Retroflex consonant

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Retroflex consonant" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (August 2020) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)

A retroflex (

• Laminal post-alveolar, with a flat tongue. These occur, for example, in Polish cz, sz, ż (rz), dż.
• Apical post-alveolar, with a somewhat concave tongue. These occur, for example, in Mandarin zh, ch, sh, r, Hindi and other Indo-Aryan languages.^[1][2]
• Subapical palatal, with a highly concave tongue, which occur particularly in the
  r-coloring to the vowel and sound as if an American English r occurred between the vowel and consonant. They are not a place of articulation, as the IPA chart implies, but a shape of the tongue analogous to laminal and apical.^[3]

Subapical sounds are sometimes called "true retroflex" because of the curled-back shape of the tongue, and the other sounds sometimes go by other names. For example, Ladefoged and Maddieson^[4] prefer to call the laminal post-alveolar sounds "flat post-alveolar".

Other sounds

Retroflex sounds must be distinguished from other consonants made in the same parts of the mouth:

• the palato-alveolar consonants (e.g., [ʃ ʒ]), such as the sh, ch and zh occurring in English words like ship, chip and vision
• the alveolo-palatal consonants (e.g., [ɕ ʑ]), such as the j, q and x occurring in Mandarin Chinese
• the dorsal palatal consonants (e.g., [ç ʝ ɲ]), such as the ch [ç] in German ich or the ñ [ɲ] in Spanish año
• the grooved alveolar consonants (e.g., [s z]), such as the s and z occurring in English words like sip and zip

The first three types of sounds above have a convex tongue shape, which gives them an additional secondary articulation of palatalization. The last type has a groove running down the center line of the tongue, which gives it a strong hissing quality. The retroflex sounds, however, have a flat or concave shape, with no associated palatalization, and no groove running down the tongue. The term "retroflex", in fact, literally means "bent back" (concave), although consonants with a flat tongue shape are commonly considered retroflex as well.

The

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.

Retroflex consonants are transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as follows:

Other conventions

Some linguists restrict these symbols for consonants with subapical palatal articulation, in which the tongue is curled back and contacts the hard palate, 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⟩, and use ⟨ᶘ, ᶚ⟩ for laminal retroflex, as in Polish and Russian.^[10] The latter are also often transcribed with a retraction diacritic, as ⟨s̠⟩. Otherwise they are typically but inaccurately transcribed as if they were palato-alveolar, as ⟨ʃ⟩.

Consonants with more forward articulation, in which the tongue touches the alveolar or postalveolar region rather than the hard palate, can be indicated with the retracted diacritic (minus sign below). This occurs especially for [s̠ ẕ]; other sounds indicated this way, such as ⟨ṉ ḻ ḏ⟩, tend to refer to alveolo-palatal rather than retroflex consonants.

Occurrence

Although data are not precise, about 20 percent of the world's languages contain retroflex consonants of one sort or another.^[11] About half of these possess only retroflex continuants, with most of the rest having both stops and continuants.

Retroflex consonants are concentrated in the Indian subcontinent, particularly in the Indo-Aryan and Dravidian languages, but are found in other languages of the region as well, such as the Munda languages and Burushaski.

The

Most languages with retroflex sounds typically have only one retroflex sound with a given manner of articulation^{[citation needed]}. An exception, however, is the Toda language, with a two-way distinction among retroflex sibilants between apical (post)alveolar and subapical palatal.

See also

• Hush consonant
• List of phonetics topics
• Place of articulation
• Retroflex approximant

Notes

References