Prevoicing, in

phonetics Phonetics is a branch of linguistics that studies how humans produce and perceive sounds, or in the case of sign languages, the equivalent aspects of sign. Linguists who specialize in studying the physical properties of speech are phoneticians. ...

, is voicing before the onset of a consonant or beginning with the onset of the consonant but ending before its release. In the

extensions to the International Phonetic Alphabet The Extensions to the International Phonetic Alphabet for Disordered Speech, commonly abbreviated extIPA , are a set of letters and diacritics devised by the International Clinical Phonetics and Linguistics Association to augment the Internatio ...

for

speech pathology Speech is a human vocal communication using language. Each language uses phonetic combinations of vowel and consonant sounds that form the sound of its words (that is, all English words sound different from all French words, even if they are th ...

, prevoicing is transcribed with a voicing diacritic ( ̬, U+032C) placed in front of the consonant, as in . In several

Khoisan languages The Khoisan languages (; also Khoesan or Khoesaan) are a group of African languages originally classified together by Joseph Greenberg. Khoisan languages share click consonants and do not belong to other African language families. For much of th ...

of Southern Africa, such as

Taa Trans Australia Airlines (TAA), renamed Australian Airlines in 1986, was one of the two major Australian domestic airlines between its inception in 1946 and its merger with Qantas in September 1992. As a result of the "COBRA" (or Common Brand ...

and !Kung, stops such as ( or ) and ( or ) are sometimes analyzed as being prevoiced and ,Kehrein, Wolfgang. (2002). ''Phonological representation and phonetic phasing''. Tübingen: Niemeyer. though the cessation of voicing has also been analyzed as phonetic detail in the transition of a phonemically voiced consonant to its voiceless aspiration or ejection. (See

aspirated voiced consonant In phonetics, aspiration is the strong burst of breath that accompanies either the release or, in the case of preaspiration, the closure of some obstruents. In English, aspirated consonants are allophones in complementary distribution with th ...

and

voiced ejective In phonetics, ejective consonants are usually voiceless consonants that are pronounced with a glottalic egressive airstream. In the phonology of a particular language, ejectives may contrast with aspirated, voiced and tenuis consonants. Some l ...

.) Kelabit has a similar set of

aspirated voiced In phonetics, aspiration is the strong burst of breath that accompanies either the release or, in the case of preaspiration, the closure of some obstruents. In English, aspirated consonants are allophones in complementary distribution with th ...

consonants. Not all speakers produce the aspiration, resulting in prevoiced (or mixed voiced) (or equivalently , and neighboring Lun Dayeh has (= .

References

Phonetics {{Phonetics-stub