oclusiva

Occlusiva, or occlusive, is a category of consonants in phonetics and phonology defined by a complete or near-complete constriction of the vocal tract that momentarily blocks the airstream, followed by a release burst. The occlusion can occur at various places of articulation, most commonly bilabial, alveolar, and velar. The defining feature is the closure, which may be released with a burst of air or, in some languages, released more quietly.

Occlusives can be voiceless or voiced, and many languages also distinguish aspiration after the release, producing an audible breath with voiceless stops (as in English p, t, k) or a less aspirated release (as in Spanish p, t, k in certain contexts). A frequently included example set comprises the stops p, b, t, d, k, g, as well as the glottal stop ʔ. Some languages also realize dental or other variants of these stops. In addition to stops, some analyses discuss affricates (such as ts, tʃ) as stop-fricative combinations, which are sometimes treated separately from pure occlusives.

Occlusives are contrasted with other manners of articulation such as fricatives, nasals, approximants, and flaps or taps. They are a fundamental element of many phoneme inventories and influence syllable structure, phonotactics, and sound change across languages. Their realization ranges from fully ejective or aspirated to unaspirated or unreleased, depending on language-specific phonology and phonetic context.