Velopharyngeal fricative

The velopharyngeal fricatives, also known as the posterior nasal fricatives, are a family of sounds produced principally by people with a cleft palate, as substitutes for sibilants (which in English are /s, z, ʃ, ʒ, tʃ, dʒ, tr, dr/). These are "the so-called 'nasal snort', in which (usually loud) friction results from leakage through a tense, but incompletely occluded, velopharyngeal port," and results from "the approximation but inadequate closure of the upper border of the velum and the posterior pharyngeal wall." To produce a velopharyngeal fricative, the soft palate approaches the pharyngeal wall and narrows the velopharyngeal port, such that the restricted port creates fricative turbulence in air forced through it into the nasal cavity. The articulation may be aided by a posterior positioning of the tongue and may involve velar flutter (a snorting sound).

Voiceless velopharyngeal fricative
ʩ
Audio sample
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Encoding
Entity (decimal)	ʩ
Unicode (hex)	U+02A9
Image

Voiced velopharyngeal fricative
ʩ̬
Audio sample
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Voiceless velopharyngeal trill
𝼀
ʩ𐞪
Audio sample
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Encoding
Entity (decimal)	𝼀
Unicode (hex)	U+1DF00
Image

The term 'velopharyngeal' indicates "articulation between the upper surface of the velum and the back wall of the naso-pharynx."

The base symbol for a velopharyngeal fricative in the extensions to the International Phonetic Alphabet for disordered speech is ⟨ʩ⟩, and secondary articulation is indicated with a superscript [𐞐]. The following variants are described:

• A voiceless velopharyngeal fricative [ʩ]
• A voiced velopharyngeal fricative [ʩ̬]
• A velopharyngeal fricative trill or "snort" (much as epiglottal fricatives tend to be trilled):
  • voiceless [𝼀]
  • voiced [𝼀̬]
• Other consonants accompanied by velopharyngeal frication, such as [s𐞐], potentially transcribed ⟨s𐞐𐞪⟩ to overtly indicate accompanying trill.

Velopharyngeal frication
◌𐞐
◌͌

The letter [𝼀] for the trill was only adopted in 2015; before then the letter ⟨ʩ⟩ had stood for both. Some authorities describe the trilled velopharyngeals as being accompanied by uvular trill rather than velar flutter. Whether this is a difference in interpretation or of pronunciation, it would be explicitly transcribed with a superscript ⟨ʀ⟩: voiceless [ʩ𐞪] and voiced [ʩ̬𐞪].

See also

• Hypernasal speech

Notes

1. A double tilde, ⟨◌͌⟩, was used prior to 2024.

External links

• Production videos for Consonants (ExtIPA symbols) (click on ⟨ʩ⟩ in the chart for a plain [ʩ])

References

1. Martin J. Ball (June 1991) Computer Coding of the IPA: Extensions to the IPA. Journal of the International Phonetic Association, vol. 21, no. 1, pp. 39
2. Martin Duckworth, George Allen, William Hardcastle & Martin Ball (1990) 'Extensions to the International Phonetic Alphabet for the transcription of atypical speech'. Clinical Linguistics & Phonetics 4: 4, p. 276.
3. Arnold Aronson & Diane Thieme (2009) Clinical Voice Disorders
4. Linda Vallino, Dennis Ruscello & David Zajac (2017) Cleft Palate Speech and Resonance: An Audio and Video Resource, p. 30–32.
5. Bertil Malmberg & Louise Kaiser (1968) Manual of phonetics, North-Holland, p. 325.
6. http://tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02699206.2024.2365205