phonetics Phonetics is a branch of linguistics that studies how humans produce and perceive sounds or, in the case of sign languages, the equivalent aspects of sign. Linguists who specialize in studying the physical properties of speech are phoneticians ...

, advanced tongue root (ATR or +ATR), or expanded pharynx, and retracted tongue root (RTR or −ATR) are contrasting states of the

pharynx The pharynx (: pharynges) is the part of the throat behind the human mouth, mouth and nasal cavity, and above the esophagus and trachea (the tubes going down to the stomach and the lungs respectively). It is found in vertebrates and invertebrates ...

during the

pronunciation Pronunciation is the way in which a word or a language is spoken. To This may refer to generally agreed-upon sequences of sounds used in speaking a given word or all language in a specific dialect—"correct" or "standard" pronunciation—or si ...

vowel A vowel is a speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract, forming the nucleus of a syllable. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness a ...

s in some languages, especially in

Western Western may refer to: Places *Western, Nebraska, a village in the US *Western, New York, a town in the US *Western Creek, Tasmania, a locality in Australia *Western Junction, Tasmania, a locality in Australia *Western world, countries that id ...

and Eastern Africa, but also in Kazakh and Mongolian. ATR vs RTR was once suggested to be the basis for the distinction between tense and lax vowels in

European languages There are over 250 languages indigenous to Europe, and most belong to the Indo-European language family. Out of a total European population of 744 million as of 2018, some 94% are native speakers of an Indo-European language. The three larges ...

such as German, but Ladefoged and Maddieson have found that the tongue root position in Germanic languages is not an independent gesture.

Advanced tongue root

Advanced tongue root, abbreviated ATR or +ATR, also called expanded, involves the expansion of the pharyngeal cavity by moving the base of the tongue forward, lowering the

larynx The larynx (), commonly called the voice box, is an organ (anatomy), organ in the top of the neck involved in breathing, producing sound and protecting the trachea against food aspiration. The opening of larynx into pharynx known as the laryngeal ...

, and otherwise expanding the walls of the pharynx during the pronunciation of a vowel. This may result in +ATR vowels being longer than −ATR vowels. The lowering of the larynx sometimes adds a breathy quality to the vowel.

Voiced Voice or voicing is a term used in phonetics and phonology to characterize speech sounds (usually consonants). Speech sounds can be described as either voiceless (otherwise known as ''unvoiced'') or voiced. The term, however, is used to refe ...

stops such as can often involve non-contrastive tongue root advancement. Results can be seen occasionally in sound changes relating stop voicing and vowel frontness, such as voicing stop consonants before

front vowel A front vowel is a class of vowel sounds used in some spoken languages, its defining characteristic being that the highest point of the tongue is positioned approximately as far forward as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction th ...

s in the Oghuz Turkic languages; or in Adjarian's law (the fronting of vowels after voiced stops in certain dialects of

Armenian Armenian may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to Armenia, a country in the South Caucasus region of Eurasia * Armenians, the national people of Armenia, or people of Armenian descent ** Armenian diaspora, Armenian communities around the ...

). True

uvular consonant Uvulars are consonants articulated with the back of the tongue against or near the uvula, that is, further back in the mouth than velar consonants. Uvulars may be stops, fricatives, nasals, trills, or approximants, though the IPA does not ...

s appear to be incompatible with advanced tongue root, i.e. they are inherently minus;ATR Combined with the above tendency for voiced stops to be ATR that motivates the extreme rarity of the voiced uvular stop compared to its voiceless counterpart . 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 standard written representation ...

represents ATR with a "left tack"

diacritic A diacritic (also diacritical mark, diacritical point, diacritical sign, or accent) is a glyph added to a letter or to a basic glyph. The term derives from the Ancient Greek (, "distinguishing"), from (, "to distinguish"). The word ''diacrit ...

, . In languages in which they occur, advanced-tongue-root vowels very often contrast with retracted tongue root (RTR) vowels in a system of

vowel harmony In phonology, vowel harmony is a phonological rule in which the vowels of a given domain – typically a phonological word – must share certain distinctive features (thus "in harmony"). Vowel harmony is typically long distance, meaning tha ...

, which occurs commonly in large parts of West Africa. ATR vowels involve a certain tension in the tongue, often in the

lip The lips are a horizontal pair of soft appendages attached to the jaws and are the most visible part of the mouth of many animals, including humans. Mammal lips are soft, movable and serve to facilitate the ingestion of food (e.g. sucklin ...

s and jaw as well; the ear can often perceive this tension as a "brightness" (narrow

formant In speech science and phonetics, a formant is the broad spectral maximum that results from an acoustic resonance of the human vocal tract. In acoustics, a formant is usually defined as a broad peak, or local maximum, in the spectrum. For harmo ...

s) compared to RTR vowels. Nonetheless, phoneticians do not refer to ATR vowels as ''tense vowels'' since the word '' tense'' already has several meanings in European phonetics.

Retracted tongue root

Retracted tongue root, abbreviated RTR, is the retraction of the base of the tongue in the pharynx during the pronunciation of a vowel, the opposite articulation of advanced tongue root. This type of vowel has also been referred to as

pharyngealized Pharyngealization is a secondary articulation of consonants or vowels by which the pharynx or epiglottis is constricted during the articulation of the sound. IPA symbols In the International Phonetic Alphabet, pharyngealization can be indicate ...

. The neutral position of the tongue during the pronunciation of a vowel, contrasting with advanced tongue root and thus marked -ATR, is also sometimes referred to as retracted tongue root. The diacritic for RTR in the

is the right tack, .

Tongue root position and vowel harmony

As mentioned above, many African languages, such as Maasai, have systems of

based on tongue root position. That is illustrated here with the Fante dialect of Akan, which has fifteen vowels: five +ATR vowels, five −ATR vowels, and five

nasal vowel A nasal vowel is a vowel that is produced with a lowering of the soft palate (or velum) so that the air flow escapes through the nose and the mouth simultaneously, as in the French vowel /ɑ̃/ () or Amoy []. By contrast, oral vowels are p ...

s. : There are two harmonization rules that govern the vowels that may co-occur in a word: #All −ATR vowels become +ATR when followed by a peripheral +ATR vowel (). That is, orthographic ''e ɛ a ɔ o'' become ''i e a o u'' before ''i u'' and sometimes before ''a.'' #As long as it does not conflict with the previous rule, the +ATR mid vowels () become −ATR high vowels () when preceded by a −ATR non-high vowel (). (It is not reflected in the orthography; underlying and surface vowels are both spelled ''e o.'') In the

Asante dialect Asante, also known as Ashanti, Ashante, or Asante Twi, is one of the principal dialects of the Akan language. It is one of the three literary dialects of Akan, the others being Akuapem dialect, Akuapem and Fante language, Fante. There are over 3. ...

, the ±ATR distinction has merged in the

low vowel An open vowel is a vowel sound in which the tongue is positioned approximately as far as possible from the roof of the mouth. Open vowels are sometimes also called low vowels (in U.S. terminology ) in reference to the low position of the tongue ...

and so is harmonically neutral, occurring with either set of vowels. In addition, the two vowels written ''e'' ( and ) and ''o'' ( and ) are often not distinguished and are approximately equivalent to European and , as reflected in the orthography; for such people, the second harmonization rule does not apply.

Tongue root and phonation

With advances in

fiber-optic An optical fiber, or optical fibre, is a flexible glass or plastic fiber that can transmit light from one end to the other. Such fibers find wide usage in fiber-optic communications, where they permit transmission over longer distances and at ...

laryngoscopy at the end of the twentieth century, new types of

phonation The term phonation has slightly different meanings depending on the subfield of phonetics. Among some phoneticians, ''phonation'' is the process by which the vocal folds produce certain sounds through quasi-periodic vibration. This is the defi ...

were discovered that involve more of the

than just the

glottis The glottis (: glottises or glottides) is the opening between the vocal folds (the rima glottidis). The glottis is crucial in producing sound from the vocal folds. Etymology From Ancient Greek ''γλωττίς'' (glōttís), derived from ''γ ...

. One of the few languages studied thus far, the Togolese language Kabiyé, has a vocalic distinction that had been assumed to be one of tongue root. However, it turned out to be a phonation distinction of faucalized voice versus harsh voice. It is not yet clear whether that is characteristic of ±ATR distinctions in general.

Additional images

File:Slide1lll.JPG, Tongue root File:Slide1mmm.JPG, Tongue root File:Slide7sss.JPG, tongue root File:Slide17sss.JPG, tongue root File:Slide3ttt.JPG, tongue root File:Slide5uuu.JPG, tongue root File:Slide11vvv.JPG, tongue root

References

Sources

* {{cite book , last1 =Ladefoged , first1 =Peter , last2 =Maddieson , first2 =Ian , title =The Sounds of the World's Languages , year =1996 , publisher =Blackwell , location =Oxford , isbn =

External links

Maasai Vowels
with audio examples of ATRand ATR Vowels