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In linguistics, voicelessness is the property of sounds being pronounced without the larynx vibrating. Phonologically, this is a type of phonation, which contrasts with other states of the larynx, but some object that the word "phonation" implies voicing, and that voicelessness is the ''lack'' of phonation. The International Phonetic Alphabet has distinct letters for many voiceless and modally voiced pairs of consonants (the obstruents), such as . In addition, there are diacritics for voicelessness, and , which is used for letters with a descender. Diacritics are typically used with letters for prototypically voiced sounds, such as vowels and sonorant consonants: . ==Voiceless vowels and other sonorants== Sonorants are those sounds, such as vowels and nasals, that are voiced in most of the world's languages. However, in some languages sonorants may be voiceless, usually allophonically. For example, the Japanese word ''sukiyaki'' is pronounced . This may sound like to an English speaker, but the lips can be seen compressing for the . Something similar happens in English with words like ''peculiar'' and ''potato'' . Voiceless vowels are also an areal feature in languages of the American Southwest (e.g. Hopi and Keres), Great Basin (including all Numic languages), and the Great Plains, where they are present in Numic Comanche but also in Algonquian Cheyenne and Caddoan Arikara. Sonorants may also be contrastively voiceless, not just voiceless due to their environment. Standard Tibetan, for example, has a voiceless in ''Lhasa,'' which sounds similar to, but is not as noisy as, the voiceless lateral fricative in Welsh, and which contrasts with a modally voiced . Welsh contrasts several voiceless sonorants: , , , and , the latter represented by "rh". In the Moksha language there is even a voiceless palatal approximant (written in Cyrillic as <йх> ''jh'') along with and (written as <лх> ''lh'' and <рх> ''rh''). The last two have palatalized counterparts and (<льх> and <рьх>). In the Kildin Sami language there is also <ҋ>. Although contrastively voiceless vowels have been reported several times, they have never been verified. (L&M 1996:315). 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「voicelessness」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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