Palatal lateral flap

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The palatal lateral flap is a rare type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. There is no symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound. However, the symbol for a palatal lateral approximant may be used with a breve as an ad hoc symbol, ʎ̆.

[edit] Features

Features of the alveolar lateral flap:

• Its manner of articulation is flap, which means it is produced with a single contraction of the muscles so that one articulator is thrown against another.
• Its place of articulation is palatal, which means it is articulated with the middle or back part of the tongue raised against the hard palate.
• Its phonation type is voiced, which means the vocal cords are vibrating during the articulation.
• It is an oral consonant, which means air is allowed to escape through the mouth.
• It is a lateral consonant, which means it is produced by allowing the airstream to flow over the sides of the tongue, rather than the middle of the tongue.
• The airstream mechanism is pulmonic egressive, which means it is articulated by pushing air out of the lungs and through the vocal tract, rather than from the glottis or the mouth.

[edit] Found in

The Iwaidja and Ilgar languages of Australia have a palatal lateral flap as well as alveolar and retroflex lateral flaps. However, the palatal flap has not been shown to be phonemic; it may instead be an underlying sequence /ɺj/. An example from Ilgar is the personal name [miʎ̆argu].