Voiceless bilabially post-trilled dental stop

Voiceless bilabially post-trilled dental stop
t̪ʙ̥
Encoding
X-SAMPA	tB/

The voiceless bilabially post-trilled dental stop is a very rare consonantal sound reported to occur in a few spoken languages: the Oro Win and Wariʼ languages in South America and Sangtam in Northeast India. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ⟨t̪ʙ̥⟩, and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is t_dB\_0.

Features

Features of the voiceless bilabially post-trilled dental stop:

• Its manner of articulation is trill, which means it is produced by directing air over an articulator so that it vibrates.
• It has two places of articulation:
  • The stop is dental, which means it is articulated with either the tip or the blade of the tongue at the upper teeth, termed respectively apical and laminal.
  • The trill is bilabial, which means it is articulated with both lips.
• Its phonation is voiceless, which means it is produced without vibrations of the vocal cords. In some languages the vocal cords are actively separated, so it is always voiceless; in others the cords are lax, so that it may take on the voicing of adjacent sounds.
• It is an oral consonant, which means air is allowed to escape through the mouth only.
• It is a central consonant, which means it is produced by directing the airstream along the center of the tongue, rather than to the sides.
• Its airstream mechanism is pulmonic, which means it is articulated by pushing air solely with the intercostal muscles and abdominal muscles, as in most sounds.

Occurrence

Language		Word	IPA	Meaning	Notes
Oro Win
Pirahã
Sangtam		[t͡ʙ̥ʰʌ]		'plate'	Contrasts /t͡ʙ̥, t͡ʙ̥ʰ/.
Wari'		[t͡ʙ̥ot͡ʙ̥o]		'to be pleasant'	Forms a minimal pair with [toto], which means 'to paint'

External links

• List of languages with [t̪ʙ] on PHOIBLE