This MedLibrary.org supplementary page on Alveolar tap is provided directly from the open source Wikipedia as a service to our readers. Please see the note below on authorship of this content, as well as the Wikipedia usage guidelines. To search for other content from our encyclopedia supplement, please use the form below:
Related Sponsors
| IPA – number | 124 |
| IPA – text | ɾ |
| IPA – image |  |
| Entity | ɾ |
| X-SAMPA | 4 |
| Kirshenbaum | * |
| Sound sample | |
The alveolar tap or flap is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents dental, alveolar, and postalveolar flaps is ɾ, and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is 4.
Contents |
Definition
The terms tap and flap may be used interchangeably.
Peter Ladefoged proposed for a while that it may be useful to distinguish between them. However, his usage has been inconsistent, contradicting itself even between different editions of the same text. The last proposed distinction was that a tap strikes its point of contact directly, as a very brief plosive, whereas a flap strikes the point of contact tangentially: "Flaps are most typically made by retracting the tongue tip behind the alveolar ridge and moving it forward so that it strikes the ridge in passing." However, later on, he no longer felt this was a useful distinction to make, and preferred to use the word flap in all cases.
For linguists who do make the distinction, the coronal tap is transcribed as a fish-hook "r", [ɾ], while the flap is transcribed as a small capital "d", [ᴅ], which is not recognized by the IPA. Otherwise, alveolars and dentals are typically called taps, and other articulations flaps. No language contrasts a tap and a flap at the same place of articulation.
This sound is often analyzed (and therefore transcribed) by native English speakers as an 'R-sound' in many foreign languages. For example, the 'Japanese R' in hara, akira, tora, etc. is actually an alveolar tap. In languages where this segment is present but is not a true phoneme, an alveolar tap is often an allophone of either an alveolar stop (/t/ or /d/) or an 'R-sound' i.e. an alveolar trill or alveolar approximant.
Features
Features of the alveolar flap/tap:
- Its manner of articulation is tap or flap, which means it is produced with a single contraction of the muscles so that one articulator briefly strikes the other.
- Its place of articulation is alveolar which means it is articulated with the tip of the tongue against the alveolar ridge.
- Its phonation type is voiced, which means the vocal cords are vibrating during the articulation.
- It is an oral consonant, which means air is allowed to escape through the mouth.
- It is a central consonant, which means it is produced by allowing the airstream to flow over the middle of the tongue, rather than the sides.
- The airstream mechanism is pulmonic egressive, which means it is articulated by pushing air out of the lungs and through the vocal tract, rather than from the glottis or the mouth.
Occurrence
| Language | Word | IPA | Meaning | Notes | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Albanian | emër | [ɛməɾ] | 'name' | ||
| Arabic | Egyptian1 | رأس | [ɾaʔs] | 'head' | Contrasts with emphatic form. See Arabic phonology |
| Basque | lorea | [loˈɾea] | 'the flower' | ||
| Catalan2 | innecessari | [innəsəˈsaɾi] | 'unnecessary' | See Catalan phonology | |
| Chechen | рагI/raġ | [ɾɑɣ] | 'mountain range' | ||
| English | GA | better | [ˈbɛɾɚ] | 'better' | Intervocalic allophone of /t/ and /d/. See English phonology and flapping |
| Australian3 | [ˈbe̞ɾə] | See Australian English phonology | |||
| New Zealand | [ˈbeɾə] | ||||
| Scouse4 | free | [fɾiː] | 'free' | Rhotic consonant | |
| Scotland | |||||
| Japanese | 心/こころ/kokoro | [ko̥koɾo] | 'heart' | May instead be a lateral flap See Japanese phonology | |
| Korean | 바람/baram | [paɾam] | 'wind' | See Korean phonology | |
| Norwegian | Norge | [ˈnɔɾgə] | 'Norway' | See Norwegian phonology | |
| Portuguese5 | contra | [ˈkõtɾɐ] | 'against' | See Portuguese phonology | |
| Spanish6 | caro | [ˈkaɾo̞] | 'expensive' | See Spanish phonology | |
References
- ^ Watson (2002:16)
- ^ Carbonell & Llisterri (1992:53)
- ^ Cox & Palethorpe (2007:343)
- ^ Watson (2007:352)
- ^ Cruz-Ferreira (1995:91)
- ^ Martínez-Celdrán et al (2003:255)
Bibliography
- Carbonell, Joan F. & Joaquim Llisterri (1992), "Catalan", Journal of the International Phonetic Association 22 (1-2): 53-56
- Cox, Felicity & Sallyanne Palethorpe (2007), "Australian English", Journal of the International Phonetic Association 37 (3): 341-349
- Cruz-Ferreira, Madalena (1995), "European Portuguese", Journal of the International Phonetic Association 25 (2): 90-94
- Martínez-Celdrán, Eugenio; Ana Ma. Fernández-Planas & Josefina Carrera-Sabaté (2003), "Castilian Spanish", Journal of the International Phonetic Association 33 (2): 255-259
- Watson, Janet (2002), written at New York, The Phonology and Morphology of Arabic, Oxford University Press
- Watson, Kevin (2007), "Liverpool English", Journal of the International Phonetic Association 37 (3): 351-360
See also
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
The Letter "R" |
|
| General: | The letter R · Rhotic consonants (R-like sounds) · Rhotic and non-rhotic accents · R-colored vowels · Guttural R · Linking R and Intrusive R |
| Pronunciations: | Alveolar trill [r] · Alveolar approximant [ɹ] · Alveolar tap [ɾ] · Alveolar lateral flap [ɺ] ·Retroflex approximant [ɻ] · Retroflex flap [ɽ] ·Uvular trill [ʀ] ·Voiced uvular fricative [ʁ] |
| Variations: | R rotunda · Ɍɍ (R with stroke) · Ʀʀ · Ȑȑ · Ŕŕ · Ŗŗ · Řř · Ȓȓ · Ṙṙ · Ṛṛ · Ṝṝ · Ṟṟ · Rd · Rh · Rl · Rn · Rr · Rt · Rnd · ᚱ (Raidô) · ℛ (Riemann integral) · ℜ (Real part) · ℝ (Real number) · ® (Registered trademark symbol) · Ⓡ (Enclosed R) |
Wikipedia content modification information:
- This page was last modified on 17 October 2008, at 00:31.
Wikipedia Authorship and Review
Wikipedia content provided here is not reviewed directly by MedLibrary.org. Wikipedia content is authored by an open community of volunteers and is not produced by or in any way affiliated with MedLibrary.org.
Wikipedia Usage Guidelines
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article on "Alveolar tap".
The URL for this specific entry is:
All Wikipedia text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License. (See Copyrights for details). Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.