The voiced epiglottal or pharyngeal tap or flap is not known to exist as a phoneme in any language. However, it exists as the intervocalic voiced allophone of the otherwise voiceless epiglottal stop /ʡ/ of Dahalo[1] and perhaps of other languages. It may also exist in Iraqi Arabic, where the consonant 'ayn is too short to be an epiglottal stop, but has too much of a burst to be a fricative or approximant.[2]

Voiced epiglottal tap
ʡ̆
ʢ̆
Audio sample

There is no dedicated symbol for this sound in the IPA, but it can be transcribed by adding an "extra short" diacritic to the symbol for the stop, ⟨ʡ̆⟩.

Features

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Occurrence

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Language Word IPA Meaning Notes
Dahalo[1] [nd̠oːʡ̆o] [Nd̠ódoʡo] 'mud' Intervocalic allophone of the voiceless epiglottal stop /ʡ/, may be an approximant instead.[1]

Notes

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  1. ^ a b c Maddieson et al. (1993), p. 33.
  2. ^ Esling (2010), p. 700.

References

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  • Esling, John (2010), "Phonetic Notation", in Hardcastle, William J.; Laver, John; Gibbon, Fiona E. (eds.), The Handbook of Phonetic Sciences (2nd ed.), Wiley-Blackwell, ISBN 978-1-4051-4590-9
  • Maddieson, Ian; Spajić, Siniša; Sands, Bonny; Ladefoged, Peter (1993), "Phonetic structures of Dahalo", in Maddieson, Ian (ed.), UCLA working papers in phonetics: Fieldwork studies of targeted languages, vol. 84, Los Angeles: The UCLA Phonetics Laboratory Group, pp. 25–65