hidden pixel

Alveolar Trill Information

The alveolar trill is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents dental, alveolar, and postalveolar trills is ⟨r⟩, and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is r. It is commonly called the rolled R, rolling R, or trilled R. Quite often, ⟨r⟩ is used in phonemic transcriptions (especially those found in dictionaries) of languages like English and German that have rhotic consonants that are not an alveolar trill. This is partly due to ease of typesetting and partly because ⟨r⟩ is the letter used in the orthographies of these languages.

In the majority of Indo-European languages, this sound is at least occasionally allophonic with an alveolar tap [ɾ], particularly in unstressed positions. Exceptions to this include Catalan, Spanish, Albanian and some Portuguese dialects, which treat them as separate phonemes.

Contents

Features

Features of the alveolar trill:

Occurrence

Language Word IPA Meaning Notes
Abkhaz ашəара [aʃʷara] 'measure' See Abkhaz phonology
Adyghe рекӀы [retʃə] 'crushing'
Afrikaans rooi [rɔɪ] 'red'
Albanian rrush [ruʃ] 'grape'
Arabic رأس [rɑʔs] 'head' Represented by a <ر>. See Arabic phonology
Armenian ռումբ [rumb] (help·info) 'cannon-ball'
Asturian xenru [ʃɵ̃nˈru] 'son-in-law'
Basque errota [erot̪a] 'mill'
Catalan[1] roba [ˈrɔβə] 'clothes' Weakly trilled, see Catalan phonology
Czech chlor [xlɔ̝ːr] 'chlorine' May be syllabic. See Czech phonology
Dutch rood [roːt] (help·info) 'red' Standard pronunciation. Pronunciation of 'r' varies regionally, see Dutch phonology
English Scottish curd [kʌrd] 'curd' See English phonology
Esperanto tri [tri] (help·info) 'three'
Estonian narr [nɑrː] 'fool'
Finnish purra [purːɑ] 'to bite' See Finnish phonology
French southern France and Corsica rouge [ruʒ] 'red' See Standard and Quebec French phonologies.
rural Quebec
African French
German some dialects Schmarrn [ʃmaːrn] (help·info) 'nonsense' See German phonology
Greek χορός [xoˈros] 'dance' See Modern Greek phonology
Hebrew Some dialects ראש [roʃ] 'head' See Modern Hebrew phonology
Hindi घर [ɡʱər] 'house' See Hindi-Urdu phonology
Hungarian arra [ɒrːɒ] 'that way' See Hungarian phonology
Icelandic rós [ˈroːus] 'rose' See Icelandic phonology
Ilokano gurruod [ɡʊˈruʔod] 'thunder'
Italian[2] terra [ˈtɛrra] 'earth' See Italian phonology
Japanese Some dialects 羅針/rashin [raɕiɴ] 'compass' Use of [r] is known in Japanese as makijita' (巻き舌; 'rolling tongue').
Kele[3] [ⁿrikei] 'leg'
Macedonian игра [igra] 'play' See Macedonian phonology
Malay Standard arah [arah] 'direction'
Ngwe Njoagwi dialect [lɛ̀rɛ́] 'eye'
Persian رضا/Reza [ˈrezɒː] 'Reza' Allophone of [ɾ] in word-initial positions. See Persian phonology.
Polish[4] krok [ˈkrɔk] (help·info) 'step' See Polish phonology
Portuguese Some dialects carro [ˈkaru] 'car' Northern European Portuguese and some Brazilian speakers. Guttural in most dialects. See Portuguese phonology
Russian[5] играть [ɪˈɡr̠atʲ] 'to play' Retracted. See Russian phonology
Scots wir [wir] 'our'
Serbo-Croatian рт/rt [r̩t] 'cape' May be syllabic. See Serbo-Croatian phonology
Slovak[6] krk [kr̩k] 'neck' May be a tap, particularly when not syllabic
Spanish[7] perro [ˈpe̞ro̞] 'dog' See Spanish phonology
Swedish Central Standard rov [ruːv] (help·info) 'prey' See Swedish phonology
Tajik арра [ʌrrʌ] 'saw'
Titan[3] [ⁿrakeiʔin] 'girls'
Ubykh [bəqˤʼərda] 'to roll around' See Ubykh phonology
Ukrainian рух [rux] 'motion' See Ukrainian phonology
Welsh Rhagfyr [ˈr̥aɡvɨr] 'December' Contrasts voiced and voiceless alveolar trills. See Welsh phonology.
West Frisian rûp [rup] 'carterpillar'
Zapotec Tilquiapan[8] r-ree [rəˀə] 'habitual-go out' Underlyingly two sequences of /ɾ/

Voiceless alveolar trill

Some languages possess a voiceless alveolar trill, which differs only in the vibrations of the vocal cord. This is rare, and usually occurs alongside the voiced version as a similar phoneme or an allophone. It is postulated to have occurred in Ancient Greek, where it was spelled ⟨ῥ⟩; this sound has since merged with [r] in Modern Greek.

Occurrence

Language Word IPA Meaning Notes
Icelandic dagur [ˈtaːɣʏr̥] 'day' Postvocalic allophone of /r/. See Icelandic phonology
Lezgian[9] крчар/krčar [ˈkʰr̥t͡ʃar] 'horns' Allophone of /r/ between voiceless obstruents
Welsh Rhagfyr [ˈr̥aɡvɨr] 'December' Contrasts voiced and voiceless alveolar trills. See Welsh phonology.

Raised alveolar non-sonorant trill

In Czech there are two contrasting alveolar trills. Besides the typical trill, written r, there is another, written ř, in words such as rybáři [ˈrɪbaːr̝ɪ] 'fishermen' and the common surname Dvořák. Its manner of articulation is similar to [r] but the tongue is raised; it is partially fricative, with the frication sounding rather like [ʒ], though not so retracted. Thus in the IPA it is written as ⟨r⟩ plus the raising diacritic, ⟨r̝⟩. (Before the 1989 IPA Kiel Convention, it had a dedicated symbol ⟨ɼ⟩). It is normally voiced, but there is a voiceless allophone [r̝̊] as with many other Czech consonants.

(Listen: [r̝] (help·info))

Occurrence

Language Word IPA Meaning Notes
Czech čtyři [t͡ʃtɪr̝ɪ] (help·info) 'four' See Czech phonology

See also

References

  1. ^ Carbonell & Llisterri (1992:53)
  2. ^ Rogers & d'Arcangeli (2004:117)
  3. ^ a b Ladefoged (2005:165)
  4. ^ Jassem (2003:103)
  5. ^ Skalozub (1963:?); cited in Ladefoged & Maddieson (1996:?)
  6. ^ Hanulíková & Hamann (2010:374)
  7. ^ Martínez-Celdrán, Fernández-Planas & Carrera-Sabaté (2003:255)
  8. ^ Merrill (2008:109)
  9. ^ Haspelmath (1993:35)

Bibliography

International Phonetic Alphabet
IPA topics
IPA
Phonetics
Special topics
Encodings
Consonants
IPA pulmonic consonants chartchart imageaudio
Place Labial Coronal Dorsal Radical Glottal
Manner Bila​bial Labio​dental Den​tal Alve​olar Post​alv. Retro​flex Pal​a​tal Ve​lar Uvu​lar Pha​ryn​geal Epi​glot​tal Glot​tal
Nasal m ɱ n ɳ ɲ̥ ɲ ŋ̊ ŋ ɴ
Plosive p b t d ʈ ɖ c ɟ k ɡ q ɢ ʡ ʔ
Fricative ɸ β f v θ ð s z ʃ ʒ ʂ ʐ ç ʝ x ɣ χ ʁ ħ ʕ ʜ ʢ h ɦ
Approximant ʋ ɹ ɻ j ɰ
Trill ʙ r ɽ͡r ʀ я *
Flap or tap ⱱ̟ ɾ ɽ ɢ̆ ʡ̯
Lateral Fric. ɬ ɮ ɭ˔̊ ʎ̥˔ ʟ̝̊ ʟ̝
Lateral Appr. l ɭ ʎ ʟ
Lateral flap ɺ ɺ̠ ʎ̯
Non-pulmonic consonants
Clicks ʘ ǀ ǃ ǂ ǁ
ʘ̃ ʘ̃ˀ ʘ͡q ʘ͡qʼ
Implosives ɓ ɗ ʄ ɠ ʛ
Ejectives ʈʼ
θʼ ɬʼ χʼ
tsʼ tɬʼ cʎ̝̥ʼ tʃʼ ʈʂʼ kxʼ kʟ̝̊ʼ
Affricates
p̪f b̪v ts dz ʈʂ ɖʐ
ɟʝ cʎ̥˔ kʟ̝̊
Co-articulated consonants
Fricatives ɕ ʑ ɧ
Approximants ʍ w ɥ ɫ
Stops k͡p ɡ͡b ŋ͡m
These tables contain phonetic symbols, which may not display correctly in some browsers. [Help]
Where symbols appear in pairs, left—right represent the voiceless—voiced consonants.
Shaded areas denote pulmonic articulations judged to be impossible.
* Symbol not defined in IPA.
Chart image
  • Pulmonics
  • Non-pulmonics
  • Affricates
  • Co-articulated
Vowels
Front Near-​front Central Near-​back Back
Close
i yɨ ʉɯ uɪ ʏɪ̈ ʊ̈ʊe øɘ ɵɤ o ø̞ əɤ̞ ɛ œɜ ɞʌ ɔæ ɐa ɶäɑ ɒ
Near-close
Close-mid
Mid
Open-mid
Near-open
Open
Vowels: IPA help • chartchart with audio
The Letter "R"
General
Pronunciations
Variations

Categories:

 

The above information uses material from Wikipedia and is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License.
Some facts may not have been fully verified for accuracy. [Disclaimers]
This page was last archived by our server on Wed Apr 25 11:31:04 2012.
Displaying this page or its contents does not use any Wikimedia Foundation's resources.
The owners of this site proudly support the Wikimedia Foundation.