Voiced retroflex plosive

Template:Infobox IPA The voiced retroflex plosive is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is Template:IPA, and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is d`. The IPA symbol is a lowercase letter d with a rightward-pointing tail protruding from the lower right of the letter. Like all the retroflex consonants, the IPA symbol is formed by adding a rightward pointing hook extending from the bottom of the symbol used for the equivalent alveolar consonant, in this case the voiced alveolar plosive which has the symbol d. Compare d and Template:IPA.

Features

Features of the voiced retroflex plosive:

Its manner of articulation is plosive or stop, which means it is produced by obstructing airflow in the vocal tract.
Its place of articulation is retroflex, which prototypically means it is articulated with the tip of the tongue curled up, but more generally means that it is postalveolar without being palatalized.
Its phonation type is voiced, which means the vocal cords are vibrating during the articulation.
It is an oral consonant, which means air is allowed to escape through the mouth.
It is a central consonant, which means it is produced by allowing the airstream to flow over the middle of the tongue, rather than the sides.
The airstream mechanism is pulmonic egressive, which means it is articulated by pushing air out of the lungs and through the vocal tract, rather than from the glottis or the mouth.

Although it is not used in most dialects of English, the voiced retroflex plosive is used for /d/ (and sometimes Template:IPA) by many speakers of Indian English (e.g., Template:IPA for "deep"; Template:IPA for "asked"; Template:IPA for "the"). This characteristic is due to the influence of Indo-Aryan and Dravidian languages, in which retroflexion is phonemic. Some speakers of American English produce words such as "border" with Template:IPA as an allophone of /d/, reflecting coarticulation associated with the Template:IPA.

The voiced retroflex plosive is common among the languages of South Asia. Among Indo-Aryan languages, aspiration is typically phonemic (cf. Template:IPA "branch", Template:IPA "shield" in Hindi). The symbol [ḍ] is commonly used by some linguists to transcribe voiced retroflex plosives; Ladefoged and Maddieson (1996) use [ḍ] to denote a lesser degree of retroflexion vis-à-vis Template:IPA. The voiced retroflex plosive also occurs in some languages of Europe and Oceania (especially Australian Aboriginal languages).

Swedish and Norwegian feature Template:IPA in a series of assimilations combining /r/ and alveolar consonants; Template:Audio Template:IPA "soil, dirt".

Peter Ladefoged and Ian Maddieson, The Sounds of the World's Languages. Blackwell Publishers, 1996. ISBN 0631198156
Colin P. Masica, The Indo-Aryan Languages. Cambridge University Press, 1991. ISBN 0521299446