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The alveolar tap or flap is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents dental, alveolar, and postalveolar flaps is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is 4.
Many linguists use the terms tap and flap indiscriminately. Peter Ladefoged proposed for a while that it may 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 and dentals are typically called taps, and other articulations flaps. No language contrasts a tap and a flap at the same place of articulation.
Features
Features of the alveolar flap/tap:
- Its manner of articulation is tap or flap, which means it is produced with a single contraction of the muscles so that one articulator briefly strikes the other.
- Its place of articulation is alveolar which means it is articulated with the tip of the tongue against the alveolar ridge.
- 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 central consonant, which means it is produced by allowing the airstream to flow over the middle of the tongue, rather than the sides.
- 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.
In English
The alveolar flap is not a phoneme of English, but it occurs as an allophone of and [d (the voiceless alveolar plosive and voiced alveolar plosive) in North American English and sometimes in Australian and New Zealand English when they occur in unstressed syllables, like in the words rider ( or ). See flapping.
Other languages
Spanish and Catalan
The alveolar tap is the single orthographic 'r' between vowels, as in pero ("but"), but not in perro ("dog"), where it is an alveolar trill. (Initial orthographic r, as in rana ("frog"), however, and (for many people) the final r as in ir ("to go"), are also trills). In Catalan the spelling is the same.Swedish
The alveolar tap sometimes occurs in Central Swedish dialects as an allophone of /r/.See also
Stimmhafter alveolarer Tap | Consonne battue alvéolaire voisée | 歯茎はじき音 | Vibrante simples alveolar | Alveolar flapp
"Alveolar tap"