The Latin-derived word retroflex means "bent back"; some retroflex consonants are pronounced with the tongue fully curled back so that articulation involves the underside of the tongue tip (subapical). These sounds are sometimes described as "true" retroflex consonants. However, retroflexes are commonly taken to include other consonants having a similar place of articulation without such extreme curling of the tongue; these may be articulated with the tongue tip (apical) or the tongue blade (laminal).
Types
Retroflex consonants, like other coronal consonants, come in several varieties, depending on the shape of the tongue. The tongue may be either flat or concave, or even with the tip curled back. The point of contact on the tongue may be with the tip (apical), with the blade (laminal), or with the underside of the tongue (subapical). The point of contact on the roof of the mouth may be with the alveolar ridge (alveolar), the area behind the alveolar ridge (postalveolar), or the hard palate (palatal). Finally, both sibilant (fricative or affricate) and nonsibilant (stop, nasal, lateral, rhotic) consonants can have a retroflex articulation.
The greatest variety of combinations occurs with sibilants, because for them, small changes in tongue shape and position cause significant changes in the resulting sound. Retroflex sounds generally have a duller, lower-pitched sound than other alveolar or postalveolar consonants, especially the groovedalveolar sibilants. The farther back the point of contact with the roof of the mouth, the more concave is the shape of the tongue, and the duller (lower pitched) is the sound, with subapical consonants being the most extreme.
The main combinations normally observed are:
Laminal post-alveolar, with a flat tongue. These occur, for example, in Polishcz, sz, ż (rz), dż.
Subapical palatal, with a highly concave tongue, which occur particularly in the Dravidian languages and some Indo-Aryan languages. They are the dullest and lowest-pitched type and, after a vowel, often add strong r-coloring to the vowel and sound as if an American Englishr occurred between the vowel and consonant. They are not a place of articulation, as the IPA chart implies, but a shape of the tongue analogous to laminal and apical.[3]
Subapical sounds are sometimes called "true retroflex" because of the curled-back shape of the tongue, and the other sounds sometimes go by other names. For example, Ladefoged and Maddieson[4] prefer to call the laminal post-alveolar sounds "flat post-alveolar".
Other sounds
Retroflex sounds must be distinguished from other consonants made in the same parts of the mouth:
The first three types of sounds above have a convex tongue shape, which gives them an additional secondary articulation of palatalization. The last type has a groove running down the center line of the tongue, which gives it a strong hissing quality. The retroflex sounds, however, have a flat or concave shape, with no associated palatalization, and no groove running down the tongue. The term "retroflex", in fact, literally means "bent back" (concave), although consonants with a flat tongue shape are commonly considered retroflex as well.
The velar bunched approximant found in northern varieties of Dutch and some varieties of American English is acoustically similar to the retroflex approximant. It is articulated with the body of the tongue bunched up at the velum.
Some linguists restrict these symbols for consonants with subapical palatal articulation, in which the tongue is curled back and contacts the hard palate, and use the alveolar symbols with the obsolete IPA underdot symbol for an apical post-alveolar articulation: ⟨ṭ, ḍ, ṇ, ṣ, ẓ, ḷ, ɾ̣, ɹ̣⟩, and use ⟨ᶘ, ᶚ⟩ for laminal retroflex, as in Polish and Russian.[11] The latter are also often transcribed with a retraction diacritic, as ⟨s̠⟩. Otherwise they are typically but inaccurately transcribed as if they were palato-alveolar, as ⟨ʃ⟩.
Consonants with more forward articulation, in which the tongue touches the alveolar or postalveolar region rather than the hard palate, can be indicated with the retracted diacritic (minus sign below). This occurs especially for [s̠ẕ]; other sounds indicated this way, such as ⟨ṉ ḻ ḏ⟩, tend to refer to alveolo-palatal rather than retroflex consonants.
Occurrence
Although data are not precise, about 20 percent of the world's languages contain retroflex consonants of one sort or another.[12] About half of these possess only retroflex continuants, with most of the rest having both stops and continuants.
Retroflex consonants are largely absent from indigenous languages of the Americas with the exception of the extreme south of South America, an area in the Southwestern United States as in Hopi and O'odham, and in Alaska and the Yukon Territory as in the Athabaskan languagesGwich’in and Hän. In African languages retroflex consonants are also rare but reportedly occur in a few Nilo-Saharan languages, as well as in the Bantu languageMakhuwa and some other varieties. In southwest Ethiopia, phonemically distinctive retroflex consonants are found in Bench and Sheko, two contiguous, but not closely related, Omotic languages.[13]
There are several retroflex consonants that are implied by the International Phonetic Association. In their Handbook, they give the example of [ᶑ], a retroflex implosive, but when they requested an expansion of coverage of the International Phonetic Alphabet by Unicode in 2020, they supported the addition superscript variants of not just [ᶑ] but of the retroflex lateral fricatives [ꞎ] and [𝼅], of the retroflex lateral flap [𝼈], and of the retroflex click release [𝼊]. (See Latin Extended-F.) The lateral fricatives are explicitly provided for by extIPA.
Most languages with retroflex sounds typically have only one retroflex sound with a given manner of articulation[citation needed]. An exception, however, is the Toda language, with a two-way distinction among retroflex sibilants between apical (post)alveolar and subapical palatal.
^UCLA Working Papers in Phonetics, vol. 53–55, p. 212.
^Novák, Ľubomír (2013). "Other Eastern Iranian Languages". Problem of Archaism and Innovation in the Eastern Iranian Languages (PhD). Prague: Charles University. p. 59.
^Pitkin, Harvey (1984). Wintu grammar. University of California publications in linguistics (Vol. 94). Berkeley: University of California Press. p. 34. ISBN0-520-09612-6.
^Gurubasave Gowda, K.S. (1972). Ao-Naga Phonetic Reader (Thesis). Mysore: Central Institute of Indian Languages.
^Ian Maddieson (with a chapter contributed by Sandra Ferrari Disner); Patterns of sounds; Cambridge University Press, 1984. ISBN0-521-26536-3
^Breeze, Mary (1988). Bechhaus-Gerst, Marianne; Serzisko, Fritz (eds.). "Phonological features of Gimira and Dizi". Cushitic - Omotic: papers from the International Symposium on Cushitic and Omotic languages, Cologne, January 6–9, 1986. Hamburg: Helmut Buske Verlag: 473–487. ISBN9783871188909. OL8987799M.
^Scott, Abigail; Miller, Amanda; Namaseb, Levi; Sands, Bonny; Shah, Sheena (June 2, 2010). "Retroflex Clicks in Two Dialects of ǃXung". University of Botswana, Department of African Languages.