Apical, laminal and apicolaminal articulations

An apical consonant is a

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(speech sound) produced by obstructing the air passage with the tip of the tongue (apex) in conjunction with upper articulators from lips to

postalveolar Postalveolar or post-alveolar consonants are consonants articulated with the tongue near or touching the ''back'' of the alveolar ridge. Articulation is farther back in the mouth than the alveolar consonants, which are at the ridge itself, but no ...

, and possibly prepalatal. It contrasts with

laminal consonant A laminal consonant is a phone (speech sound) produced by obstructing the air passage with the blade of the tongue, the flat top front surface just behind the tip of the tongue in contact with upper lip, teeth, alveolar ridge, to possibly, as ...

s, which are produced by creating an obstruction with the blade of the tongue, just behind the tip. Sometimes ''apical'' is used exclusively for an articulation that involves only the tip of the tongue and ''apicolaminal'' for an articulation that involves both the tip and the blade of the tongue. However, the distinction is not always made and the latter one may be called simply ''apical'', especially when describing an apical dental articulation. As there is some laminal contact in the alveolar region, the apicolaminal dental consonants are also labelled as '' denti-alveolar''. It is not a very common distinction and is typically applied only to

fricative A fricative is a consonant manner of articulation, produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two Place of articulation, articulators close together. These may be the lower lip against the upper teeth, in the case of ; the ba ...

s and affricates. Thus, many varieties of English have either apical or laminal pairs of . However, some

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, including Hadhrami Arabic in

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, realize as laminal but as apical. Basque uses the distinction for alveolar fricatives, as does

Serbo-Croatian Serbo-Croatian () – also called Serbo-Croat (), Serbo-Croat-Bosnian (SCB), Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian (BCS), and Bosnian-Croatian-Montenegrin-Serbian (BCMS) – is a South Slavic language and the primary language of Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia an ...

Mandarin Chinese Mandarin (; ) is a group of Chinese (Sinitic) dialects that are natively spoken across most of northern and southwestern China. The group includes the Beijing dialect, the basis of the phonology of Standard Chinese, the official language ...

uses it for postalveolar fricatives (the "alveolo-palatal" and "retroflex" series). Lillooet uses it as a secondary feature in contrasting velarized and non-velarized affricates. A distinction between apical and laminal is common in Australian Aboriginal languages for nasals, plosives and (usually) lateral approximants. Most dialects in the Bengali–Assamese continuum distinguish between dental–laminal alveolar stops and apical alveolar stops. In Upper

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, they have merged and leave only the apical alveolar stops. In Western Bengali apical alveolars are replaced by apical post-alveolars. In the International Phonetic Alphabet, the diacritic for apical consonants is .

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Bibliography

* * * * Coronal consonants {{phonetics-stub

See also

References

Bibliography