The voiceless bilabial plosive is a type of consonantal sound used in many spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is p. The voiceless bilabial plosive in English is spelled with 'p', as in pit or speed.

is missing from about 10% of languages that have a . (See voiced velar plosive for another such gap.) This is an areal feature of the "circum-Saharan zone" (Africa north of the equator, including the Arabian peninsula). It is not known how old this areal feature is, and whether it might be a recent phenomenon due to Arabic as a prestige language (Arabic lost its in prehistoric times), or whether Arabic was itself affected by a more ancient areal pattern. It is found in other areas as well; for example, in Europe, Proto-Celtic and Old Basque are both reconstructed as having but no .

Nonetheless, the sound is very common cross-linguistically. Most languages have at least a plain , and some distinguish more than one variety. Many Indo-Aryan languages, such as Hindi, have a two-way contrast between aspirated and plain .

Features

Features of the voiceless bilabial plosive:

• Its manner of articulation is plosive or stop, which means it is produced by obstructing airflow in the vocal tract.

• Its place of articulation is bilabial which means it is articulated with both lips.

• Its phonation type is voiceless, which means it is produced without vibrations of the vocal cords.

• It is an oral consonant, which means air is allowed to escape through the mouth.

• It is a central consonant, which means it is produced by allowing the airstream to flow over the middle of the tongue, rather than the sides.

• The airstream mechanism is pulmonic egressive, which means it is articulated by pushing air out of the lungs and through the vocal tract, rather than from the glottis or the mouth.

Varieties

Occurrence

See also

• List of phonetics topics