lateral

Laterals are "L"-like consonants pronounced with an occlusion made somewhere along the axis of the tongue, while air from the lungs escapes at one side or both sides of the tongue.

Most commonly the tip of the tongue makes contact with the upper teeth (see dental consonant) or the upper gum (the alveolar ridge) just behind the teeth (see alveolar consonant). The most common laterals are approximants and belong to the class of liquids.

Laterals in various languages

English has one lateral phoneme: the lateral approximant /l/, which in many accents has two allophones. One, found before vowels as in lady or fly, is called clear l, pronounced as the alveolar lateral approximant [l] with a "neutral" position of the body of the tongue. The other variant, so-called dark l found before consonants or word-finally, as in bold or tell, is pronounced as the velarized alveolar lateral approximant [ɫ] with the tongue assuming a spoon-like shape with its back part raised, which gives the sound a [w]- or [ʟ]-like resonance. In some languages, like Albanian, those two sounds are different phonemes. East Slavic languages contrast [ɫ] and [lʲ] but do not have a plain [l].

In many British accents (e.g. London English), dark [ɫ] may undergo vocalization through the reduction and loss of contact between the tip of the tongue and the alveolar ridge, becoming a rounded back vowel or glide. This process turns tell into something like [tɛɰ]. A similar process happened during the development of many languages, including Brazilian Portuguese, Old French, and Polish, in all three of these resulting in [w], whence Modern French sauce as compared with Spanish salsa, or Polish Wisła (pronounced [viswa]) as compared with English Vistula.

In central and Venice dialects of Vèneto intervocalic /l/ has turned into a semivocalic [e], so that the written word la bala is pronounced [abae̯a].

Many aboriginal Australian languages have a series of three or four lateral approximants, as do various dialects of Irish. Rarer lateral consonants include the retroflex laterals that can be found in most Indic languages and in some Swedish dialects; and the sound of Welsh ll, the voiceless alveolar lateral fricative /ɬ/ that is also found in Zulu and many Semitic and Native American languages. In Adyghe and some Athapaskan languages like Hän both voiceless and voiced alveolar lateral fricative occur, but there is no approximant. Many of these languages also have lateral affricates. Some languages have palatal or velar voiceless lateral fricatives or affricates, such as Dahalo and Zulu but the IPA has no symbols for these sounds. However, appropriate symbols are easy to make by adding a lateral-fricative belt to the symbol for the corresponding lateral approximant (see below). Failing that, a devoicing diacritic is added to the approximant.

Nearly all languages with such lateral obstruents also have the approximant. However, there are a number of exceptions, many of them located in the Pacific Northwest area. For example, Tlingit has /tɬ, tɬʰ, tɬʼ, ɬ, ɬʼ/ but no /l/.^[1] Other examples from the same area include Nuu-chah-nulth and Kutenai, and elsewhere, Chukchi and Kabardian.

Tibetan has a voiceless lateral approximant, usually romanized as lh, as in the name Lhasa.

Pashto has retroflex lateral flap.^{[citation needed]}

There are a large number of lateral click consonants; seventeen occur in !Xóõ.

Lateral trills are possible (but occur in no known language). It is also possible to articulate Uvular laterals, but they are also too hard to pronounce to occur as a phoneme in any known language.

List of laterals

Approximants

• Alveolar lateral approximant [l]
• Velarized alveolar lateral approximant [ɫ]
• Retroflex lateral approximant [ɭ]
• Palatal lateral approximant [ʎ]
• Velar lateral approximant [ʟ]

Fricatives

• Voiceless alveolar lateral fricative [ɬ] (in Navajo, Welsh)
• Voiced alveolar lateral fricative [ɮ](in Mongolian, Tigak)
• Voiceless retroflex lateral fricative [ɬ̢] (or []) (in Toda)
• Voiceless palatal lateral fricative [ʎ̥˔] (or []) (in Dahalo)
• Voiceless velar lateral fricative [ʟ̝̊] (or []) (in Archi)

Affricates

• Voiceless alveolar lateral affricate [tɬ] (in Navajo)
• Ejective alveolar lateral affricate [tɬʼ] (in Navajo)
• Voiced alveolar lateral affricate [dɮ]
• Voiceless palatal lateral affricate [cʎ̥] (or [c]) (in Hadza)
• Ejective palatal lateral affricate [cʎ̥ʼ] (or [cʼ]) (in Dahalo, Hadza)
• Voiced velar lateral affricate [ɡʟ̝] (in Laghuu)
• Voiceless velar lateral affricate [kʟ̝̊] (or [k]) (in Laghuu)
• Ejective velar lateral affricate [kʟ̝̊ʼ] (or [kʼ]) (in Archi, G|wi, Zulu)

Flaps

• Alveolar lateral flap [ɺ] (in Japanese, Wayuu)
• Retroflex lateral flap [ɺ̢] (or []) (in Pashto, Iwaidja)
• Palatal lateral flap [ʎ̯] (in Iwaidja)

Clicks

• Dental lateral clicks [ǁ̪], [^ɡǁ̪], [^ŋǁ̪], etc. (in Juu)
• Alveolar lateral clicks [ǁ], [^ɡǁ], [^ŋǁ], etc. (in Khoisan and Bantu)
• Palatal lateral clicks "[ǂǂ]", "[^ɡǂǂ]", "[^ŋǂǂ]", etc. (in Juu)

Other symbols

The symbol for the voiceless alveolar lateral fricative [ɬ] forms the basis for the occasional ad hoc symbols for other voiceless lateral fricatives—retroflex, palatal, and velar (the latter two only known from affricates):

The symbol for the alveolar lateral flap [ɺ] is the basis for the expected symbol for the retroflex lateral flap:

Such symbols are rare, but are becoming more common now that font-editing software has become accessible. Note however that they are not sanctioned by the IPA, and as of Unicode 5.2, there are no Unicode code points assigned to them either, except that “ɭ with belt” and “ɺ with retroflex hook” can be represented as composite characters (ɬ or ɺ, followed by U+0322 COMBINING RETROFLEX HOOK BELOW). Also note that although the Charis SIL and Doulos SIL fonts have those glyphs in the Private Use Area (PUA), PUA code points should not be used for data exchange.

The symbol for the voiceless retroflex lateral fricative is planned to be included in Unicode 6.0 as U+A78E LATIN SMALL LETTER L WITH RETROFLEX HOOK AND BELT, with the annotation, voiceless lateral retroflex fricative, used to transcribe Toda.^[2][3] Everson Mono already has a glyph for this tentative code point.

Notes

See also

• Lateral release (phonetics)
• List of phonetics topics

References

• Ladefoged, Peter; Ian Maddieson (1996). The Sounds of the World's Languages. Oxford: Blackwell. ISBN 0-631-19814-8.