The voiceless alveolar lateral flap is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ⟨ɺ̥⟩, a fusion of a rotated lowercase letter ⟨r⟩ with a letter ⟨l⟩ and a voiceless diacritic.
Features
Features of the voiceless alveolar lateral flap:
Its manner of articulation is tap or flap, which means it is produced with a single contraction of the muscles so that one articulator (usually the tongue) is thrown against another.
Its place of articulation is alveolar, which means it is articulated with either the tip or the blade of the tongue at the alveolar ridge, termed respectively apical and laminal.
Its phonation is voiceless, which means it is produced without vibrations of the vocal cords. In some languages the vocal cords are actively separated, so it is always voiceless; in others the cords are lax, so that it may take on the voicing of adjacent sounds.
It is an oral consonant, which means air is allowed to escape through the mouth only.
It is a lateral consonant, which means it is produced by directing the airstream over the sides of the tongue, rather than down the middle.
The airstream mechanism is pulmonic, which means it is articulated by pushing air solely with the intercostal muscles and abdominal muscles, as in most sounds.
^Mosonyi, Emilio Esteban; Mosonyi, Jorge C.; Largo, Águeda (2000). Yavitero. In Mosonyi, Esteban Emilio and Jorge Carlos Mosonyi (eds.), Manual de Lenguas Indígenas de Venezuela: Caracas: Fundación Bigott. pp. 594–651.
References
Souza, Erick Marcelo Lima de (2012). Estudo fonológico da Língua Baniwa-Kuripako (Master's dissertation) (in Brazilian Portuguese). University of Campinas. doi:10.47749/T/UNICAMP.2012.898354. hdl:20.500.12733/1619268.
