Dental, alveolar and postalveolar trills

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 Albanian, Spanish, Cypriot Greek, and a number of Armenian and Portuguese dialects, which treat them as distinct phonemes.

People with ankyloglossia may find it exceptionally difficult to articulate this consonant due to the limited mobility of their tongues.^[1][2]

Voiced alveolar trill

Voiced alveolar trill
r
IPA number	122
Encoding
Entity (decimal)	r
Unicode (hex)	U+0072
X-SAMPA	r
Kirshenbaum	r
Braille
Sound
·

Most commonly, the alveolar trill is voiced.

Features

Features of the alveolar trill:

• Its manner of articulation is trill, which means it is produced by directing air over the articulator so that it vibrates.
• Its place of articulation is dental, alveolar or post-alveolar, which means it is articulated behind upper front teeth, at the alveolar ridge or behind the alveolar ridge. It is most often apical, which means that it is pronounced with the tip of the tongue.^[3]
• Its phonation is voiced, which means the vocal cords vibrate during the articulation.
• It is an oral consonant, which means air is allowed to escape through the mouth only.
• It is a central consonant, which means it is produced by directing the airstream along the center of the tongue, rather than to the sides.
• The airstream mechanism is pulmonic, which means it is articulated by pushing air solely with the lungs and diaphragm, as in most sounds.

Occurrence

Dental

Alveolar

Language		Word	IPA	Meaning	Notes
Afrikaans	Standard[7]	rooi	[roːi̯]	'red'	May be a tap [ɾ] instead.[7] See Afrikaans phonology
Armenian	Eastern[8]	ռումբ		'cannonball'
Danish	Few speakers of the Jutlandic dialect[9]				Corresponds to much more back [ʁ ~ ʕ] in standard Danish. See Danish phonology
English	Scottish	curd	[kʌrd]	'curd'	Only some dialects. Corresponds to [ɾ ~ ɹ] in others. See English phonology
Greek	Standard[10]	άρτος	[ˈartos]	'Communion bread'	Allophone of /r/. Usual in clusters, otherwise a tap or an approximant.[10] See Modern Greek phonology
	Cypriot[11][12]	βορράς	[voˈrːas]	'north'	Contrasts with /ɾ/.
Italian[13]		terra	[ˈt̪ɛrːä]	'earth'	See Italian phonology
Kele[14]		[ⁿrikei]		'leg'
Kyrgyz[15]		ыр	[ɯr]	'song'
Latvian[16]		rags	[räks̪]	'horn'	See Latvian phonology
Polish[17]		krok		'step'	Contrasts with /r̝/ for few speakers. See Polish phonology
Serbo-Croatian[18]		рт / rt	[r̩t]	'cape'	May be syllabic. See Serbo-Croatian phonology
Slovak[19]		krk	[kr̩k]	'neck'	May be a tap, particularly when not syllabic.
Slovene[20]		riž	[ríːʃ]	'rice'	Also described as tap [ɾ],[21] and variable between trill [r] and tap [ɾ].[22] See Slovene phonology
Spanish[23]		perro	[ˈpe̞ro̞]	'dog'	Contrasts with /ɾ/. See Spanish phonology
Titan[14]		[ⁿrakeiʔin]		'girls'
Yiddish	Standard[24]	בריק	[brɪk]	'bridge'	More commonly a flap [ɾ]; can be uvular [ʀ̆ ~ ʀ] instead.[24] See Yiddish phonology
Zapotec	Tilquiapan[25]	r-ree	[rɘˀɘ]	'go out (habitually)'	Underlyingly two sequences of /ɾ/.

Post-alveolar

Variable

Voiced alveolar fricative trill

In Czech there are two contrasting alveolar trills. Besides the typical apical trill, written r, there is another, laminal trill, written ř, in words such as rybáři [ˈrɪbaːr̝ɪ] 'fishermen' and the common surname Dvořák. Its manner of articulation is similar to [r], though more laminal and the body of the tongue is raised. It is thus partially fricative, with the frication sounding rather like [ʒ] though not so retracted. In the IPA it is typically written as ⟨r⟩ plus the raising diacritic, ⟨r̝⟩, though it has also been written as laminal ⟨r̻⟩.^[29] Non-native speakers may pronounce it as [rʐ] or [rʒ]. (Before the 1989 IPA Kiel Convention, it had a dedicated symbol ⟨ɼ⟩). The Kobon language of Papua New Guinea also has a fricative trill, although the degree of frication is variable.

Features

Features of the voiced alveolar fricative trill:

• Its manner of articulation is fricative trill, which means it is a non-sibilant fricative and a trill pronounced simultaneously.
• Its place of articulation is laminal alveolar, which means it is articulated with the blade of the tongue at the alveolar ridge,
• Its phonation is voiced, which means the vocal cords vibrate during the articulation.
• It is an oral consonant, which means air is allowed to escape through the mouth only.
• It is a central consonant, which means it is produced by directing the airstream along the center of the tongue, rather than to the sides.
• The airstream mechanism is pulmonic, which means it is articulated by pushing air solely with the lungs and diaphragm, as in most sounds.

Occurrence

See also

• Index of phonetics articles

References

Bibliography