Tap and flap consonants explained


Contrast with stops and trills

The main difference between a tap or flap and a stop is that in a tap/flap there is no buildup of air pressure behind the place of articulation and consequently no release burst. Otherwise a tap/flap is similar to a brief stop.

Taps and flaps also contrast with trills, where the airstream causes the articulator to vibrate. Trills may be realized as a single contact, like a tap or flap, but are variable, whereas a tap/flap is limited to a single contact. When a trill is brief and made with a single contact it is sometimes erroneously described as an (allophonic) tap/flap, but a true tap or flap is an active articulation whereas a trill is a passive articulation. That is, for a tap or flap the tongue makes an active gesture to contact the target place of articulation, whereas with a trill the contact is due to the vibration caused by the airstream rather than any active movement.

Tap vs. flap



For linguists who make the distinction, the alveolar tap is transcribed as a fish-hook ar, pronounced as /[ɾ]/, and the flap can be transcribed as a small capital dee, pronounced as /[ᴅ]/, which is not recognized by the IPA.[4] In IPA terms the retroflex flap pronounced as /[ɽ]/ symbol captures the initial retraction and subsequent forward movement of the tongue tip involved. Otherwise, alveolars are typically called taps, and other articulations are called flaps.

No language has been confirmed to contrast a tap and a flap at the same place of articulation. However, such a distinction has been claimed for Norwegian in which the alveolar apical tap pronounced as //ɾ// and the post-alveolar/retroflex apical flap pronounced as //ɽ// have the same place of articulation for some speakers.[5]

IPA symbols

The tap and flap consonants identified by the International Phonetic Alphabet are:

pronounced as /ɾ/alveolar tapNorth American Englishlatterpronounced as /[læɾɚ]/"latter"
pronounced as /ɺ/alveolar lateral flapVenda[vuɺa]"to open"
pronounced as /ɽ/retroflex flapWarlpiridupapronounced as /[ɽupa]/"windbreak"
pronounced as /ⱱ/labiodental flapKarangpronounced as /['''ⱱ'''ara]/"animal"

The Kiel Convention of the IPA recommended that for other taps and flaps, a homorganic consonant, such as a stop or trill, should be used with a breve diacritic:

However, the former could be mistaken for a short trill, and is more clearly transcribed (IPA|ɢ̆), whereas for a nasal tap the unambiguous transcription (IPA|ɾ̃) is generally used.

Types of taps and flaps

Attested tap and flap consonants[6]
Central oralpronounced as /ⱱ̟ (b̆, w̆)/pronounced as /ⱱ̥ (f̆) · (v̆)/pronounced as /ɾ̼/pronounced as /ɾ̪/pronounced as /ɾ̥ · ɾ/pronounced as /ɾ̠/pronounced as /ɽ̊ · ɽ/pronounced as /ɢ̆ (ʀ̆)/pronounced as /ʡ̮ (ʢ̮)/
Central nasalpronounced as /ⱱ̟̃ (m̆)/pronounced as /ɾ̪̃/pronounced as /ɾ̃ (n̆)/pronounced as /ɽ̃ (ɳ̆)/
Central fricativepronounced as /ɾ̞̊ ɾ̞/
Lateral oralpronounced as /ɺ̪/pronounced as /ɺ̥[7] · ɺ/pronounced as /ɺ̠/pronounced as /ɺ̣ (ɭ̆)/pronounced as /ʎ̮/pronounced as /ʟ̆/
Lateral nasal

Most of the alternative transcriptions in parentheses imply a tap rather than flap articulation, so for example the flap pronounced as /[ⱱ̟]/ and the tapped stop pronounced as /[b̆]/ are arguably distinct, as are flapped pronounced as /[ɽ̃]/ and tapped pronounced as /[ɳ̆]/.

Alveolar taps and flaps

See main article: Dental and alveolar taps and flaps. Spanish features a good illustration of an alveolar tap, contrasting it with a trill: pero pronounced as //ˈpeɾo// "but" vs. perro pronounced as //ˈpero// "dog". Among the Germanic languages, this allophone occurs in American and Australian English and in Northern Low Saxon. In American and Australian English it tends to be an allophone of intervocalic /t/ (as in "butter," "later," "fattest" and "total") – see Flapping. In a number of Low Saxon dialects it occurs as an allophone of intervocalic /d/ or /t/; e.g. den /beeden/ → pronounced as /[ˈbeːɾn]/ 'to pray', 'to request', gah to Bedde! /gaa tou bede/ → pronounced as /[ˌɡɑːtoʊˈbeɾe]/ 'go to bed!', Water /vaater/ → pronounced as /[ˈvɑːɾɜ]/ 'water', Vadder /fater/ → pronounced as /[ˈfaɾɜ]/ 'father'. (In some dialects this has resulted in reanalysis and a shift to /r/; thus bären pronounced as /[ˈbeːrn]/, to Berre pronounced as /[toʊˈbere]/, Warer pronounced as /[ˈvɑːrɜ]/, Varrer pronounced as /[ˈfarɜ]/.) Occurrence varies; in some Low Saxon dialects it affects both /t/ and /d/, while in others it affects only /d/. Other languages with this are Portuguese, Korean, and Austronesian languages with /r/.

In Galician, Portuguese and Sardinian, a flap often appears instead of a former pronounced as /link/. This is part of a wider phenomenon called rhotacism.

Retroflex flaps

Most Indic and Dravidian languages have retroflex flaps. In Hindi there are three, a simple retroflex flap as in pronounced as /[bɐɽɑː]/ big, a murmured retroflex flap as in pronounced as /[koɽʱiː]/ leper, and a retroflex nasal flap in the Hindicized pronunciation of Sanskrit pronounced as /[mɐɽ̃i]/ ruby. Some of these may be allophonic.


Lateral taps and flaps

Many of the languages of Africa, Asia, and the Pacific that do not distinguish [r] from l may have a lateral flap. However, it is also possible that many of these languages do not have a lateral–central contrast at all, so that even a consistently neutral articulation may be perceived as sometimes lateral pronounced as /[ɺ]/ or pronounced as /[l]/, sometimes central pronounced as /[ɾ]/. This has been suggested to be the case for Japanese, for example.

The Iwaidja language of Australia has both alveolar and retroflex lateral flaps. These contrast with lateral approximants at the same positions, as well as a retroflex tap pronounced as /[ɽ]/, alveolar tap pronounced as /[ɾ]/, and retroflex approximant pronounced as /[ɻ]/. However, the flapped, or tapped, laterals in Iwaidja are distinct from 'lateral flaps' as represented by the corresponding IPA symbols (see below). These phones consist of a flap component followed by a lateral component, whereas In Iwaidja the opposite is the case. For this reason, current IPA transcriptions of these sounds by linguists working on the language consist of an alveolar lateral followed by a superscript alveolar tap and a retroflex lateral followed by a superscript retroflex tap.

A velar lateral tap may exist as an allophone in a few languages of New Guinea, according to Peter Ladefoged and Ian Maddieson.

Non-coronal flaps


for this sound. (Supported by some fonts: pronounced as /[ⱱ]/.) Previously, it had been transcribed with the use of the breve diacritic, pronounced as /[v̆]/, or other ad hoc symbols.

Other taps or flaps are much less common. They include an epiglottal tap; a bilabial flap in Banda, which may be an allophone of the labiodental flap; and a velar lateral tap as an allophone in Kanite and Melpa. These are often transcribed with the breve diacritic, as pronounced as /[w̆, ʟ̆]/. Note here that, like a velar trill, a central velar flap or tap is not possible because the tongue and soft palate cannot move together easily enough to produce a sound.

If other flaps are found, the breve diacritic could be used to represent them, but would more properly be combined with the symbol for the corresponding voiced stop. A palatal or uvular tap or flap, which unlike a velar tap is believed to be articulatorily possible, could be represented this way (by pronounced as /


Nasal taps and flaps

Nasalized consonants include taps and flaps, although these are rarely phonemic. Many West African languages have a nasal flap pronounced as /[ɾ̃]/ (or pronounced as /[n̆]/) as an allophone of pronounced as //ɾ// before a nasal vowel; Pashto, however, has a phonemic nasal retroflex lateral flap.

Tapped fricatives

Voiced and voiceless tapped alveolar fricatives have been reported from a few languages. Flapped fricatives are possible but do not seem to be used.[9] See voiced alveolar tapped fricative, voiceless alveolar tapped fricative.

See also

External links

pronounced as /navigation/

Notes and References

  6. Bickford & Floyd (2006) Articulatory Phonetics, Table 25.1, augmented by sources at the articles on individual consonants.
  7. Phillips, Donald (1976) "Wahgi phonology and morphology". Pacific Linguistics B, issue 36
  8. The IPA has recommended (ʀ̆), but that could be confused with an extra-short (e.g. one-contact) trill. (ɢ̆) is less ambiguous, because articulatorily taps are extra-short stops.
  9. Laver (1994) Principles of Phonetics, p. 263.