Apical, laminal and apicolaminal articulations

An apical consonant is a

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(speech sound) produced by obstructing the air passage with the tip of the tongue (apex) in conjunction with upper articulators from lips to

postalveolar Postalveolar or post-alveolar consonants are consonants articulated with the tongue near or touching the ''back'' of the alveolar ridge. Articulation is farther back in the mouth than the alveolar consonants, which are at the ridge itself, but n ...

, and possibly prepalatal. It contrasts with

laminal consonant A laminal consonant is a phone (speech sound) produced by obstructing the air passage with the blade of the tongue, the flat top front surface just behind the tip of the tongue in contact with upper lip, teeth, alveolar ridge, to possibly, a ...

s, which are produced by creating an obstruction with the blade of the tongue, just behind the tip. Sometimes ''apical'' is used exclusively for an articulation that involves only the tip of the tongue and ''apicolaminal'' for an articulation that involves both the tip and the blade of the tongue. However, the distinction is not always made and the latter one may be called simply ''apical'', especially when describing an apical dental articulation. As there is some laminal contact in the alveolar region, the apicolaminal dental consonants are also labelled as ''

denti-alveolar In linguistics, a denti-alveolar consonant or dento-alveolar consonant is a consonant that is articulated with a flat tongue against the alveolar ridge and the upper teeth, such as and in languages such as French, Italian and Spanish. That is, ...

''. It is not a very common distinction and is typically applied only to

fricative A fricative is a consonant produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together. These may be the lower lip against the upper teeth, in the case of ; the back of the tongue against the soft palate in ...

s and

affricate An affricate is a consonant that begins as a stop and releases as a fricative, generally with the same place of articulation (most often coronal). It is often difficult to decide if a stop and fricative form a single phoneme or a consonant pai ...

s. Thus, many varieties of

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ...

have either apical or laminal pairs of . However, some

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, including Hadhrami Arabic in

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, realize as laminal but as apical.

Basque Basque may refer to: * Basques, an ethnic group of Spain and France * Basque language, their language Places * Basque Country (greater region), the homeland of the Basque people with parts in both Spain and France * Basque Country (autonomous co ...

uses the distinction for alveolar fricatives, as does

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Mandarin Chinese Mandarin (; ) is a group of Chinese (Sinitic) dialects that are natively spoken across most of northern and southwestern China. The group includes the Beijing dialect, the basis of the phonology of Standard Chinese, the official language ...

uses it for postalveolar fricatives (the "alveolo-palatal" and "retroflex" series).

Lillooet Lillooet () is a district municipality in the Squamish-Lillooet region of southwestern British Columbia. The town is on the west shore of the Fraser River immediately north of the Seton River mouth. On BC Highway 99, the locality is by road abo ...

uses it as a secondary feature in contrasting velarized and non-velarized affricates. A distinction between apical and laminal is common in

Australian Aboriginal languages The Indigenous languages of Australia number in the hundreds, the precise number being quite uncertain, although there is a range of estimates from a minimum of around 250 (using the technical definition of 'language' as non-mutually intellig ...

for nasals, plosives and (usually) lateral approximants. Most dialects in the Bengali–Assamese continuum distinguish between dental–laminal alveolar stops and apical alveolar stops. In Upper Assamese, they have merged and leave only the apical alveolar stops. In Western

Bengali Bengali or Bengalee, or Bengalese may refer to: *something of, from, or related to Bengal, a large region in South Asia * Bengalis, an ethnic and linguistic group of the region * Bengali language, the language they speak ** Bengali alphabet, the w ...

apical alveolars are replaced by apical post-alveolars. In the

International Phonetic Alphabet The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is an alphabetic system of phonetic notation based primarily on the Latin script. It was devised by the International Phonetic Association in the late 19th century as a standardized representation ...

, the diacritic for apical consonants is .

References

Bibliography

* * * * Coronal consonants {{phonetics-stub

See also

References

Bibliography