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Postalveolar consonant
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Postalveolar consonants are consonants articulated with the tongue near or touching the back of the alveolar ridge, placing them a bit further back in the mouth than the alveolar consonants, which are at the ridge itself, but not as far back as the hard palate (the place of articulation for palatal consonants).
Among the fricatives and affricates, a subtype called palato-alveolar consonants (see below) are shown with examples in the table. The alveolo-palatal and retroflex consonants are also postalveolar in their point of articulation, but they are given separate columns in the IPA chart, and illustrated with examples in their own articles.
The palato-alveolar sibilants and postalveolar clicks identified by the International Phonetic Alphabet are:
Types of postalveolar fricatives and affricates
The difference between palato-alveolar, alveolo-palatal, retroflex, and several other articulations is in the shape of the tongue rather than the location of the contact with the roof of the mouth. All are postalveolar in that sense.
One variable in tongue shape is whether the contact occurs with the very tip of the tongue (an "apical" articulation with the surface just above the tip, called the blade of the tongue (a "laminal" articulation or with the underside of the tip (a "sub-apical" articulation). Laminal articulations are often palatal, but may have postalveolar allophones.
A second variable is the amount of raising of the tongue behind this point of contact, which amounts to a degree of palatalization. From least to most palatalized, the attested possibilities are flat bunched-up or domed palato-alveolar and alveolo-palatal Of course, these possibilities may all be voiced as well:
There is an additional postalveolar articulation found in Circassian languages such as Ubyx: the tip of the tongue rests against the lower teeth so that there is no sublingual cavity. Ladefoged has called this a "closed laminal postalveolar" articulation; Catford describes the fricatives as "hissing-hushing" sounds, and transcribes them as (note: this is not IPA notation). Presumably this "closed" articulation may be combined with the other two as a third variable, but this is not attested.
The attested possibilities, with exemplar languages, are as follows. Note that the IPA diacritics are simplified; some articulations would require two diacritics to be fully specified, but only one is used in order to keep the results legible without the need for OpenType IPA fonts. Also, Ladefoged has resurrected an obsolete IPA symbol, the under dot, to indicate apical postalveolar (normally included in the category of retroflex consonants), and that notation is used here. (Note that the notation is sometimes reversed; either may also be called 'retroflex' and written .)
| IPA | Place of articulation | Exemplifying languages |
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| | laminal flat postalveolar (laminal retroflex) | Mandarin sh, zh, ch, Polish sz, rz, cz, z | | | apical postalveolar (apical retroflex) | Ubyx, Toda | | | domed postalveolar (palato-alveolar) | English sh, zh (may be either laminal or apical) | | | laminal domed postalveolar | Toda | | | laminal palatalized postalveolar (alveolo-palatal) | Mandarin q, j, x, Polish c, s, z, dz, Ubyx | | | laminal closed postalveolar | Ubyx | | | sub-apical postalveolar or palatal (sub-apical retroflex) | Toda |
Other postalveolars
Some languages which distinguish "dental" vs. "alveolar" stops have something closer to prealveolar and postalveolar. Such is the case for Malayalam speakers who trill both of that language's rhotics: vs. . Since these are trills and therefore both apical, the latter is usually termed retroflex.
However, in some non-standard forms of Malayalam, there is a laminal postalveolar nasal that contrasts with apical alveolar, palatal, and subapical retroflex nasals: .
See also
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