In phonetics Phonetics is a branch of linguistics that comprises the study of the sounds of human speech. It is concerned with the physical properties of speech sounds (phones), and the processes of their physiological production, auditory reception, and neurophysiological perception, retroflex consonants are consonant In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the upper vocal tract, the upper vocal tract being defined as that part of the vocal tract that lies above the larynx. Consonants contrast with vowels sounds used in some languages A language is a system for encoding information. In its most common use, the term refers to so-called "natural languages" — the forms of communication considered peculiar to humankind. In linguistics the term is extended to refer to the human cognitive facility of creating and using language. Essential to both meanings is the. (They are sometimes referred to as cerebral consonants, especially in indology Indology is the academic study of the languages, texts, history and cultures of the Indian subcontinent, and as such a subset of Asian studies.) The tongue articulates with the roof of the oral cavity behind the alveolar ridge An alveolar ridge is one of the two jaw ridges either on the roof of the mouth between the upper teeth and the hard palate or on the bottom of the mouth behind the lower teeth. The alveolar ridges contain the sockets (alveoli) of the teeth. They can be felt with the tongue in the area right above the top teeth or below the bottom teeth. Its, and may even be curled back to touch the palate The palate is the roof of the mouth in humans and vertebrate animals. It separates the oral cavity from the nasal cavity. The palate is divided into two parts, the anterior bony hard palate, and the posterior fleshy soft palate or velum. The maxillary nerve branch of the trigeminal nerve (V) supplies sensory innervation to the palate: that is, they are articulated in the postalveolar Postalveolar consonants are consonants articulated with the tongue near or touching the back of the alveolar ridge, further back in the mouth than the alveolar consonants, which are at the ridge itself, but not as far back as the hard palate to palatal Palatal consonants are consonants articulated with the body of the tongue raised against the hard palate . Consonants with the tip of the tongue curled back against the palate are called retroflex region of the mouth.
Retroflex consonants, like other coronals Coronal consonants are articulated with the flexible front part of the tongue. Only the coronal consonants can be divided into apical , laminal (using the tongue blade), domed (with the tongue bunched up), or sub-apical (with the tongue curled back), as well as a few rarer orientations, because only the front of the tongue has such dexterity, come in several varieties, depending on the shape of the tongue. The tongue may be flat, with the blade of the tongue (the top surface of the tongue near the tip) approaching or touching the roof of the mouth, as in Polish Polish is a West Slavic language. and the official language of Poland. Its written standard is the Polish alphabet which corresponds basically to the Latin alphabet with a few additions. Polish-speakers use the language in a uniform manner through most of Poland cz, sz, ż (rz), dż and Mandarin The latter grouping is defined and used mainly by linguists, and is not commonly used outside of academic circles as a self-description. Instead, when asked to describe the spoken form they are using, Chinese speaking a form of non-Standard Mandarin will describe the variant that they are speaking, for example Southwestern Mandarin or Northeastern zh, ch, sh, r. This is termed laminal A laminal consonant is a phone produced by obstructing the air passage with the blade of the tongue, which is the flat top front surface just behind the tip of the tongue on the top. This contrasts with apical consonants, which are produced by creating an obstruction with the tongue apex only. This distinction applies only to coronal consonants, (laminal retroflex). Or they may be pronounced with the tip of the tongue, as in Hindi Hindi (Devanāgarī: हिन्दी or हिंदी, IAST: Hindī, IPA: [ɦɪnd̪iː] ) is the name given to an Indo-Aryan language, or a dialect continuum of languages, spoken in northern and central India (the "Hindi belt"). This is termed apical An apical consonant is a phone produced by obstructing the air passage with the apex of the tongue (i.e. the tip of the tongue). This contrasts with laminal consonants, which are produced by creating an obstruction with the blade of the tongue (which is just behind the apex) (apical retroflex). Finally, the tongue may be curled back so that the underside touches the alveolar or pre-palatal region, as in many of the Dravidian languages The Dravidian family of languages includes approximately 73 languages , spoken by around 200 million people. They are mainly spoken in southern India and parts of eastern and central India as well as in northeastern Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Iran, and overseas in other countries such as Malaysia and Singapore. Among them. This is termed sub-apical A sub-apical consonant is a consonant made by contact with the underside of the tip of the tongue. The only common sub-apical articulations are in the postalveolar to palatal region; these are called "retroflex" (sub-apical retroflex).[1]
The consonants commonly called postalveolar Postalveolar consonants are consonants articulated with the tongue near or touching the back of the alveolar ridge, further back in the mouth than the alveolar consonants, which are at the ridge itself, but not as far back as the hard palate, or more precisely palato-alveolar, such as English sh and ch, as well as the alveolo-palatals In phonetics, alveolo-palatal consonants are palatalized postalveolar fricatives, articulated with the blade of the tongue behind the alveolar ridge, and the body of the tongue raised toward the palate. They are similar to palato-alveolar and retroflex fricatives, but are laminal rather than apical or sub-apical as the retroflex fricatives are,, such as Mandarin q, j, x, are also pronounced in the postalveolar region. However, they differ from retroflex consonants in having an additional secondary articulation Secondary articulation refers to co-articulated consonants where the two articulations are not of the same manner. The approximant-like secondary articulation is weaker than the primary, and colors it rather than obscuring it. For example, the voiceless labialized velar plosive [kʷ] has only a single stop articulation, velar [k], with a of palatalization The second may be the result of the first, but they often differ. A vowel may "palatalize" a consonant , but the result might not be a palatalized consonant in the phonetic sense (sense 2), or the phonetically palatalized (sense 2) consonant may occur irrespective of front vowels. The consonants commonly called palatal Palatal consonants are consonants articulated with the body of the tongue raised against the hard palate . Consonants with the tip of the tongue curled back against the palate are called retroflex are pronounced in the palatal region like the sub-apical retroflexes, but they touch the palate with the back of the tongue, not the tip. (That is, they are dorsal Dorsal consonants are articulated with the mid body of the tongue . They contrast with coronal consonants articulated with the flexible front of the tongue, and radical consonants articulated with the root of the tongue, or more precisely dorso-palatal, rather than coronal consonants.)
In other words, retroflex consonants include various types of coronal consonants articulated behind the alveolar ridge which do not have the secondary articulation of palatalization.
Occurrence
Although data are not precise, about 20 percent of the world's languages contain retroflex consonants of one sort or another[2]. About half of these possess only retroflex continuants A continuant is a sound produced with an incomplete closure of the vocal tract. That is, any sound except a stop . An affricate is considered to be a complex segment, composed of both a stop and a continuant, with most of the rest having both stops and continuants. Retroflex consonants are relatively rare among European languages, occurring in Sardinian Sardinian is, after Italian, the main language spoken on the island of Sardinia, Italy. It is considered the most conservative of the Romance languages in terms of phonology and is noted for its Paleosardinian substratum, in Sicilian Sicilian is a Romance language. Its dialects comprise the Italiano Meridionale-estremo language group, which are spoken on the island of Sicily and its satellite islands; in southern and central Calabria (where it is called Southern Calabro); in the southern parts of Apulia, the Salento (where it is known as Salentino); and Campania, on the, some southern Italian dialects such as Calabrian The primary languages of the Calabria region are Standard Italian and many regional dialects of the Italo-Dalmatian group collectively known as Calabrian . In addition, there is a significant Calabrian version of the Griko language and pockets of Occitan and Arbëresh and Salentino, in Swedish Swedish ( svenska ) is a North Germanic language, spoken by approximately 10 million people, predominantly in Sweden and parts of Finland, especially along the coast and on the Åland islands. It is to a considerable extent mutually intelligible with Norwegian and to a lesser extent with Danish (see especially "Classification"). Along and Norwegian Norwegian is a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Norway, where it is an official language. Together with Swedish and Danish, Norwegian forms a continuum of more or less mutually intelligible local and regional variants (see Danish language#Classification) (where a sequence of r plus a coronal consonant may be replaced by the coronal's retroflex equivalent, e.g. the name Martin would be pronounced [maʈin]. Also, this is sometimes done for several consonants in a row after an r - Hornstull is pronounced [hoɳʂʈul]). The retroflex approximant The retroflex approximant is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ɻ, and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is r\`. The IPA symbol is a turned lowercase letter r with a rightward hook protruding from the lower right of the letter /ɻ/ is an allophone In phonetics, an allophone is one of several similar speech sounds (phones) that belong to the same phoneme. A phoneme is an abstract unit of speech sound that can distinguish words: That is, changing a phoneme in a word can produce another word. Speakers of a particular language perceive a phoneme as a distinctive sound in that language. An of the alveolar approximant The alveolar approximant is a type of consonantal sound used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents alveolar and postalveolar approximants is ɹ, a lowercase letter r rotated 180 degrees; the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is r\ /ɹ/ in many dialects of American English American English , also known as United States English or U.S. English, is a set of dialects of the English language used mostly in the United States. Approximately two thirds of native speakers of English live in the United States, particularly in the Midwestern The Midwestern United States is one of the four geographic regions within the United States of America that are officially recognized by the United States Census Bureau United States The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district. The country is situated mostly in central North America, where its forty-eight contiguous states and Washington, D.C., the capital district, lie between the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, bordered by Canada to the north and Mexico to the. Polish and Russian possess retroflex sibilants A sibilant is a type of fricative or affricate consonant, made by directing a jet of air through a narrow channel in the vocal tract towards the sharp edge of the teeth, but no stops or liquids at this place of articulation. Retroflex consonants are largely absent from indigenous languages of the Americas with the exception of the extreme south of South America and an area in Southwestern US The Southwestern United States is defined as the states that lie west of the Mississippi River, with the qualification of a certain northern limit such as the 37, 38, 39, or 40 degree north line. A 97.33 degree west line could qualify as the separation of the American Southwest from the American South. The Southwest historically began at the far, as in Hopi Hopi is a Uto-Aztecan language spoken by the Hopi people of northeastern Arizona, USA, although today some Hopi are monolingual English speakers and Papago. In African languages retroflex consonants are also very rare, reportedly occurring in a few Nilo-Saharan languages The Nilo-Saharan languages are a hypothetical group of African languages spoken mainly in the upper parts of the Chari and Nile rivers , including historic Nubia, north of where the two tributaries of Nile meet. Its member languages extend, however, through 17 nations in the northern half of Africa: from Algeria and Mali in the northwest; to Benin,. In southwest Ethiopia, phonemically distinctive retroflex consonants are found in Bench and Sheko, two contiguous, but not closely related, Omotic The Omotic languages are a branch of the Afro-Asiatic family spoken in southwestern Ethiopia. The Ge'ez alphabet is used to write some Omotic languages, the Roman alphabet for some others. They are fairly agglutinative, and have complex tonal systems languages.[3]
Retroflex consonants are concentrated in the Indo-Aryan languages Geographical distribution of the major Indo-Aryan languages and the Dravidian languages The Dravidian family of languages includes approximately 73 languages , spoken by around 200 million people. They are mainly spoken in southern India and parts of eastern and central India as well as in northeastern Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Iran, and overseas in other countries such as Malaysia and Singapore. Among them of the Indian subcontinent South Asia, also known as Southern Asia, is the southern region of the Asian continent, which comprises the sub-Himalayan countries and, for some authorities , also includes the adjoining countries on the west and the east. It is surrounded (clockwise, from west to east) by Western Asia, Central Asia, Eastern Asia, Southeastern Asia and the Indian, where they occur as an areal feature apparently inherited from Dravidian (they do not exist in Proto-Indo-Iranian Proto-Indo-Iranian, is the reconstructed proto-language of the Indo-Iranian branch of Indo-European. Its speakers, the hypothetical Proto-Indo-Iranians, are assumed to have lived in the late 3rd millennium BC, and are usually connected with the early Andronovo archaeological horizon). Many retroflex consonants also exist in Eastern Iranian languages The Eastern Iranian languages are a subgroup of the Iranian languages emerging in Middle Iranian times . The Avestan language is often classified as early Eastern Iranian, but this is uncertain such as Pashto Pashto , also known as Kabuli, or Afghani, is an Indo-European language spoken primarily in Afghanistan and northwestern Pakistan. Pashto belongs to the Eastern Iranian branch of the Indo-Iranian language family. There are nearly 40 million Pashtuns. As defined in the Constitution of Afghanistan, Pashto is a national and official language, Khotanese Khotanese is a form of the Sakan language once spoken in the Kingdom of Khotan. The language is preserved in the texts among the Dunhuang manuscripts, written in a script derived from the Brahmi. These texts have been deciphered and edited by Harold Bailey and Pamir languages The Pamir languages are a subgroup of the Eastern Iranian languages, spoken by Pamiri people in the Pamir Mountains, primarily along the Panj River and its tributaries. This includes the Badakhshan Province of northeastern Afghanistan and the Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Province of eastern Tajikistan. Smaller communities can be found in the. They are also common in Nuristani languages The Nuristani languages are a third separate group of the Indo-Iranian language family, and they are spoken primarily in eastern Afghanistan. They also occur in some other Asian languages such as Mandarin Chinese The latter grouping is defined and used mainly by linguists, and is not commonly used outside of academic circles as a self-description. Instead, when asked to describe the spoken form they are using, Chinese speaking a form of non-Standard Mandarin will describe the variant that they are speaking, for example Southwestern Mandarin or Northeastern, Javanese Javanese is the language of the people in the central and eastern parts of the island of Java, in Indonesia. In addition, there are also some pockets of Javanese speakers in the northern coast of western Java. It is the native language of more than 75,500,000 people and Vietnamese. The other major concentration is in the indigenous languages of Australia and the Western Pacific (notably New Caledonia). Here, most languages have retroflex plosives, nasal and approximants.
There are several retroflex consonants not yet recognized by the IPA. For example, the Iwaidja language of northern Australia has a retroflex lateral flap [ɺ̢] as well as a retroflex tap [ɽ] and retroflex lateral approximant [ɭ]; and the Dravidian language Toda has a sub-apical retroflex lateral fricative [ɬ̢] and a retroflexed trill [ɽ͡r]. Because of the regularity of deriving retroflex symbols from their alveolar counterparts, people will occasionally use a font editor to create the appropriate symbols for such sounds. (Here they were written with diacritics.) The Ngad'a language of Flores has been reported to have a retroflex implosive [ᶑ], but in this case the expected symbol is coincidentally supported by Unicode. Sub-apical retroflex clicks occur in Central Juu and in Damin.
Retroflex consonants identified by the International Phonetic Alphabet are:
| IPA | Description | Example | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Language | Orthography | IPA | Meaning | ||
| retroflex nasal | Swedish | Vänern | [vɛː.neɳ] | Vänern | |
| voiceless retroflex plosive | Hindi | टापू (ṭāpū) | [ʈɑpu] | island | |
| voiced retroflex plosive | Swedish | nord | [nuːɖ] | north | |
| voiceless retroflex fricative | Mandarin | 上海 (Shànghǎi) | [ʂɑ̂ŋ.xàɪ] | Shanghai | |
| voiced retroflex fricative | Russian Polish | жаба żaba | [ʐaba] | toad frog | |
| retroflex approximant | Tamil | தமிழ் (Tamil) | [t̪ɐmɨɻ] | Tamil | |
| lateral retroflex approximant | Swedish | Karlstad | [kʰɑːɭ.sta] | Karlstad | |
| retroflex flap | Hausa | shaara | [ʃáːɽa] | sweeping | |
| ɺ̢ | retroflex lateral flap | Pashto | ړوند | [ɺ̢und] | blind |
| ǃ˞ | (voiced) retroflex click | Central Juu | — | [ɡǃ˞ú] | water |
Note: In the International Phonetic Alphabet, the symbols for retroflex consonants are typically the same as for the alveolar consonants, but with the addition of a right-facing hook to the bottom of the symbol. Some linguists restrict these symbols for the "true" retroflex consonants with sub-apical palatal articulation, and use the alveolar symbols with the obsolete IPA underdot symbol for an apical post-alveolar articulation: [ṭ, ḍ, ṇ, ṣ, ẓ, ḷ, ɾ̣, ɹ̣]. Another solution, more in keeping with the official IPA, would be to use the rhotic diacritic for the apical retroflexes: [t˞, d˞, n˞, s˞, z˞, l˞, ɾ˞, ɹ˞]. Laminal retroflexes, as in Polish and Russian, are often transcribed with a retraction diacritic, as [s̱], etc. Otherwise they are typically but inaccurately transcribed as if they were palato-alveolar, as *[ʃ], etc.
See also
References
- ^ Ladefoged, Peter; Ian Maddieson (1996). The Sounds of the World's Languages. Oxford: Blackwell. ISBN 0-631-19814-8.
- ^ Ian Maddieson (with a chapter contributed by Sandra Ferrari Disner); Patterns of sounds; Cambridge University Press, 1984. ISBN 0-521-26536-3
- ^ Breeze, Mary. 1988. "Phonological features of Gimira and Dizi." In Marianne Bechhaus-Gerst and Fritz Serzisko (eds.), Cushitic - Omotic: papers from the International Symposium on Cushitic and Omotic languages, Cologne, January 6-9, 1986, 473-487. Hamburg: Helmut Buske Verlag.
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Categories: Consonants
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