Above: | Lateral release |
Ipa Symbol: | ◌ˡ |
Decimal1: | 737 |
Ipa Number: | 426 |
In phonetics, a lateral release is the release of a plosive consonant into a lateral consonant. Such sounds are transcribed in the IPA with a superscript, for example as pronounced as /[tˡ]/ in English spotless pronounced as /[ˈspɒtˡlɨs]/. In Old English words such as middle/middel in which, historically, the tongue made separate contacts with the alveolar ridge for the pronounced as //d// and pronounced as //l//, pronounced as /[ˈmɪdəl]/, many speakers today make only one tongue contact. That is, the pronounced as //d// is laterally released directly into the pronounced as //l//: pronounced as /[ˈmɪdˡl̩]/. While this is a minor phonetic detail in English (in fact, it is commonly transcribed as having no audible release: pronounced as /[ˈspɒt̚lɨs]/, pronounced as /[ˈmɪd̚l̩]/), it may be more important in other languages.
In most languages (as in English), laterally-released plosives are straightforwardly analyzed as biphonemic clusters whose second element is pronounced as //l//. In the Hmong language, however, it is sometimes claimed that laterally-released consonants are unitary phonemes. According to Peter Ladefoged and Ian Maddieson,[1] the choice between one or another analysis is purely based on phonological convenience—there is no actual acoustic or articulatory difference between one language's "laterally-released plosive" and another language's biphonemic cluster.