Uvularization
Manner of secondary articulation
Uvularization or uvularisation is a secondary articulation of consonants or vowels by which the back of the tongue is constricted toward the uvula and upper pharynx during the articulation of a sound with its primary articulation elsewhere.
01IPA symbols
In the International Phonetic Alphabet, uvularization can be indicated by the symbol ⟨ʶ⟩ (a superscript voiced uvular fricative (inverted small capital R)) after the letter standing for the consonant that is uvularized, as in [tʶ] (the uvularized equivalent of [t]). This is specified in VoQS standards. The symbol ⟨ᵡ⟩ (a superscript voiceless uvular fricative) is sometimes used on voiceless consonants.
02Occurrence
Uvularized consonants are often not distinguished from pharyngealized consonants, and they may be transcribed as if they were pharyngealized.
In Arabic and several other Semitic and Berber languages, uvularization is the defining characteristic of the series of "emphatic" coronal consonants.
Uvularized consonants in standard Arabic are /sʶ/, /dʶ/, /tʶ/, /ðʶ/, /lʶ/. Regionally there is also /zʶ/ and /rʶ/. Other consonants, and vowels, may be phonetically uvularized.
In Greenlandic, long vowels are uvularized before uvular consonants, and English speakers retaining the Northumbrian Burr are reported to uvularize and retract vowels before a rhotic.
Sources and credits
This article is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Uvularization”, written by its contributors and licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Fathomly has changed the layout, removed citation markers, navigation and maintenance notices, and adjusted punctuation. This adapted version is shared under the same license. For references, see the original article.
Images, from Wikimedia Commons:
- IPA Unicode 0x02B6.svg by Kwamikagami, CC BY-SA 4.0
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