Dental, alveolar and postalveolar lateral flaps

Dental, alveolar and postalveolar lateral flaps
ɺ
lɾ
IPA Number	181
Encoding
Entity (decimal)	ɺ
Unicode (hex)	U+027A
X-SAMPA	l\
Braille
Image

The alveolar lateral flap is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ⟨ɺ⟩, a fusion of a rotated lowercase letter ⟨r⟩ with a letter ⟨l⟩.

Some languages that are described as having a lateral flap, such as Japanese, actually have a flap that is indeterminate with respect to centrality, and may surface as either central or lateral, either in free variation or allophonically depending on surrounding vowels and consonants.

Features

Features of the alveolar lateral flap:

• Its manner of articulation is flap, which means it is produced with a single contraction of the muscles so that one articulator (usually the tongue) is thrown against another.
• Its place of articulation is alveolar, which means it is articulated with either the tip or the blade of the tongue at the alveolar ridge, termed respectively apical and laminal.
• Its phonation is voiced, which means the vocal cords vibrate during the articulation.
• It is an oral consonant, which means air is allowed to escape through the mouth only.
• It is a lateral consonant, which means it is produced by directing the airstream over the sides of the tongue, rather than down the middle.
• The airstream mechanism is pulmonic, which means it is articulated by pushing air solely with the lungs and diaphragm, as in most sounds.

Occurrence

Dental

Language		Word	IPA	Meaning	Notes
Chaga					Laminal dental.

Alveolar

Language		Word	IPA	Meaning	Notes
Japanese		心/kokoro	<phonos file="ja-kokoro.ogg">[kokoɺo]</phonos>	'heart'	See Japanese phonology
Pirahã		toogixi	[tòːɺ͡ɺ̼ìʔì]	'hoe'	Only used in some types of speech
Wayuu		püülükü	[pɯːɺɯkɯ]	'pig'	Contrasts with /r/

The variable Japanese sound has been transcribed with an l–ɾ ligature, lɾ.

Postalveolar

See also: Retroflex lateral flap

Language		Word	IPA	Meaning	Notes
Norwegian	Trøndersk	glas	[ˈɡɺ̠ɑːs]	'glass'	Realization of the tjukk l according to Grønnum (2005). See Norwegian phonology
O'odham					Apical.

See also

• Index of phonetics articles