Plosives

Plosives, also called stops, are consonants produced by creating a complete closure of the vocal tract at a particular place of articulation, trapping the airstream, and then releasing it abruptly to produce a burst of sound. The closure is formed at several possible points in the vocal tract, most commonly the bilabial, alveolar, and velar regions, yielding p, b; t, d; and k, g. Less common articulations include dental, palatal, and uvular stops, and the glottal stop is sometimes treated as a stop in many languages.

The airstream mechanism for plosives is pulmonic egressive: air is pushed from the lungs and released through the oral cavity after the closure. The release creates the characteristic plosive burst. Plosives contrast in voicing: voiceless stops (p, t, k) and their voiced counterparts (b, d, g). In many languages, aspiration follows the oral release, producing a longer, fricative-like noise (pʰ, tʰ, kʰ). Some languages also have unaspirated voiceless stops, and phonation can vary across contexts.

Plosives are a core class of consonants and are contrasted with nasals and fricatives. Their distribution influences syllable structure, stress, and phonotactics within languages. In phonetic transcription, the standard symbols p, b, t, d, k, g denote voiceless and voiced stops at bilabial, alveolar, and velar places of articulation, with other places indicated by corresponding symbols. The glottal stop [ʔ] is often considered a type of stop and occurs phonemically or allophonically in many languages.