Uvular trill

The uvular trill is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ⟨ʀ⟩, a small capital ar. This consonant is one of several collectively called guttural R.

Within Europe, the uvular trill seems to have originated in Standard French around the seventeenth century, spreading to standard varieties of German, Danish, as well as in parts of Dutch, Norwegian and Swedish; it is also present in other areas of Europe, but it's not all that clear if such pronunciations are due to French influence.^[1] In most cases, varieties have shifted this to a uvular fricative ([ʁ]). See guttural R for more information.

Features

Features of the uvular trill:

• Its manner of articulation is trill, which means it is produced by directing air over the articulator so that it vibrates.
• Its place of articulation is uvular, which means it is articulated with the back of the tongue (the dorsum) at the uvula.
• 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 central consonant, which means it is produced by directing the airstream along the center of the tongue, rather than to the sides.
• The airstream mechanism is pulmonic, which means it is articulated by pushing air solely with the lungs and diaphragm, as in most sounds.

Occurrence

See also

• List of phonetics topics

References

Bibliography

• Ewert, A. (1963), The French Language, London: Faber 
• Grevisse, Maurice; Goosse, André (2008), Le Bon Usage (14th ed.), De Boeck et Larcier 
• Hall, Tracy Alan (1993), "The phonology of German /ʀ/", Phonology 10 (1): 83–105, doi:10.1017/S0952675700001743 
• Martinet, A. (1969), Le Français sans fard, Paris: Presses Universitaires 
• Moulton, W.G. (1952), "Jacob Böhme's uvular r", Journal of English and Germanic philology 51: 83–89 
• Rood, David S.; Taylor, Allan R. (1996), "Sketch of Lakhota, a Siouan Language, Part I", Handbook of North American Indians, 17, Smithsonian Institution, pp. 440–482, http://lakxotaiyapi.freecyberzone.com/sk1.htm 
• Trudgill, Peter (1974), "Linguistic change and diffusion: Description and explanation in sociolinguistic dialect", Language in Society 3 (2): 215–246, doi:10.1017/S0047404500004358