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) and retracted tongue root (RTR) are contrasting states of the root of the

tongue The tongue is a muscular organ (anatomy), organ in the mouth of a typical tetrapod. It manipulates food for mastication and swallowing as part of the digestive system, digestive process, and is the primary organ of taste. The tongue's upper surfa ...

during the pronunciation of

vowel A vowel is a syllabic speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness and also in quantity (leng ...

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 East Africa, Eastern Africa, or East of Africa, is the eastern subregion of the African continent. In the United Nations Statistics Division scheme of geographic regions, 10-11-(16*) territories make up Eastern Africa: Due to the historical ...

, 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 Most languages of Europe 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. Within Indo-European, the three largest phyla are Rom ...

such as

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany (of or related to) ** Germania (historical use) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law **Ge ...

, but that no longer seems tenable.

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 and often lowering the

larynx The larynx (), commonly called the voice box, is an 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 inlet is about ...

during the pronunciation of a vowel. 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 refer ...

stops Stop may refer to: Places *Stop, Kentucky, an unincorporated community in the United States * Stop (Rogatica), a village in Rogatica, Republika Srpska, Bosnia and Herzegovina Facilities * Bus stop * Truck stop, a type of rest stop for truck dri ...

such as can often involve non-contrastive tongue root advancement whose 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 as far forward as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would otherw ...

s in the

Oghuz Turkic The Oghuz languages are a sub-branch of the Turkic language family, spoken by approximately 108 million people. The three languages with the largest number of speakers are Turkish, Azerbaijani and Turkmen, which, combined, account for more t ...

languages or in

Adjarian's law Adjarian's law is a sound law relating to the historical phonology of the Armenian language: in certain dialects, initial-syllable vowels are fronted after the consonants which reflect the inherited Proto-Indo-European (PIE) voiced aspirates. It ...

: 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 across 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 provi ...

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 ATR may refer to: Medicine * Acute transfusion reaction * Ataxia telangiectasia and Rad3 related, a protein involved in DNA damage repair Science and mathematics * Advanced Test Reactor, nuclear research reactor at the Idaho National Laboratory, ...

that motivates the extreme rarity of the

voiced uvular stop The voiced uvular plosive or stop 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 G\. is a rare sound, even ...

compared to its voiceless counterpart . The

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

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 ''diacriti ...

, . 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 an Assimilation (linguistics), assimilatory process in which the vowels of a given domain – typically a phonological word – have to be members of the same natural class (thus "in harmony"). Vowel harmony is t ...

, 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 the visible body part at the mouth of many animals, including humans. Lips are soft, movable, and serve as the opening for food intake and in the articulation of sound and speech. Human lips are a tactile sensory organ, and can be ...

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 harmoni ...

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 indicated ...

. 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 Maasai may refer to: * Maasai people *Maasai language * Maasai mythology * MAASAI (band) See also * Masai (disambiguation) * Massai Massai (also known as: Masai, Massey, Massi, Mah–sii, Massa, Wasse, Wassil or by the nickname "Big Foot" Mas ...

, have systems of

based on tongue root position. That is illustrated here with the Fante dialect of

Akan Akan may refer to: People and languages *Akan people, an ethnic group in Ghana and Côte d'Ivoire *Akan language, a language spoken by the Akan people *Kwa languages, a language group which includes Akan *Central Tano languages, a language group w ...

, 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 or Amoy []. By contrast, oral vowels are produced wit ...

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

Twi Twi () is a dialect of the Akan language spoken in southern and central Ghana by several million people, mainly of the Akan people, the largest of the seventeen major ethnic groups in Ghana. Twi has about 17-18 million speakers in total, includ ...

language, the ±ATR distinction has merged in the

low vowel An open vowel is a vowel sound in which the tongue is positioned 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. In the cont ...

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 in Commonwealth English, is a flexible, transparent fiber made by drawing glass (silica) or plastic to a diameter slightly thicker than that of a human hair. Optical fibers are used most often as a means t ...

laryngoscopy Laryngoscopy () is endoscopy of the larynx, a part of the throat. It is a medical procedure that is used to obtain a view, for example, of the vocal folds and the glottis. Laryngoscopy may be performed to facilitate tracheal intubation during ge ...

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 defini ...

were discovered that involve more of the

than just the

glottis The glottis is the opening between the vocal folds (the rima glottidis). The glottis is crucial in producing vowels and voiced consonants. Etymology From Ancient Greek ''γλωττίς'' (glōttís), derived from ''γλῶττα'' (glôtta), va ...

. One of the few languages studied thus far, the

Togolese Togo (), officially the Togolese Republic (french: République togolaise), is a country in West Africa. It is bordered by Ghana to the west, Benin to the east and Burkina Faso to the north. It extends south to the Gulf of Guinea, where its c ...

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 Faucalized voice, also called hollow voice or yawny voice, is a vocal quality of speech production characterized by the vertical expansion of the pharyngeal cavity due to the lowering of the larynx. It is termed ''faucalized'' because of the str ...

versus

harsh voice Harsh voice, also called ventricular voice or (in some high-tone registers) pressed voice, is the production of speech sounds (typically vowels) with a constricted laryngeal cavity, which generally involves epiglottal co-articulation. 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

and

Vowels