Palatal ejective stop

A palatal ejective is a type of consonantal sound used in some spoken languages, and the symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) that represents this sound is ⟨cʼ⟩.

Palatal ejective stop
cʼ
IPA number	107 + 401
Audio sample
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Encoding
Entity (decimal)	c​ʼ
Unicode (hex)	U+0063 U+02BC
X-SAMPA	c_>
Image

Features

Some of the features of a palatal ejective stop are:

• Its manner of articulation is occlusive, which means it is produced by obstructing airflow in the vocal tract. Since the consonant is also oral, with no nasal outlet, the airflow is blocked entirely, and the consonant is a plosive.
• Its place of articulation is palatal, which means it is articulated with the middle or back part of the tongue raised to the hard palate.
• Its phonation is un-voiced, which means it is produced without vibrations of the vocal cords.
• It is an oral consonant, which means that air is not allowed to escape through the nose.
• It is a central consonant, which means it is produced by directing the airstream along the center of the tongue, rather than to the sides.
• The airstream mechanism is ejective (glottalic egressive), which means the air is forced out by pumping the glottis upward.

Occurrence

Language	Word	IPA	Meaning	Notes
Hausa[1]	[cʼaːɽa]		'grass'	The three-way contrast between palatals /c ɟ cʼ/, plain velars /k ɡ kʼ/, and labialized velars /kʷ ɡʷ kʷʼ/ is found only before long and short /a/.
Jaqaru[2]	[example needed]
Keres[3][4]	[example needed]
Nǁng[5]	/cʼaˤe/	cʼaqe	'to be finely-sized'

See also

• List of phonetics topics