Voiceless Bilabial Plosive Article Index for
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Voiceless Bilabial Plosive




The voiceless bilabial plosive is a type of Consonant al sound used in many Spoken Language s. 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 India n languages, such as Hindi , have a two-way contrast between Aspirated and plain .


FEATURES


Features of the voiceless bilabial plosive:



VARIETIES OF THE VOICELESS BILABIAL PLOSIVE



OCCURRENCE



In English


English has both aspirated and plain , but they are Allophone s of the phoneme .

When occurs at the beginning of a word or a Stressed Syllable , like in ''print'', ''support'', or ''potato'', then it is always aspirated. When it occurs at the beginning of an unstressed syllable that isn't at the beginning of a word, like in ''occupant'', ''vapid'', or ''keeper'', then it is always unaspirated. When occurs in a Consonant Cluster following , like in ''spin'', ''sprain'', or ''suspend'', then it is always unaspirated. When it occurs at the end of a word, like in ''tip'', ''wasp'', or ''telescope'', then it is usually unaspirated, and if the word is at the end of an Utterance , then the is often unreleased.


In other languages



SEE ALSO