Voiced Velar Stop - Occurrence

Occurrence

Of the six stops that would be expected from the most common pattern world-wide—that is, three places of articulation plus voicing — and are the most frequently missing, being absent in about 10% of languages that otherwise have this pattern. Absent stop is an areal feature (see also Voiceless bilabial stop). Missing, on the other hand, is widely scattered around the world. (A few languages, such as Modern Standard Arabic, are missing both.) It seems that is somewhat more difficult to articulate than the other basic stops. Ian Maddieson speculates that this may be due to a physical difficulty in voicing velars: Voicing requires that air flow into the mouth cavity, and the relatively small space allowed by the position of velar consonants means that it will fill up with air quickly, making voicing difficult to maintain in for as long as it is in or . This could have two effects: and might become confused, and the distinction is lost, or perhaps a never develops when a language first starts making voicing distinctions. (with uvulars, where there is even less space between the glottis and tongue for airflow, the imbalance is more extreme: Voiced is much rarer than voiceless ). Many Indo-Aryan languages, such as Hindustani, have a two-way contrast between aspirated and plain .