Voiced uvular tap and flap

In the context of phonetics, a voiced uvular tap or flap is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. There is no dedicated symbol for this sound in the IPA. It can specified by adding a 'short' diacritic to the letter for the uvular plosive, ⟨ɢ̆⟩, but normally it is covered by the unmodified letter for the uvular trill, ⟨ʀ⟩, since the two have never been reported to contrast and a uvular tap or flap is not known to exist as a phoneme in any language.

In some languages a uvular tap is reported is said to vary allophonically with a uvular trill, and is most likely a single-contact trill [ʀ̆] rather than an actual tap or flap [ɢ̆] in these languages.

Features

Features of a voiced uvular tap or 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 uvular, which means it is articulated with the back of the tongue (the dorsum) at the uvula.
• Its phonation is voiced, which means the vocal cords vibrate during the articulation.
• It is an oral consonant, which means that air is not allowed to escape through the nose.
• It is a median consonant, which means it is produced by directing the airstream down the midline of the tongue, rather than to the sides.
• Its airstream mechanism is pulmonic, which means it is articulated by pushing air only with the intercostal muscles and abdominal muscles, as in most sounds.

Occurrence

Notes