Uvularization

Last updated
Uvularized
◌ʶ
◌ᵡ

Uvularization or uvularisation (British English) is a secondary articulation of consonants or vowels by which the back of the tongue is constricted toward the uvula and upper pharynx during the articulation of a sound with its primary articulation elsewhere.

Contents

IPA symbols

In the International Phonetic Alphabet, uvularization can be indicated by the symbol ⟨ʶ⟩ (a superscript voiced uvular fricative (inverted small capital R)) after the letter standing for the consonant that is uvularized, as in [tʶ] (the uvularized equivalent of [t]). The symbol ⟨ᵡ⟩ (a superscript voiceless uvular fricative) is sometimes used on voiceless consonants. This is specified in VoQS standards.

Occurrence

Uvularized consonants are often not distinguished from pharyngealized consonants, and they may be transcribed as if they were pharyngealized.

In Arabic and several other Semitic and Berber languages, uvularization is the defining characteristic of the series of "emphatic" coronal consonants. [1] [2]

Uvularized consonants in standard Arabic are /sʶ/, /dʶ/, /tʶ/, /ðʶ/, /lʶ/. Regionally there is also /zʶ/ and /rʶ/. Other consonants, and vowels, may be phonetically uvularized.

In Greenlandic, long vowels are uvularized before uvular consonants, [3] and English speakers retaining the Northumbrian Burr are reported both to uvularize and to retract vowels before a rhotic. [4]

Related Research Articles

Approximants are speech sounds that involve the articulators approaching each other but not narrowly enough nor with enough articulatory precision to create turbulent airflow. Therefore, approximants fall between fricatives, which do produce a turbulent airstream, and vowels, which produce no turbulence. This class is composed of sounds like and semivowels like and, as well as lateral approximants like.

A fricative is a consonant produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together. These may be the lower lip against the upper teeth, in the case of ; the back of the tongue against the soft palate in the case of German ; or the side of the tongue against the molars, in the case of Welsh. This turbulent airflow is called frication.

An affricate is a consonant that begins as a stop and releases as a fricative, generally with the same place of articulation. It is often difficult to decide if a stop and fricative form a single phoneme or a consonant pair. English has two affricate phonemes, and, often spelled ch and j, respectively.

Uvulars are consonants articulated with the back of the tongue against or near the uvula, that is, further back in the mouth than velar consonants. Uvulars may be stops, fricatives, nasals, trills, or approximants, though the IPA does not provide a separate symbol for the approximant, and the symbol for the voiced fricative is used instead. Uvular affricates can certainly be made but are rare: they occur in some southern High-German dialects, as well as in a few African and Native American languages. Uvular consonants are typically incompatible with advanced tongue root, and they often cause retraction of neighboring vowels.

Guttural speech sounds are those with a primary place of articulation near the back of the oral cavity, where it is difficult to distinguish a sound's place of articulation and its phonation. In popular usage it is an imprecise term for sounds produced relatively far back in the vocal tract, such as German ch or the Arabic ayin, but not simple glottal sounds like h. The term 'guttural language' is used for languages that have such sounds.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pharyngealization</span> Articulation of consonants or vowels

Pharyngealization is a secondary articulation of consonants or vowels by which the pharynx or epiglottis is constricted during the articulation of the sound.

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 languages have glottalized sonorants with creaky voice that pattern with ejectives phonologically, and other languages have ejectives that pattern with implosives, which has led to phonologists positing a phonological class of glottalic consonants, which includes ejectives.

The voiceless uvular plosive or stop is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. It is pronounced like a voiceless velar plosive, except that the tongue makes contact not on the soft palate but on the uvula. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is q, and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is q.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Voiced dental and alveolar lateral fricatives</span> Consonantal sounds represented by ⟨ɮ⟩ in IPA

The voiced alveolar lateral fricative is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents voiced dental, alveolar, and postalveolar lateral fricatives is ɮ, and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is K\.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Voiced pharyngeal fricative</span> Consonantal sound represented by ⟨ʕ⟩ in IPA

The voiced pharyngeal approximant or fricative is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ʕ, and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is ?\. Epiglottals and epiglotto-pharyngeals are often mistakenly taken to be pharyngeal.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Voiced uvular fricative</span> Consonantal sound represented by ⟨ʁ⟩ in IPA

The voiced uvular fricative is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ʁ, an inverted small uppercase letter ʀ, or in broad transcription r if rhotic. This consonant is one of the several collectively called guttural R when found in European languages.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Voiced uvular plosive</span> Consonantal sound represented by ⟨ɢ⟩ in IPA

The voiced uvular plosive or stop is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ɢ, a small capital version of the Latin letter g, and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is G\.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Voiceless pharyngeal fricative</span> Consonantal sound represented by ⟨ħ⟩ in IPA

The voiceless pharyngeal fricative is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is an h-bar, ħ, and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is X\. In the transcription of Arabic, Berber as well as a few other scripts, it is often written ⟨Ḥ⟩, ⟨ḥ⟩.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Voiceless uvular fricative</span> Consonantal sound represented by ⟨χ⟩ in IPA

The voiceless uvular fricative is a type of consonantal sound that is used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is χ, the Greek chi. The sound is represented by ⟨x̣⟩ in Americanist phonetic notation. It is sometimes transcribed with x in broad transcription.

In phonetics, a trill is a consonantal sound produced by vibrations between the active articulator and passive articulator. Standard Spanish ⟨rr⟩ as in perro, for example, is an alveolar trill.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pharyngeal consonant</span> Consonant articulated through the pharynx

A pharyngeal consonant is a consonant that is articulated primarily in the pharynx. Some phoneticians distinguish upper pharyngeal consonants, or "high" pharyngeals, pronounced by retracting the root of the tongue in the mid to upper pharynx, from (ary)epiglottal consonants, or "low" pharyngeals, which are articulated with the aryepiglottic folds against the epiglottis at the entrance of the larynx, as well as from epiglotto-pharyngeal consonants, with both movements being combined.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Guttural R</span> Type of rhotic consonant ("r sound")

Guttural R is the phenomenon whereby a rhotic consonant is produced in the back of the vocal tract rather than in the front portion thereof and thus as a guttural consonant. Speakers of languages with guttural R typically regard guttural and coronal rhotics to be alternative pronunciations of the same phoneme, despite articulatory differences. Similar consonants are found in other parts of the world, but they often have little to no cultural association or interchangeability with coronal rhotics and are (perhaps) not rhotics at all.

Americanist phonetic notation, also known as the North American Phonetic Alphabet (NAPA), the Americanist Phonetic Alphabet or the American Phonetic Alphabet (APA), is a system of phonetic notation originally developed by European and American anthropologists and language scientists for the phonetic and phonemic transcription of indigenous languages of the Americas and for languages of Europe. It is still commonly used by linguists working on, among others, Slavic, Uralic, Semitic languages and for the languages of the Caucasus, of India, and of much of Africa; however, Uralists commonly use a variant known as the Uralic Phonetic Alphabet.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Velopharyngeal consonant</span>

A velopharyngeal fricative, also known as a posterior nasal fricative, is a sound produced by some children with speech disorders, including some with a cleft palate, as a substitute for sibilants, which cannot be produced with a cleft palate. It results from "the approximation but inadequate closure of the upper border of the velum and the posterior pharyngeal wall." To produce a velopharyngeal fricative, the soft palate approaches the pharyngeal wall and narrows the velopharyngeal port, such that the restricted port creates fricative turbulence in air forced through it into the nasal cavity. The articulation may be aided by a posterior positioning of the tongue and may involve velar flutter.

References

  1. McCarthy, John (1994) "The phonetics and phonology of Semitic pharyngeals. In Keating (ed.) Phonological structure and phonetic form: papers in laboratory phonology III, 191233. Cambridge University Press.
  2. Shahin, Kimary (1996) "Accessing pharyngeal place in Palestinian Arabic", in Eid & Parkinson (eds.) Perspectives on Arabic Linguistics: Papers from the Ninth Annual Symposium on Arabic Linguistics, Washington DC, 1995, 131149
  3. Sydney Wood (1997) "The gestural organization of vowels and consonants: a cinefluorographic study of articulator gestures in Greenlandic", 5th European Conference on Speech Communication and Technology
  4. Wells, J. (1982) Accents of English, 3 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.