In English, a plosive is unreleased before a homorganic nasal, as in catnip . Commonly the first in a cluster of plosives, as in apt or doctor, is also said to be unreleased in the speech of most English speakers. However, although these may be transcribed [ˈæp̚t] and , these are not actually unreleased. Rather, the first stop is released during the hold of the second, so that they overlap; in this way the first release is inaudible.
In languages such as Cantonese, Catalan, Korean, Min Nan (Taiwanese), Malay and Thai, final stops are not released: mak [mak̚]. Unreleased final stops lack aspiration, neutralising the aspiration distinction between stop pairs such as p/b, k/g, t/d etc in languages such as Cantonese.
Some languages which are reported to have unreleased final stops turn out to have short voiceless nasal releases instead. Vietnamese is an example.
Released plosives, on the other hand, are not normally indicated. If a final plosive is aspirated, the aspiration symbol [ʰ] is sufficient to indicate the release. Otherwise, the 'unaspirated' diacritic from the Extended IPA may be employed for this: apt [æp̚t⁼]. Another convention sometimes seen is to use an upper right corner, the mirror image of [ ̚].
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Last updated on Thursday June 12, 2008 at 23:28:59 PDT (GMT -0700)
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