Airstream Mechanism

Presented to:Prof. Dr. Mubashar Nadeem

Presented by: Azhar Munir Bhatti, PhD Student

University of Education,
Division of Arts and Social Sciences
Lower Mall Campus, Lahore
 Speech Mechanism
• Respiration (Lungs)
• It starts from Diaphragm and ends at trachea.
• Normal process of living creatures (inhale and exhale)
• Phonation (Larynx)
• It is a process of producing sounds through vocal folds (periodic
vibration) by creating different pressures (like negative or positive
pressure by closing and opening glottis)
• Articulation (Mouth)
• It happens in oral or nasal cavity.
• Producing intelligible sounds
 Speech Mechanism

Oro-Nasal Process
Articulation
Articulatory Process
All four
components Phonation Process
of Speech
Mechanism
Airstream Process
(Respiration)
 Types of Airstream Mechanism
• There are three types of airstream mechanisms
• Pulmonic
• Velaric
• Glottalic
• There are four kinds of sounds produced from different airstream
mechanisms: egressive/ingressive/clicks/ejectives
• We are only concerned with two types: egressive/ingressive
• Pulmonic – can only be used for egressive sounds
• Velaric – can only be used for ingressive sounds
• Glottalic – can be used both for egressive or ingressive
 Sounds
• English sounds are produced through pulmonic egressive
airstream
• This is a normal exhalation process. We inhale and then exhale but
at exhalation process, we produce sounds, which make utterances.
• The ingressive sounds are produced by moving the glottis
downward in addition to expelling the air from the lungs.
• Saraiki and Sindhi have implosive or ingressive sounds
• /ɓ/ /ɗ/ /ʄ/ /ɠ/ /ʛ/
• Almost 13% of the human languages have implosives
• Pakistan, Sub-Saharan African, Australia, Indonesia, Thailand, North
America, Guatemala
 Implosives
• It can be voiced
• Sometimes it can also be voiceless
• In connected speech, these can be nasal, trill, lateral

• /ɓ/ is voiced bilabial implosive - Saraiki / Sindhi

• /ɗ/ is voiced alveolar implosive - Saraiki / Sindhi
• /ʄ/ is voiced palatal implosive - Sindhi / Saraiki
• /ʛ/ is uvular implosive - Saraiki / Sindhi