Emergent Stops

Two of the most fundamental distinctions between classes of speech sounds is that between sonorants and obstruents and between continuants and non-continuants. Sonorants are characterized as sounds which have no constriction small enough to impede the flow of air to the point of creating any audible turbulence; obstruents, as sounds which have a constriction which does impede the flow of air to the point of creating turbulence a stop burst. Continuants are sounds which could be extended indefinitely whereas non-continuants involve a momentary and abrupt attenuation of the speech signal amplitude. This being the case, it is a rather remarkable phonological event when a stop, which is an non-continuant obstruent, appears as it were, “out of nowhere” surrounded by speech sounds which are either sonorants and/or continuants. Typically these are referred to in the phonological literature as ‘epenthetic’ or ‘intrusive’ stops, terms which reflect the belief that they were introduced by some external cause. Some examples are given in (1) (for references, see Ohala 1995, in press).