The voiced palatal lateral approximant is a type of
consonantal sound used in some
spoken languages. The symbol in 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 ...
that represents this sound is , a rotated lowercase letter (not to be confused with lowercase
lambda, ), and the equivalent
X-SAMPA symbol is
L.
Many languages that were previously thought to have a palatal lateral approximant actually have a lateral approximant that is, broadly,
alveolo-palatal; that is to say, it is articulated at a place in-between the
alveolar ridge and the
hard palate
The hard palate is a thin horizontal bony plate made up of two bones of the facial skeleton, located in the roof of the mouth. The bones are the palatine process of the maxilla and the horizontal plate of palatine bone. The hard palate spans ...
(excluded), and it may be variously described as alveolo-palatal, lamino-postalveolar,
[, citing ] or postalveolo-prepalatal. None of the 13 languages investigated by , many of them
Romance, has a 'true' palatal. That is likely the case for several other languages listed here. Some languages, like Portuguese and Catalan, have a lateral approximant that varies between alveolar and alveolo-palatal.
There is no dedicated symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents the alveolo-palatal lateral approximant. If precision is desired, it may be transcribed or ; they are essentially equivalent because the contact includes both the blade and body (but not the tip) of the tongue. There is also a non-IPA letter ("l", plus the curl found in the symbols for alveolo-palatal sibilant fricatives ), used especially in Sinological circles.
The voiced palatal lateral approximant contrasts phonemically with its
voiceless counterpart in the
Xumi language spoken in China.
Features
Features of the voiced palatal lateral approximant:
Occurrence
See also
*
Yeísmo, a feature of Spanish dialects that have merged this sound with
*
Index of phonetics articles
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 ejecti ...
Notes
References
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{{IPA navigation
Lateral consonants
Palatal consonants
Alveolo-palatal consonants
Pulmonic consonants
Oral consonants