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AIRSTREAM MECHANISMS

المؤلف:  Parviz Birjandi

المصدر:  AN INTRODUCTION TO PHONETICS

الجزء والصفحة:  C4-P79

2026-07-09

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AIRSTREAM MECHANISMS

It was pointed out before that most sounds in speech are produced by passing a stream of air from the lungs through one or more resonators belonging to the phonetic apparatus. In a small number of languages, the airstream does not originate in the lungs, but rather from outside. This velaric ingressive airstream mechanism produces implosive and click sounds through inhalation. A speech sound can also be generated from a difference in pressure of the air inside and outside a resonator. In the case of pharyngeal cavity, this pressure difference can be created without using the lungs at all whereby producing ejective sounds. This is called the glottalic egressive airstream mechanism. The main airstream mechanism in most of the world's languages, however, is the pulmonic egressive airstream mechanism which produces almost all the phonemes of the world's most important languages. In this case, the flow of air originates in the lungs. As such, it is called pulmonic airstream (or simply pulmonic air). It then moves outward through the resonators; hence, the name egressive. When articulators (i.e., parts of the vocal tract that modify the airstream) influence the flow of pulmonic air, sounds are produced. The nature of the modifications that produce one phoneme differs from those of any other phoneme. As it was mentioned earlier, modern or systematic phonetics uses binary phonetic features to describe the nature of these modifications.