Trisha Shetty (Editor)

Palatal lateral flap

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Palatal lateral flap

The palatal lateral flap is a rare type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. There is no symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound. However, the symbol for a palatal lateral approximant may be used with a breve as an ad hoc symbol, placed under the letter to avoid the ascender, ⟨ʎ̮ ⟩.

Contents

Features

Features of the alveolar lateral flap:

  • Its manner of articulation is flap, which means it is produced with a single contraction of the muscles so that one articulator (usually the tongue) is thrown against another.
  • Its place of articulation is palatal, which means it is articulated with the middle or back part of the tongue raised to the hard palate.
  • Its phonation is voiced, which means the vocal cords vibrate during the articulation.
  • It is an oral consonant, which means air is allowed to escape through the mouth only.
  • It is a lateral consonant, which means it is produced by directing the airstream over the sides of the tongue, rather than down the middle.
  • The airstream mechanism is pulmonic, which means it is articulated by pushing air solely with the lungs and diaphragm, as in most sounds.

    • Occurrence

    The Iwaidja and Ilgar languages of Australia have a palatal lateral flap as well as alveolar and retroflex lateral flaps. However, the palatal flap has not been shown to be phonemic; it may instead be an underlying sequence /ɺj/. An example from Ilgar is the personal name [miʎ̮arɡu].

    References

    Palatal lateral flap Wikipedia
    (Text) CC BY-SA