Uvular consonant
Uvulars are
Uvular consonants in IPA
The uvular consonants identified by the International Phonetic Alphabet are:
IPA | Description | Example | |||
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Language | Orthography | IPA | Meaning | ||
ɴ̥ | voiceless uvular nasal | Lamo | [ example needed ]
| ||
ɴ | voiced uvular nasal | Bai (Luobenzhuo dialect)[2] | 我/nò | [ɴɔ˦˨] | 'I' |
q | voiceless uvular plosive | Arabic
|
قصّةٌ qiṣṣatun | [qisˤˈsˤɑtun] | 'a story' |
ɢ | voiced uvular plosive | Inuktitut | utirama | [ʔutiɢama] | 'because I return' |
q͡χ | voiceless uvular affricate | Kabardian | кхъэ | ⓘ | 'grave' |
ɢ͡ʁ | voiced uvular affricate | Ekagi[3]
|
gaati | [ɢ͡ʁaːti] | 'ten' |
χ | voiceless uvular fricative | Peninsular Spanish | enjuto | [ẽ̞ɴˈχut̪o̞] | 'skinny' |
ʁ | voiced uvular fricative | French | rester | [ʁɛste] | 'to stay' |
ʁ̞ | voiced uvular approximant
|
Danish[4] | rød | [ʁ̞œ̠ð̠] | 'red' |
ʟ̠ | voiced uvular lateral approximant | English (some American speakers[5]) | wool | [wʊʟ̠] | 'wool' |
ɢ̆ | voiced uvular flap
|
Hiw[6] | [βɔ̞ʀ̆] | 'hibiscus' | |
ʀ̥ | voiceless uvular trill | French (Belgian)[7] |
triste | [t̪ʀ̥is̪t̪œ] | 'sad' |
ʀ | voiced uvular trill | French (20th century Paris accent) |
Paris | [paˈʀi] | 'Paris' |
ʀ̆ | voiced uvular tap or flap | Yiddish | בריק | [bʀ̆ɪk] | 'bridge' |
qʼ | uvular ejective stop | Quechua
|
q'allu | [ˈqʼaʎu] | 'section, piece, slice, sauce' |
q͡χʼ | uvular ejective affricate | Georgian | ყოფა q'opa | [q͡χʼɔpʰɑ] | 'being/existence' |
χʼ | uvular ejective fricative | Tlingit[8] | x̱'aan | [χʼàːn] | 'fire' |
ʛ | voiced uvular implosive | Konso[9] | pogoota | [poʛoːta] | 'mandible' |
ʛ̥ (ʠ) | voiceless uvular implosive | Mam[10] | q'ootj | [ʛ̥oːtʰχ] | 'dough' |
Descriptions in different languages
The
[qʼ], the uvular ejective, is found in Ubykh, Tlingit, Cusco Quechua, and some others. In Georgian, the existence of this phoneme is debatable, since the general realization of the letter "ყ" is /χʼ/. This is due to /qʰ/ merging with /χ/ and therefore /qʼ/ being influenced by this merger and becoming /χʼ/.
[ɢ], the
The voiceless uvular fricative [χ] is similar to the voiceless velar fricative [x], except that it is articulated near the uvula. It is found in Georgian, and instead of [x] in some dialects of German, Spanish, and colloquial Arabic, as well as in some Dutch varieties and in standard Afrikaans.
Uvular flaps have been reported for
The Enqi dialect of the Bai language has an unusually complete series of uvular consonants consisting of the stops /q/, /qʰ/ and /ɢ/, the fricatives /χ/ and /ʁ/, and the nasal /ɴ/.[14] All of these contrast with a corresponding velar consonant of the same manner of articulation.[14] The existence of the uvular nasal is especially unusual, even more so than the existence of the voiced stop.
The Tlingit language of the Alaska Panhandle has ten uvular consonants, all of which are voiceless obstruents:
Description | Orthographic | IPA | Gloss |
---|---|---|---|
tenuis stop | g̱ákw | qákʷ | 'tree spine' |
aspirated stop | ḵákw | qʰákʷ | 'basket' |
ejective stop | ḵʼákw | qʼakʷ | 'screech owl' |
labialized tenuis stop | náaḵw | náaqʷ | 'octopus' |
labialized aspirated stop | ḵwáan | qʷʰáan | 'people, tribe' |
labialized ejective stop | ḵʼwátl | qʷʼátɬ | 'cooking pot' |
voiceless fricative | x̱aakw | χaakʷ | 'fingernail' |
ejective fricative | x̱ʼáakw | χʼáakʷ | 'freshwater sockeye salmon' |
labialized voiceless fricative | x̱wastáa | χʷastáa | 'canvas, denim' |
labialized ejective fricative | x̱wʼáalʼ | χʷʼáaɬʼ | 'down (feathers)' |
And the extinct Ubykh language of Turkey has twenty.
Phonological representation
In featural phonology, uvular consonants are most often considered to contrast with velar consonants in terms of being [–high] and [+back]. Prototypical uvulars also appear to be [-ATR].[1]
Two variants can then be established. Since palatalized consonants are [-back], the appearance of palatalized uvulars in a few languages such as Ubykh is difficult to account for. According to Vaux (1999), they possibly hold the features [+high], [-back], [-ATR], the last being the distinguishing feature from a palatalized velar consonant.
Uvular rhotics
The uvular
As with most trills, uvular trills are often reduced to a single contact, especially between vowels.
Unlike other uvular consonants, the uvular trill is articulated without a retraction of the tongue, and therefore doesn't lower neighboring high vowels the way uvular stops commonly do.
Several other languages, including Inuktitut, Abkhaz, Uyghur and some varieties of Arabic, have a voiced uvular fricative but do not treat it as a rhotic consonant. However, Modern Hebrew and some modern varieties of Arabic also both have at least one uvular fricative that is considered non-rhotic, and one that is considered rhotic.[citation needed]
In Lakhota the uvular trill is an allophone of the voiced uvular fricative before /i/.
See also
- Uvularization
- Place of articulation
- List of phonetics topics
- Guttural R
- Retracted vowels
Notes
- ^ a b Vaux, Bert (1999). "A Note on Pharyngeal Features". Harvard Working Papers in Linguistics.
- CiteSeerX 10.1.1.692.4221.
- ^ Staroverov, Peter; Tebay, Soren (2019). "Posterior Affricate in Mee and Consonant-Vowel Place Interactions". Proceedings of the 2018 Annual Meeting on Phonology. LSA.
- ^ Basbøll (2005:66)
- ^ Cruttenden (2014), p. 221.
- ^ François (2005), p. 44.
- ^ Demolin (2001), pp. 65, 67–68, 70–71.
- ^ "Phoible 2.0 -".
- ^ Orkaydo (2013).
- OCLC 748935484.
- ISBN 978-1-136-91164-4.
- ^ Watters (2005).
- ISBN 9788170992141. Archivedfrom the original on 9 February 2018. Retrieved 13 January 2017.
- ^ a b Feng, Wang (2006). "Comparison of Languages in Contact: The Distillation Method and the Case of Bai" (PDF). Language and Linguistics Monograph Series B. Frontiers in Linguistics III.
- JSTOR 30028779.
References
- ISBN 0-203-97876-5
- Cruttenden, Alan (2014). Gimson's Pronunciation of English (8th ed.). Routledge. ISBN 978-1-4441-8309-2.
- Demolin, Didier (2001). "Some phonetic and phonological observations concerning /ʀ/ in Belgian French". In van de Velde, Hans; van Hout, Roeland (eds.). 'r-atics. Rapport d'Activités de l'Institut des Langues Vivantes et de Phonétique. Brussels: Etudes & Travaux. pp. 61–73. ISSN 0777-3692.
- François, Alexandre (2005), "Unraveling the history of the vowels of seventeen northern Vanuatu languages", S2CID 131668754
- ISBN 0-631-19815-6.
- Orkaydo, Ongaye (2013), A Grammar of Konso, Landelijke Onderzoekschool Taalwetenschap, ISBN 978-94-6093-109-3