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Tongue root
Tongue root
tongue root
tongue root
tongue root
tongue root
tongue root
| Advanced tongue root (ATR) | |
|---|---|
| ◌̘ | |
| ◌꭪ | |
| IPA Number | 417 |
| Retracted tongue root (RTR) | |
|---|---|
| ◌̙ | |
| ◌꭫ | |
| IPA Number | 418 |
In phonetics, advanced tongue root (ATR) and retracted tongue root (RTR) are contrasting states of the root of the tongue during the pronunciation of vowels in some languages, especially in Western and Eastern Africa, but also in Kazakh and Mongolian. ATR vs RTR was once suggested to be the basis for the distinction between tense and lax vowels in European languages such as German, but that no longer seems tenable. [1]
Advanced tongue root, abbreviated ATR or +ATR, also called expanded, [2] involves the expansion of the pharyngeal cavity by moving the base of the tongue forward and often lowering the larynx during the pronunciation of a vowel. The lowering of the larynx sometimes adds a breathy quality to the vowel.
Voiced stops such as [ b ], [ d ], [ ɡ ] can often involve non-contrastive tongue root advancement whose results can be seen occasionally in sound changes relating stop voicing and vowel frontness such as voicing stop consonants before front vowels in the Oghuz Turkic languages or in Adjarian's law: the fronting of vowels after voiced stops in certain dialects of Armenian. [3]
True uvular consonants appear to be incompatible with advanced tongue root, i.e. they are inherently [−ATR]. Combined with the above tendency for voiced stops to be [+ATR], that motivates the extreme rarity of the voiced uvular stop [ɢ] compared to its voiceless counterpart [q]. [3]
The International Phonetic Alphabet represents ATR with a "left tack" diacritic, [̘ ].
In languages in which they occur, advanced-tongue-root vowels very often contrast with retracted tongue root (RTR) vowels in a system of vowel harmony, which occurs commonly in large parts of West Africa. [4]
ATR vowels involve a certain tension in the tongue, often in the lips and jaw as well; the ear can often perceive this tension as a "brightness" (narrow formants) compared to RTR vowels[ citation needed ]. Nonetheless, phoneticians do not refer to ATR vowels as tense vowels since the word tense already has several meanings in European phonetics.
Retracted tongue root, abbreviated RTR, is the retraction of the base of the tongue in the pharynx during the pronunciation of a vowel, the opposite articulation of advanced tongue root. This type of vowel has also been referred to as pharyngealized. [5]
The neutral position of the tongue during the pronunciation of a vowel, contrasting with advanced tongue root and thus marked -ATR, is also sometimes referred to as retracted tongue root.[ citation needed ]
The diacritic for RTR in the International Phonetic Alphabet is the right tack, [̙ ].
As mentioned above, many African languages, such as Maasai, have systems of vowel harmony based on tongue root position. That is illustrated here with the Fante dialect of Akan, which has fifteen vowels: five +ATR vowels, five −ATR vowels, and five nasal vowels.
| Ortho- graphy | +ATR value | −ATR value | Approx. European equivalents |
|---|---|---|---|
| i | /i̘/ | [i] | |
| e | /e̘/ | /i/ | [e], [ɪ] |
| ɛ | /e/ | [ɛ] | |
| a | /a̘/ | /a/ | [æ], [ɑ] |
| ɔ | /o/ | [ɔ] | |
| o | /o̘/ | /u/ | [o], [ʊ] |
| u | /u̘/ | [u] |
There are two harmonization rules that govern the vowels that may co-occur in a word:
In the Twi language, the ±ATR distinction has merged in the low vowel and so /a/ is harmonically neutral, occurring with either set of vowels. In addition, the two vowels written e (/e̘/ and /i/) and o (/o̘/ and /u/) are often not distinguished and are approximately equivalent to European [e] and [o], as reflected in the orthography; for such people, the second harmonization rule does not apply. [6]
With advances in fiber-optic laryngoscopy at the end of the twentieth century, new types of phonation were discovered that involve more of the larynx than just the glottis. One of the few languages studied thus far, the Togolese language Kabiyé, has a vocalic distinction that had been assumed to be one of tongue root. However, it turned out to be a phonation distinction of faucalized voice versus harsh voice. [7]
It is not yet clear whether that is characteristic of ±ATR distinctions in general.
Click consonants, or clicks, are speech sounds that occur as consonants in many languages of Southern Africa and in three languages of East Africa. Examples familiar to English-speakers are the tut-tut or tsk! tsk! used to express disapproval or pity, the tchick! used to spur on a horse, and the clip-clop! sound children make with their tongue to imitate a horse trotting.
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. Phoneticians—linguists who specialize in studying Phonetics the physical properties of speech. The field of phonetics is traditionally divided into three sub-disciplines based on the research questions involved such as how humans plan and execute movements to produce speech, how various movements affect the properties of the resulting sound, or how humans convert sound waves to linguistic information. Traditionally, the minimal linguistic unit of phonetics is the phone—a speech sound in a language which differs from the phonological unit of phoneme; the phoneme is an abstract categorization of phones.
In articulatory phonetics, the place of articulation of a consonant is a location along the vocal tract where its production occurs. It is a point where a constriction is made between an active and a passive articulator. Active articulators are organs capable of voluntary movement which create the constriction, while passive articulators are so called because they are normally fixed and are the parts with which an active articulator makes contact. Along with the manner of articulation and phonation, the place of articulation gives the consonant its distinctive sound.
A vowel is a syllabic speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness and also in quantity (length). They are usually voiced and are closely involved in prosodic variation such as tone, intonation and stress.
Velars are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue against the soft palate, the back part of the roof of the mouth.
The field of articulatory phonetics is a subfield of phonetics that studies articulation and ways that humans produce speech. Articulatory phoneticians explain how humans produce speech sounds via the interaction of different physiological structures. Generally, articulatory phonetics is concerned with the transformation of aerodynamic energy into acoustic energy. Aerodynamic energy refers to the airflow through the vocal tract. Its potential form is air pressure; its kinetic form is the actual dynamic airflow. Acoustic energy is variation in the air pressure that can be represented as sound waves, which are then perceived by the human auditory system as sound.
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.
Pharyngealization is a secondary articulation of consonants or vowels by which the pharynx or epiglottis is constricted during the articulation of the sound.
The voiced palatal plosive or stop is a type of consonantal sound in some vocal languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ⟨ɟ⟩, a barred dotless ⟨j⟩ that was initially created by turning the type for a lowercase letter ⟨f⟩. The equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is J\.
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.
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⟩, and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is G\.
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.
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.
In phonetics, nasalization is the production of a sound while the velum is lowered, so that some air escapes through the nose during the production of the sound by the mouth. An archetypal nasal sound is.
In linguistics, fortis and lenis, sometimes identified with tense and lax, are pronunciations of consonants with relatively greater and lesser energy, respectively. English has fortis consonants, such as the p in pat, with a corresponding lenis consonant, such as the b in bat. Fortis and lenis consonants may be distinguished by tenseness or other characteristics, such as voicing, aspiration, glottalization, velarization, length, and length of nearby vowels. Fortis and lenis were coined for languages where the contrast between sounds such as p and b does not involve voicing.
Akan is a Central Tano language and the principal native language of the Akan people of Ghana, spoken over much of the southern half of Ghana. About 80% of Ghana's population can speak Akan, and about 44% of Ghanaians are native speakers. It is also spoken in parts of Côte d'Ivoire. One might describe it as a primordial typological-lexography.
In phonology, tenseness or tensing is, most broadly, the pronunciation of a sound with greater muscular effort or constriction than is typical. More specifically, tenseness is the pronunciation of a vowel with less centralization, longer duration, and narrower mouth width compared with another vowel. The opposite quality to tenseness is known as laxness or laxing: the pronunciation of a vowel with relatively more centralization, shorter duration, and more widening.
Turkana is the language of the Turkana people of Kenya. It is spoken in northwestern Kenya, primarily in Turkana County, which lies west of Lake Turkana. It is one of the Eastern Nilotic languages, and is closely related to Karamojong, Jie and Teso of Uganda, to Toposa spoken in the extreme southeast of South Sudan, and to Nyangatom in the South Sudan/Ethiopia Omo valley borderland; these languages together form the cluster of Ateker Languages.
In linguistics, a distinctive feature is the most basic unit of phonological structure that distinguishes one sound from another within a language. For example, the feature [voice] distinguishes the two bilabial plosives: [p] and [b]. There are many different ways of defining and arranging features into feature systems: some deal with only one language while others are developed to apply to all languages.
Laryngeal consonants are consonants with their primary articulation in the larynx. The laryngeal consonants comprise the pharyngeal consonants, the glottal consonants, and for some languages uvular consonants.