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 flap or tap is a type of
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 wit ...
al sound, which is
produced with a single contraction of the muscles so that one articulator (such as the tongue) is thrown against another.
Contrast with stops and trills
The main difference between a tap or flap and a
stop
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 d ...
is that in a tap/flap there is no buildup of air pressure behind the
place of articulation
In articulatory phonetics, the place of articulation (also point of articulation) of a consonant is a location along the vocal tract where its production occurs. It is a point where a constriction is made between an active and a passive articula ...
and consequently no
release
Release may refer to:
* Art release, the public distribution of an artistic production, such as a film, album, or song
* Legal release, a legal instrument
* News release, a communication directed at the news media
* Release (ISUP), a code to iden ...
burst. Otherwise a tap/flap is similar to a brief stop.
Taps and flaps also contrast with
trills, where the airstream causes the articulator to vibrate. Trills may be realized as a single contact, like a tap or flap, but are variable, whereas a tap/flap is limited to a single contact. When a trill is brief and made with a single contact it is sometimes erroneously described as an (allophonic) tap/flap, but a true tap or flap is an active articulation whereas a trill is a passive articulation. That is, for a tap or flap the tongue makes an active gesture to contact the target place of articulation, whereas with a trill the contact is due to the vibration caused by the airstream rather than any active movement.
Tap vs. flap
Many
linguists use the terms ''tap'' and ''flap'' indiscriminately.
Peter Ladefoged
Peter Nielsen Ladefoged ( , ; 17 September 1925 – 24 January 2006) was a British linguist and phonetician.
He was Professor of Phonetics at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), where he taught from 1962 to 1991. His book ''A Course ...
proposed for a while that it might be useful to distinguish between them. However, his usage was inconsistent and contradicted itself even between different editions of the same text. One proposed version of the distinction was that a tap strikes its point of contact directly, as a very brief
stop
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 d ...
, but a flap strikes the point of contact tangentially: "Flaps are most typically made by retracting the tongue tip behind the
alveolar ridge
The alveolar process () or alveolar bone is the thickened ridge of bone that contains the tooth sockets on the jaw bones (in humans, the maxilla and the mandible). The structures are covered by gums as part of the oral cavity.
The synonymous t ...
and moving it forward so that it strikes the ridge in passing."
Later, however, he used the term ''flap'' in all cases. Subsequent work on the labiodental flap has clarified the issue: flaps involve retraction of the active articulator, and a forward-striking movement.
For linguists who make the distinction, the
alveolar flap is transcribed as a fish-hook ar, , and the tap can be transcribed as a small capital D, , which is not recognized by the IPA, or by . In IPA terms the retroflex flap symbol captures the initial retraction and subsequent forward movement of the tongue tip involved. Otherwise, alveolars are typically called ''taps'', and other
articulations are called ''flaps''.
A few languages have been reported to contrast a tap and a flap at the same place of articulation. This is the case for Norwegian, in which the alveolar apical tap and the post-alveolar/retroflex apical flap have the same place of articulation for some speakers,
and
Kamviri
Kamviri () is a dialect of the Kamkata-vari language spoken by 5,000 to 10,000 of the Kom people of Afghanistan and Pakistan. There are slight dialectal differences of the Kamviri speakers of Pakistan. The most used alternative names are ''Kati' ...
, which also has apical alveolar taps and flaps.
IPA symbols
The tap and flap consonants identified by 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 ...
are:
The
Kiel Convention
The International Phonetic Alphabet was created soon after the International Phonetic Association was established in the late 19th century. It was intended as an international system of phonetic transcription for oral languages, originally for p ...
of the IPA recommended that for other taps and flaps, a homorganic consonant, such as a stop or trill, should be used with a breve diacritic:
However, the former could be mistaken for a short trill, and is more clearly transcribed , whereas for a nasal tap the unambiguous transcription is generally used.
Types of taps and flaps
Most of the alternative transcriptions in parentheses imply a tap rather than flap articulation, so for example the flap and the tapped stop are arguably distinct, as are flapped and tapped .
Alveolar taps and flaps
Spanish
Spanish might refer to:
* Items from or related to Spain:
**Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain
**Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries
**Spanish cuisine
Other places
* Spanish, Ontario, Can ...
features a good illustration of an alveolar flap, contrasting it with a
trill
TRILL (Transparent Interconnection of Lots of Links) is an Internet Standard implemented by devices called TRILL switches. TRILL combines techniques from bridging and routing, and is the application of link-state routing to the VLAN-aware cus ...
: ''pero'' "but" vs. ''perro'' "dog". Among the
Germanic languages
The Germanic languages are a branch of the Indo-European language family spoken natively by a population of about 515 million people mainly in Europe, North America, Oceania and Southern Africa. The most widely spoken Germanic language, Engli ...
, the tap
allophone
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 ''s ...
occurs in American and Australian English and in Northern
Low Saxon
Low Saxon, also known as West Low German ( nds, Nedersassisch, Nedersaksies; nl, Nedersaksisch) are a group of Low German dialects spoken in parts of the Netherlands, northwestern Germany and southern Denmark (in North Schleswig by parts of th ...
. In American and Australian English it tends to be an allophone of intervocalic and , leading to homophonous pairs such as "metal" / "medal" and "latter" / "ladder" – see
tapping
Tapping is a playing technique that can be used on any stringed instrument, but which is most commonly used on guitar. The technique involves a string being fretted and set into vibration as part of a single motion. This is in contrast to stand ...
. In a number of Low Saxon dialects it occurs as an allophone of intervocalic or ; e.g. ''bäden'' /beeden/ → 'to pray', 'to request', ''gah to Bedde!'' /gaa tou bede/ → 'go to bed!', ''Water'' → 'water', ''Vadder'' /fater/ → 'father'. (In some dialects this has resulted in reanalysis and a shift to ; thus ''bären'' , ''to Berre'' , ''Warer'' , ''Varrer'' .) Occurrence varies; in some Low Saxon dialects it affects both and , while in others it affects only . Other languages with this are
Portuguese
Portuguese may refer to:
* anything of, from, or related to the country and nation of Portugal
** Portuguese cuisine, traditional foods
** Portuguese language, a Romance language
*** Portuguese dialects, variants of the Portuguese language
** Portu ...
,
Korean
Korean may refer to:
People and culture
* Koreans, ethnic group originating in the Korean Peninsula
* Korean cuisine
* Korean culture
* Korean language
**Korean alphabet, known as Hangul or Chosŏn'gŭl
**Korean dialects and the Jeju language
** ...
, and
Austronesian languages with .
In
Galician,
Portuguese
Portuguese may refer to:
* anything of, from, or related to the country and nation of Portugal
** Portuguese cuisine, traditional foods
** Portuguese language, a Romance language
*** Portuguese dialects, variants of the Portuguese language
** Portu ...
and
Sardinian, a flap often appears instead of a former . This is part of a wider phenomenon called
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 ...
.
Retroflex flaps
Most
Indic
Indic may refer to:
* Indic languages (disambiguation)
* Various scripts:
** Brahmic scripts, a family of scripts used to write Indian and other Asian languages
** Kharosthi (extinct)
* Indian numerals
* Indian religions, also known as the Dharm ...
and
Dravidian languages
The Dravidian languages (or sometimes Dravidic) are a family of languages spoken by 250 million people, mainly in southern India, north-east Sri Lanka, and south-west Pakistan. Since the colonial era, there have been small but significant ...
have retroflex flaps. In
Hindi
Hindi (Devanāgarī: or , ), or more precisely Modern Standard Hindi (Devanagari: ), is an Indo-Aryan language spoken chiefly in the Hindi Belt region encompassing parts of northern, central, eastern, and western India. Hindi has been de ...
there are three, a simple retroflex flap as in ''big,'' a
murmured
Breathy voice (also called murmured voice, whispery voice, soughing and susurration) is a phonation in which the vocal folds vibrate, as they do in normal (modal) voicing, but are adjusted to let more air escape which produces a sighing-like ...
retroflex flap as in ''leper,'' and a retroflex
nasal flap in the Hindicized pronunciation of
Sanskrit
Sanskrit (; attributively , ; nominally , , ) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had diffused there from the northwest in the late ...
''ruby.'' Some of these may 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 '' ...
.
A retroflex flap is also common in
Norwegian dialects
Norwegian dialects (''dialekter'') are commonly divided into four main groups, 'Northern Norwegian' (), 'Central Norwegian' ('' trøndersk''), 'Western Norwegian' (''vestlandsk''), and 'Eastern Norwegian' (). Sometimes 'Midland Norwegian' () and ...
and some
Swedish dialects
Swedish dialects are the various forms of the Swedish language, particularly those that differ considerably from Standard Swedish.
Traditional dialects
The linguistic definition of a Swedish traditional dialect, in the literature merely called ' ...
.
Lateral taps and flaps
Many of the languages of Africa, Asia, and the Pacific that do not distinguish
from
l may have a lateral flap. However, it is also possible that many of these languages do not have a lateral–central contrast at all, so that even a consistently neutral articulation may be perceived as sometimes lateral or , sometimes central . This has been suggested to be the case for
Japanese
Japanese may refer to:
* Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia
* Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan
* Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture
** Japanese diaspor ...
, for example.
The
Iwaidja language
Iwaidja, in phonemic spelling ''Iwaja'', is an Australian aboriginal language of the Iwaidja people with about 123 native, with an extra 20 to 30 L2 speakers in northernmost Australia. Historically having come from the base of the Cobourg Penin ...
of Australia has both alveolar and
retroflex lateral flap
The voiced retroflex lateral flap is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The expected symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet is ().Kirk Miller & Michael AshbyL2/20-252RUnicode request for IPA modifier-letters (a), ...
s. These contrast with
lateral approximant
A lateral is a consonant in which the airstream proceeds along one or both of the sides of the tongue, but it is blocked by the tongue from going through the middle of the mouth. An example of a lateral consonant is the English ''L'', as in ''Larr ...
s at the same positions, as well as a retroflex tap ,
alveolar tap Alveolus (; pl. alveoli, adj. alveolar) is a general anatomical term for a concave cavity or pit.
Uses in anatomy and zoology
* Pulmonary alveolus, an air sac in the lungs
** Alveolar cell or pneumocyte
** Alveolar duct
** Alveolar macrophage
* M ...
, and
retroflex approximant
The voiced retroflex approximant is a type of consonant used in some languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is r\`. The IPA symbol is a turned lowercase lett ...
. However, the flapped, or tapped, laterals in Iwaidja are distinct from 'lateral flaps' as represented by the corresponding IPA symbols (see below). These phones consist of a flap component followed by a lateral component, whereas In Iwaidja the opposite is the case. For this reason, current IPA transcriptions of these sounds by linguists working on the language consist of an alveolar lateral followed by a superscript alveolar tap and a retroflex lateral followed by a superscript retroflex tap.
A
velar lateral tap
The voiced velar lateral tap is an allophone of the velar lateral approximant in some languages of New Guinea
New Guinea (; Hiri Motu: ''Niu Gini''; id, Papua, or , historically ) is the world's second-largest island with an area of . Lo ...
may exist as an allophone in a few languages of New Guinea, according to
Peter Ladefoged
Peter Nielsen Ladefoged ( , ; 17 September 1925 – 24 January 2006) was a British linguist and phonetician.
He was Professor of Phonetics at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), where he taught from 1962 to 1991. His book ''A Course ...
and
Ian Maddieson
Ian Maddieson (born September 1, 1942 in Watford, United Kingdom) is British-American linguist and professor emeritus of linguistics at the University of New Mexico, in the United States. He has served as Vice-President of the International Phone ...
.
Non-coronal flaps
The only common non-
coronal flap is the
labiodental flap
In phonetics, the voiced labiodental flap is a speech sound found primarily in languages of Central Africa, such as Kera and Mangbetu. It has also been reported in the Austronesian language Sika. It is one of the few non- rhotic flaps. The ...
, found throughout central Africa in languages such as
Margi. In 2005, the IPA adopted a right-hook v,
:
for this sound. (Supported by some fonts: .) Previously, it had been transcribed with the use of the breve diacritic, , or other ''ad hoc'' symbols.
Other taps or flaps are much less common. They include an
epiglottal tap; a
bilabial flap
The voiced bilabial flap is an uncommon non- rhotic flap. It is usually, and perhaps always, an allophone of the labiodental flap, though it is the preferred allophone in a minority of languages such as Banda and some of its neighbors.
In Mono ...
in
Banda, which may be an
allophone
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 ''s ...
of the labiodental flap; and a
velar lateral tap
The voiced velar lateral tap is an allophone of the velar lateral approximant in some languages of New Guinea
New Guinea (; Hiri Motu: ''Niu Gini''; id, Papua, or , historically ) is the world's second-largest island with an area of . Lo ...
as an allophone in
Kanite and
Melpa. These are often transcribed with the breve diacritic, as . Note here that, like a velar
trill
TRILL (Transparent Interconnection of Lots of Links) is an Internet Standard implemented by devices called TRILL switches. TRILL combines techniques from bridging and routing, and is the application of link-state routing to the VLAN-aware cus ...
, a central velar flap or tap is not possible because the tongue and
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. ...
cannot move together easily enough to produce a sound.
If other flaps are found, the breve diacritic could be used to represent them, but would more properly be combined with the symbol for the corresponding voiced stop. A
palatal
The palate () is the roof of the mouth in humans and other mammals. It separates the oral cavity from the nasal cavity.
A similar structure is found in crocodilians, but in most other tetrapods, the oral and nasal cavities are not truly separ ...
or
uvular
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 prov ...
tap or flap, which unlike a velar tap is believed to be articulatorily possible, could be represented this way (by ).
Nasal taps and flaps
Nasalized consonant
In phonetics, a nasal, also called a nasal occlusive or nasal stop in contrast with an oral stop or nasalized consonant, is an occlusive consonant produced with a lowered velum, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. The vast majori ...
s include taps and flaps, although these are rarely phonemic. Many West African languages have a nasal flap (or ) as an allophone of before a nasal vowel;
Pashto
Pashto (,; , ) is an Eastern Iranian language in the Indo-European language family. It is known in historical Persian literature as Afghani ().
Spoken as a native language mostly by ethnic Pashtuns, it is one of the two official languages ...
, however, has a phonemic nasal
retroflex lateral flap
The voiced retroflex lateral flap is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The expected symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet is ().Kirk Miller & Michael AshbyL2/20-252RUnicode request for IPA modifier-letters (a), ...
.
Tapped fricatives
Voiced and voiceless tapped alveolar fricatives have been reported from a few languages. Flapped fricatives are possible but do not seem to be used.
[Laver (1994) ''Principles of Phonetics'', p. 263.] See
voiced alveolar tapped fricative,
voiceless alveolar tapped fricative
The voiceless alveolar fricatives are a type of fricative consonant pronounced with the tip or blade of the tongue against the alveolar ridge (gum line) just behind the teeth. This refers to a class of sounds, not a single sound. There are at lea ...
.
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 ...
Notes
References
*
External links
A Crosslinguistic Lexicon of the Labial Flap
{{Articulation navbox
Manner of articulation