Encyclopedia
In phonetics, a
flap or
tap is a type of consonantal sound, which is produced with a single contraction of the muscles so that one articulator is thrown against another.
Contrast with stops and trills
The main difference between a flap and a stop consonant is that in a flap, there is no buildup of air pressure behind the
place of articulation, and consequently no release burst. Otherwise a flap is similar to a brief stop.
Flaps also contrast with trills, where the airstream causes the articulator to vibrate. Trills may be realized as a single contact, like a flap, but are variable, whereas a flap is limited to a single contact.
Tap vs. flap
Many linguists use the terms
tap and
flap indiscriminantly. Peter Ladefoged proposed for a while that it might be useful to distinguish between them. However, his usage has been inconsistent, contradicting itself even between different editions of the same text. The last proposed distinction was that a tap strikes its point of contact directly, as a very brief plosive, whereas a flap strikes the point of contact tangentially: "Flaps are most typically made by retracting the tongue tip behind the alveolar ridge and moving it forward so that it strikes the ridge in passing." However, he no longer feels this is a useful distinction to make, and prefers to use the word
flap in all cases. For linguists that do make the distinction, the coronal tap is transcribed as a fish-hook ar, , while the flap is transcribed as a small capital dee, , which is not recognized by the IPA. Otherwise alveolars are typically called
taps, and other articulations
flaps. No language contrasts a tap and a flap at the same place of articulation.
IPA symbols
The flap and tap consonants identified by the
International Phonetic Alphabet are:
| IPA | Description | Example |
|---|
| Language | Orthography | IPA | Meaning |
| | alveolar tap | North American English | latter | | "latter" |
| | alveolar lateral flap | Japanese | ???? | | "ramen" |
| | retroflex flap | Warlpiri | dupa | | "windbreak" |
| | labiodental flap | Karang | | | "animal" |
Types of flaps
Alveolar flaps
Spanish features a good illustration of an alveolar flap, contrasting it with a trill:
pero "but" vs.
perro "dog". Among the
Germanic languages, this allophone occurs in American English and in Northern
Low Saxon . In American English it tends to be an allophone of intervocalic /t/ . In a number of Low Saxon dialects it occurs as an allophone of intervocalic /d/ or /t/; e.g.
bäden /beeden/ ? [] ‘to pray’, ‘to request’,
gah to Bedde! /gaa tou bede/ ? [] ‘go to bed!’,
Water /vaater/ ? [] ‘water’,
Vatter /fater/ ? [] ‘father’. Occurrence varies; in some Low Saxon dialects it affects both /t/ and /d/, while in others it affects only /d/.
Retroflex flaps
Most Indic and Dravidian languages have retroflex flaps. In
Hindi there are three, a simple retroflex flap as in
big, a murmured retroflex flap as in
leper, and a retroflex nasal flap in the Hindicized pronunciation of
Sanskrit ruby. Some of these may be allophonic.
Lateral flaps
Lateral flaps may be more common than much of the literature would lead one to believe. Many of the languages of Africa, Asia, and the Pacific that don't distinguish
r from
l may have a lateral flap, but this is generally missed by European linguists, who often aren't familiar with the sound.
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 or , sometimes central . This has been suggested to be the case for
Japanese, for example.
The Iwaidja language of Australia has both alveolar and
retroflex lateral flaps, and perhaps a
palatal lateral flap as well. These contrast with
lateral approximants at the same positions, as well as a central retroflex flap , alveolar trill , and retroflex approximant .
The symbol for the alveolar lateral flap is the basis for the expected symbol for the
retroflex lateral flap,
Symbols such as these are uncommon, but are becoming more frequent now that font-editing software has become accessible. Note however that besides not being sanctioned by the IPA, there are no
Unicode values for them. However, the retroflex lateral flap may be written as a digraph with the right-tail diacritic, .
Non-rhotic flaps
The only common non-rhotic flap is the
labiodental flap, found throughout central Africa in languages such as Margi. In 2005, the IPA adopted a right-hook vee,
for this sound. Previously, it had been transcribed with the use of the breve diacritic, , or other
ad hoc symbols.
Other flaps are much less common. They include a
bilabial flap in Banda, which may be an allophone of the labiodental flap, and a velar lateral flap as an allophone in Kanite and Melpa. These are often transcribed with the breve diacritic, as , but other possibilities sometimes seen include the new labiodental flap symbol plus an advanced diacritic for the bilabial, and a monogram for the velar.
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 plosive, as in the hypothetical palatal and uvular flaps .
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