In
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. ...
, a trill is a
consonant
In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract. Examples are and pronounced with the lips; and pronounced with the front of the tongue; and pronounced wi ...
al sound
produced by vibrations between the
active articulator
The field of articulatory phonetics is a subfield of phonetics that studies articulation and ways that humans produce speech. Articulatory phoneticians explain how humans produce speech sounds via the interaction of different physiological struct ...
and
passive articulator.
Standard Spanish as in , for example, is an
alveolar trill
The voiced alveolar trill is a type of consonantal sound used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents dental, alveolar, and postalveolar trills is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is ...
.
A trill is made by the articulator being held in place and the airstream causing it to vibrate. Usually a trill vibrates for 2–3 contacts, but may be up to 5, or even more if
geminate
In phonetics and phonology, gemination (), or consonant lengthening (from Latin 'doubling', itself from '' gemini'' 'twins'), is an articulation of a consonant for a longer period of time than that of a singleton consonant. It is distinct from ...
. However, trills may also be produced with only one contact. While single-contact trills are similar to
taps and flaps, a tap or flap differs from a trill in that it is made by a muscular contraction rather than airstream.
Phonemic trills
Trill consonants included 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 ...
:
* –
Voiced alveolar trill
* –
Voiceless alveolar trill
The voiceless alveolar trill differs from the voiced alveolar trill only by the vibrations of the vocal cord. It occurs in a few languages, usually alongside the voiced version, as a similar phoneme or an allophone.
Proto-Indo-European develo ...
* –
Voiced bilabial trill
The voiced bilabial trill is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents the sound is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is B\.
Features
Features of the voiced ...
* –
Voiceless bilabial trill
The voiceless bilabial trill is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is . The X-SAMPA symbol is B\_0
This sound is typologically extremely rare. ...
* –
Voiced retroflex trill
* –
Voiced uvular trill
The voiced 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 , a small capital letter ''R''. This consonant is one of several collectively ...
* –
Voiceless uvular trill
The voiceless uvular trill is a type of consonantal sound, used in some dialects of some spoken languages. It is less common than its voiced counterpart.
Features
Features of the voiceless uvular trill:
Occurrence
See also
*Index of ...
* –
voiced epiglottal trill
The voiced epiglottal or pharyngeal trill, or voiced epiglottal fricative,John Esling (2010) "Phonetic Notation", in Hardcastle, Laver & Gibbon (eds) ''The Handbook of Phonetic Sciences'', 2nd ed., p 695. is a type of consonantal sound, used in ...
* –
voiceless epiglottal trill
The voiceless epiglottal or pharyngeal trill, or voiceless epiglottal fricative,John Esling (2010) "Phonetic Notation", in Hardcastle, Laver & Gibbon (eds) ''The Handbook of Phonetic Sciences'', 2nd ed., p 695. is a type of consonantal sound, use ...
In addition,
* –
velopharyngeal fricative found in disordered speech sometimes involves trilling of the velopharyngeal port, producing a 'snort'.
The bilabial trill is uncommon. The coronal trill is most frequently
alveolar , but
dental and
postalveolar articulations and also occur. An alleged
retroflex trill
The voiced retroflex trill is a sound that has been reported in Toda and confirmed with laboratory measurements. Peter Ladefoged transcribes it with the IPA symbol that is normally associated with the retroflex flap, . Although the tongue start ...
found in
Toda has been transcribed (that is, the same as the
retroflex flap
The voiced retroflex flap is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is r`.
Features
Features of the voice ...
), but might be less ambiguously written , as only the onset is retroflex, with the actual trill being alveolar. The epiglottal trills are identified by the IPA as fricatives, with the trilling assumed to be
allophonic
In phonology, an allophone (; from the Greek , , 'other' and , , 'voice, sound') is a set of multiple possible spoken soundsor '' phones''or signs used to pronounce a single phoneme in a particular language. For example, in English, (as in '' ...
. However, analyzing the sounds as trills may be more economical. There are also so-called
strident vowel
Strident vowels (also called sphincteric vowels) are strongly pharyngealized vowels accompanied by an (ary)epiglottal trill, with the larynx being raised and the pharynx constricted. Either the epiglottis or the arytenoid cartilages thus vibrate ...
s which are accompanied by epiglottal trill.
The cells in the IPA chart for the
velar
Velars are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue (the dorsum) against the soft palate, the back part of the roof of the mouth (known also as the velum).
Since the velar region of the roof of the mouth is relatively extensive a ...
,
(upper) pharyngeal, and
glottal places of articulation are shaded as impossible. The glottis quite readily vibrates, but this occurs as the
phonation of vowels and consonants, not as a consonant of its own. Dorso-palatal and velar vibratory motions of the tongue are occasionally produced, especially during the release of dorsal stops, and ''ingressive''
velar trills occur in snoring, but not in normal speech. The upper pharyngeal tract cannot reliably produce a trill, but the epiglottis does, and epiglottal trills are pharyngeal in the broad sense. A partially devoiced pre-uvular (i.e. between velar and uvular)
fricative trill has been reported to occur as
coda allophone of in
Limburgish dialects of
Maastricht
Maastricht ( , , ; li, Mestreech ; french: Maestricht ; es, Mastrique ) is a city and a municipality in the southeastern Netherlands. It is the capital and largest city of the province of Limburg. Maastricht is located on both sides of the ...
and
Weert
Weert (; li, Wieërt ) is a municipality and city in the southeastern Netherlands located in the western part of the province of Limburg. It lies on the Eindhoven–Maastricht railway line, and is also astride the Zuid-Willemsvaart canal.
Pop ...
. It is in free variation with partially devoiced uvular fricative trill .
Voiceless trills occur phonemically in e.g.
Welsh
Welsh may refer to:
Related to Wales
* Welsh, referring or related to Wales
* Welsh language, a Brittonic Celtic language spoken in Wales
* Welsh people
People
* Welsh (surname)
* Sometimes used as a synonym for the ancient Britons (Celtic peop ...
and
Icelandic. (See also
voiceless alveolar trill
The voiceless alveolar trill differs from the voiced alveolar trill only by the vibrations of the vocal cord. It occurs in a few languages, usually alongside the voiced version, as a similar phoneme or an allophone.
Proto-Indo-European develo ...
,
voiceless retroflex trill,
voiceless uvular trill
The voiceless uvular trill is a type of consonantal sound, used in some dialects of some spoken languages. It is less common than its voiced counterpart.
Features
Features of the voiceless uvular trill:
Occurrence
See also
*Index of ...
.) Mangbetu and
Ninde have phonemically voiceless bilabial trills.
The
Czech language
Czech (; Czech ), historically also Bohemian (; ''lingua Bohemica'' in Latin), is a West Slavic language of the Czech–Slovak group, written in Latin script. Spoken by over 10 million people, it serves as the official language of the Czech R ...
has two contrastive alveolar trills, one a fricative trill (written ''ř'' in the orthography). In the fricative trill the tongue is raised, so that there is audible
frication during the trill, sounding a little like a simultaneous and (or and when devoiced). A symbol for this sound, , has been dropped from the IPA, and it is now generally transcribed as a raised ''r'', .
Liangshan Yi ("Cool Mountain" Yi) has two "buzzed" or fricative vowels (written ''ṳ, i̤'') which may also be trilled, .
A number of languages have
trilled affricate
Trilled affricates, also known as post-trilled consonants, are consonants which begin as a stop and have a trill release. These consonants are reported to exist in some Northern Paman languages in Australia, as well as in some Chapacuran langu ...
s such as and . The
Chapakuran language
Wariʼ
The Wariʼ, also known as the Pakaa Nova, are an indigenous people of Brazil, living in seven villages in the Amazon rainforest in the state of Rondônia. Their first contact with European settlers was on the shores of the Pakaa Nova River, a ...
and the
Muran language
Pirahã have a very unusual trilled phoneme, a
voiceless bilabially post-trilled dental stop, .
A nasal trill has been described from some dialects of Romanian, and is posited as an intermediate historical step in
rhotacism
Rhotacism () or rhotacization is a sound change that converts one consonant (usually a voiced alveolar consonant: , , , or ) to a rhotic consonant in a certain environment. The most common may be of to . When a dialect or member of a language ...
. However, the phonetic variation of the sound is considerable, and it is not clear how frequently it is actually trilled.
Extralinguistic trills
A
linguolabial
Linguolabials or apicolabials are consonants articulated by placing the tongue tip or blade against the upper lip, which is drawn downward to meet the tongue. They represent one extreme of a coronal articulatory continuum which extends from ling ...
trill is not known to be used phonemically but occurs when
blowing a raspberry
Blowing a raspberry, strawberry, razzing or making a Bronx cheer, is to make a noise similar to flatulence that may signify derision, real or feigned. It is also used in childhood phonemic play. It is made by placing the tongue between the lips, ...
.
Snoring
Snoring is the vibration of respiratory structures and the resulting sound due to obstructed air movement during breathing while sleeping. The sound may be soft or loud and unpleasant. Snoring during sleep may be a sign, or first alarm, of ob ...
typically consists of vibration of the uvula and the
soft palate
The soft palate (also known as the velum, palatal velum, or muscular palate) is, in mammals, the soft tissue constituting the back of the roof of the mouth. The soft palate is part of the palate of the mouth; the other part is the hard palate. ...
(velum), which may be described as an
ingressive
In phonetics, ingressive sounds are sounds by which the airstream flows inward through the mouth or nose. The three types of ingressive sounds are lingual ingressive or velaric ingressive (from the tongue and the velum), glottalic ingressive (f ...
velic trill. Like the uvular trill, the ingressive velic trill does not involve the tongue; it is the velum that passively vibrates in the airstream. The ''
Speculative Grammarian
''Speculative Grammarian'' (often referred to as ''SpecGram'') is the self-described "premier scholarly journal featuring research in the neglected field of satirical linguistics". It is a parody science journal, similar in nature to the '' An ...
'' has proposed a jocular symbol for the sound (and also the sound used to imitate a pig's snort), a wide O with a double dot (
Ꙫ), suggesting a pig's snout. The
Extensions to the IPA
The Extensions to the International Phonetic Alphabet for Disordered Speech, commonly abbreviated extIPA , are a set of letters and diacritics devised by the International Clinical Phonetics and Linguistics Association to augment the Internati ...
identifies an egressive fricative pronounced with this same configuration, common with a
cleft palate
A cleft lip contains an opening in the upper lip that may extend into the nose. The opening may be on one side, both sides, or in the middle. A cleft palate occurs when the palate (the roof of the mouth) contains an opening into the nose. The ...
, as
velopharyngeal , and with accompanying uvular trill as () or (
![Feng trill](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/44/Feng_trill.svg)
).
[Unicode support from 2021.]
Lateral
Lateral is a geometric term of location which may refer to:
Healthcare
*Lateral (anatomy), an anatomical direction
* Lateral cricoarytenoid muscle
* Lateral release (surgery), a surgical procedure on the side of a kneecap
Phonetics
*Lateral co ...
trills are also possible and may be pronounced by initiating or with an especially forceful airflow. There is no symbol for them in the IPA. Lateral coronal trills are sometimes used to imitate
bird call
Bird vocalization includes both bird calls and bird songs. In non-technical use, bird songs are the bird sounds that are melodious to the human ear. In ornithology and birding, songs (relatively complex vocalizations) are distinguished by func ...
s, and are a component of
Donald Duck talk
Donald Duck talk, formally called buccal speech, is an alaryngeal form of vocalization which uses the inner cheek to produce sound rather than the larynx. also published as The speech is most closely associated with the Disney cartoon character, ...
. A
labiodental trill, , is most likely to be lateral, but laterality is not distinctive among labial sounds.
Ejective
In phonetics, ejective consonants are usually voiceless consonants that are pronounced with a glottalic egressive airstream. In the phonology of a particular language, ejectives may contrast with aspirated, voiced and tenuis consonants. Some ...
trills are not known from any language although they are easy to produce. They may occur as
mimesis of a cat's purr.
Summary
See also
*
List of phonetics topics
A
* Acoustic phonetics
* Active articulator
* Affricate
* Airstream mechanism
* Alexander John Ellis
* Alexander Melville Bell
* Alfred C. Gimson
* Allophone
* Alveolar approximant ()
* Alveolar click ()
* Alveolar consonant
* Alveolar ej ...
*
Bronx cheer (gesture)
References
Bibliography
*
*
*
*
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*
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Manner of articulation