Voiceless retroflex plosive

The voiceless retroflex plosive is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ⟨ʈ ⟩, and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is t`. Like all the retroflex consonants, the IPA symbol is formed by adding a rightward-pointing hook extending from the bottom of tee (the letter used for the equivalent alveolar consonant). In many fonts lowercase tee already has a rightward-pointing hook, but ⟨ʈ ⟩ is distinguished from ⟨t⟩ by extending the hook below the baseline.

Features

Features of the voiceless retroflex plosive:

• Its manner of articulation is stop, or plosive, which means it is produced by obstructing airflow in the vocal tract. (The term plosive contrasts with nasal stops, where the blocked airflow is redirected through the nose.)
• Its place of articulation is retroflex, which prototypically means it is articulated sub-apical - with the tip of the tongue curled up. But more generally it means that it is postalveolar without being palatalized. That is, besides the prototypical sub-apical articulation, the tongue contact can be apical (pointed) or laminal (flat).
• Its phonation is voiceless, which means it is produced without vibrations of the vocal cords. In some languages the vocal cords are actively separated, so it is always voiceless; in others the cords are lax, so that it may take on the voicing of adjacent sounds.
• It is an oral consonant, which means air is allowed to escape through the mouth only.
• Because the sound is not produced with airflow over the tongue, the central–lateral dichotomy does not apply.
• 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

• Eliasson, Stig (1986), "Sandhi in Peninsular Scandinavian", in Anderson, Henning, Sandhi Phenomena in the Languages of Europe, Berlin: de Gruyter, pp. 271–300 
• Keane, Elinor (2004), "Tamil", Journal of the International Phonetic Association 34 (1): 111–116, doi:10.1017/S0025100304001549 
• Ladefoged, Peter (2005), Vowels and Consonants (Second ed.), Blackwell 
• Lunsford, Wayne A. (2001), "An overview of linguistic structures in Torwali, a language of Northern Pakistan", M.A. thesis, University of Texas at Arlington, http://www.fli-online.org/documents/languages/torwali/wayne_lunsford_thesis.pdf 
• Thompson, Laurence (1959), "Saigon phonemics", Language 35 (3): 454–476, doi:10.2307/411232, JSTOR 411232 

External links

• Phonology of English, including dialectical variations