A voiced upper-pharyngeal plosive or stop is a rare consonant.
No language is known to have a phonemic upper pharyngeal plosive. The Nǁng language (Nǀuu) is claimed to have an upper pharyngeal place of articulation among its click consonants. Clicks in Nǁng have a rear closure that is said to vary between uvular to upper pharyngeal, depending on the click type.Miller, Amanda L., Johanna Brugman, Bonny Sands, Levi Namaseb, Mats Exter, and Chris Collins. 2009a. 'Differences in airstream and posterior place of articulation among Nǀuu clicks.' Journal of the International Phonetic Association 39(2): 132. However, if the place were truly pharyngeal, these articulations could not occur as nasal clicks, which they do.
Otherwise, upper pharyngeal plosives are only known from disordered speech. The extIPA provides the letter (a turned small capital G), equivalent to IPA (a retracted ), to transcribe such a sound.
Pharyngeal and epiglottal consonants are pronounced in the upper and lower pharynx, respectively, and because of this they are often labeled "upper pharyngeal" and "lower pharyngeal". If the consonants labeled as epiglottal fricatives in the International Phonetic Alphabet chart, , are analyzed as trills, which they generally are phonetically, then all three epiglottal letters fit in gaps in the pharyngeal column of the consonant table in the chart. This has led phoneticians such as John Esling to propose merging the epiglottal consonants into the pharyngeal column of the chart. This would leave no room for the extIPA letters. As it is, the extIPA chart places the letters in the plosive cell of an "upper pharyngeal" column.Duckworth et al. (1990) Extensions to the International Phonetic Alphabet for the transcription of atypical speech. Clinical Linguistics & Phonetics 4: 4 p. 275
Features Features of a voiced upper-pharyngeal stop:
See also Voiceless upper-pharyngeal plosive
References