟨c⟩) or ⟨t̠ʲ⟩ (retracted and palatalized ⟨t⟩), but these are essentially equivalent, because the contact includes both the blade and body (but not the tip) of the tongue. The equivalent X-SAMPA symbols are  and   or , respectively. There is also a non-IPA letter ; ⟨ȶ⟩ ("t", plus the curl found in the symbols for alveolo-palatal sibilant fricatives ), which is used especially in sinological circles.

It is common for the phonetic symbol ⟨c⟩ to be used to represent voiceless postalveolar affricate or other similar affricates, for example in the Indic languages. This may be considered appropriate when the place of articulation needs to be specified and the distinction between plosive and affricate is not contrastive.

There is also the voiceless post-palatal plosive in some languages, which is articulated slightly more back compared with the place of articulation of the prototypical palatal consonant, though not as back as the prototypical velar consonant. The International Phonetic Alphabet does not have a separate symbol for that sound, though it can be transcribed as ⟨c̠⟩ (retracted ⟨c⟩) or ⟨k̟⟩ (advanced ⟨k⟩). The equivalent X-SAMPA symbols are  and , respectively.

Especially in broad transcription, the voiceless post-palatal plosive may be transcribed as a palatalized voiceless velar plosive (⟨kʲ⟩ in the IPA,  or   in X-SAMPA).

Features


Features of the voiceless palatal stop:


 * The otherwise identical post-palatal variant is articulated slightly behind the hard palate, making it sound closer to the velar.
 * Alveolo-palatal variant is articulated also with the blade of the tongue at or behind the alveolar ridge.