Uvular nasals are rare sounds cross-linguistically, occurring as a phoneme in only a small handful of languages. It is complex in terms of articulation, and also highly marked, as it is inherently difficult to produce a nasal articulation at the uvular point of contact.[1] This difficulty can be said to account for the marked rarity of this sound among the world's languages.[1]
A uvular nasal most commonly occurs as a conditioned allophone of other sounds,[2] for example as an allophone of /n/ before a uvular plosive as in Quechua, or as an allophone of /q/ before another nasal consonant as in Selkup. However, it has been reported to exist as an independent phoneme in a small number of languages. Examples include the Klallam language, Tagalog language, the Tawellemmet and Ayr varieties of Tuareg Berber,[3] the Rangakha dialect of Khams Tibetan,[4] at least two dialects of the Bai language,[5][6] the Papuan language Mapos Buang,[7] and the Chamdo languages: Lamo (Kyilwa dialect), Larong sMar (Tangre Chaya dialect), Drag-yab sMar (Razi dialect).[8] In Mapos Buang and in the Bai dialects, it contrasts phonemically with a velar nasal.[5][6][7] In the Chamdo languages it contrasts phonemically with /ŋ/, /ŋ̊/, and /ɴ̥/.[8] The syllable-final nasal in Japanese was traditionally said to be realized as a uvular nasal when utterance-final, but empirical studies have disputed this claim.[9]
There is also a pre-uvular nasal[10] in some languages such as Yanyuwa, which is articulated slightly more front compared with the place of articulation of the prototypical uvular nasal, though not as front as the prototypical velar nasal. The International Phonetic Alphabet does not have a separate symbol for that sound, though it can be transcribed as ⟨ɴ̟⟩ (advanced⟨ɴ⟩), ⟨ŋ̠⟩ or ⟨ŋ˗⟩ (both symbols denote a retracted⟨ŋ⟩).
Its manner of articulation is occlusive, which means it is produced by obstructing airflow in the vocal tract. Because the consonant is also nasal, the blocked airflow is redirected through the nose.
Its phonation is voiced, which means the vocal cords vibrate during the articulation.
It is a nasal consonant, which means air is exclusively allowed to escape through the nose for nasal stops; otherwise, in addition to through the mouth.
It is a median consonant, which means it is produced by directing the airstream down the midline of the tongue, rather than to the sides.
12Johnson, Marion R. (1978). "A note on the Inuit uvular nasal". Études Inuit Studies. 2 (1): 132–135. JSTOR42870492.
↑Bobaljik, Jonathan David (October 1996). "Assimilation in the Inuit Languages and the Place of the Uvular Nasal". International Journal of American Linguistics. 62 (4). The University of Chicago Press: 323–350. doi:10.1086/466303. JSTOR1265705. S2CID144140916.
12Suzuki, Hiroyuki; Nyima, Tashi (2018). "Historical relationship among three non-Tibetic languages in Chamdo, TAR". Proceedings of the 51st International Conference on Sino-Tibetan Languages and Linguistics (2018). Kyoto: Kyoto University. hdl:2433/235308.
↑Instead of "pre-uvular", these can be called "advanced uvular", "fronted uvular", "post-velar", "retracted velar" or "backed velar". For simplicity, this article uses only the term "pre-uvular".
↑Påhlsson, Christer (1972). The Northumbrian Burr: A Sociolinguistic Study. Lund: Gleerup. p.96.
Maekawa, Kikuo (2023), "Production of the utterance-final moraic nasal in Japanese: A real-time MRI study", Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 53 (1): 189–212, doi:10.1017/S0025100321000050
Martínez Celdrán, Eugenio; Fernández Planas, Ana Ma.; Carrera Sabaté, Josefina (2003), "Castilian Spanish", Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 33 (2): 255–259, doi:10.1017/S0025100303001373
