Talk:Nonexplosive stop

Correction for the definition of the term "nonexplosive stop".

The term "nonexplosive stop" as a whole can refer to implosives as well as what the Ikwere language has. What are in the Ikwere language are a type of nonexplosive stop. In the first sentence in the article by Clements, it says "Nonexplosive stops, including implosives and other stops regularly lacking an explosive release burst". In the 5th sentence, the sentence after the one introducing the Ikwere language, it states "In this language, the phonemically contrastive nonexplosive bilabial stops, though resembling implosives in certain respects, are produced with no lowering of the larynx". The article, however, does not state that "nonexplosive stop" refers to "stop consonants that lack the pressure build-up and burst release associated with pulmonic stops, but also the laryngeal lowering of implosive stops". Bleppi (talk) 06:49, 4 April 2026 (UTC)

@Bleppi I noticed this issue too. It's in my backlog, but I'm planning on merging the article into a minor part of glottalic consonant, which is clearly what Clements & Osu are talking about. They describe the class as containing implosives, preglottalized stops, laryngealized (creaky voiced) stops, plus Ikwerre's special "previously undocumented type" (and according to them, certain varieties of "lenis" and labial-velar stops?).

It doesn't seem like linguists elsewhere ever really picked up the term, it's a coinage unique to C&O, and they appear to refrain from using it in their later work, instead using the term "nonobstruent"; more recent sources (not C&O) just treat Ikwerre's special stops as standard implosives. So it really only deserves a sentence or few on the overlapping topic, certainly not a whole page. ~ oklopfer (💬) 07:06, 4 April 2026 (UTC)

Also to clarify, "nonobstruent" is used in a broader sense of simply [-obstruent] by them. ~ oklopfer (💬) 15:20, 5 April 2026 (UTC)