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A lateral is an ''L''-like consonant, in which the airstream proceeds along the sides of the tongue, but is blocked by the tongue from going through the middle of the mouth. Most commonly, the tip of the tongue makes contact with the upper teeth (see dental consonant) or the upper gum (the alveolar ridge) just behind the teeth (see alveolar consonant). The most common laterals are approximants and belong to the class of liquids, though lateral fricatives and affricates are common in some parts of the world. The labiodental fricatives often—perhaps usually—have lateral airflow, as the lip blocks the airflow in the center, but they are nonetheless not considered lateral consonants because no language makes a distinction between the two possibilities. Plosives are never lateral—although they may have lateral release—and the distinction is meaningless for nasals and for consonants articulated in the throat. Consonants are not necessarily lateral or central. Some, such as Japanese ''r'', are not defined by centrality: Japanese ''r'' varies allophonically between a central flap and a lateral flap . ==Examples== English has one lateral phoneme: the lateral approximant , which in many accents has two allophones. One, found before vowels as in ''lady'' or ''fly'', is called ''clear l'', pronounced as the alveolar lateral approximant with a "neutral" position of the body of the tongue. The other variant, so-called ''dark l'' found before consonants or word-finally, as in ''bold'' or ''tell'', is pronounced as the velarized alveolar lateral approximant with the tongue assuming a spoon-like shape with its back part raised, which gives the sound a - or -like resonance. In some languages, like Albanian, those two sounds are different phonemes. East Slavic languages contrast and but do not have (). In many British accents (e.g. Cockney), dark may undergo vocalization through the reduction and loss of contact between the tip of the tongue and the alveolar ridge, becoming a rounded back vowel or glide. This process turns ''tell'' into something like . A similar process happened during the development of many languages, including Brazilian Portuguese, Old French, and Polish, in all three of these resulting in or , whence Modern French ''sauce'' as compared with Spanish ''salsa'', or Polish ''Wisła'' (pronounced ) as compared with English ''Vistula''. In central and Venice dialects of Venetian, intervocalic has turned into a semivocalic , so that the written word ''ła bała'' is pronounced . The orthography uses the letter ł to represent this phoneme (note that it doesn't specifically represent the sound, it represents the phoneme which in some dialects is and in some ). Many aboriginal Australian languages have a series of three or four lateral approximants, as do various dialects of Irish. Rarer lateral consonants include the retroflex laterals that can be found in many Languages of India and in some Swedish dialects, and the voiceless alveolar lateral fricative , found in many Native North American languages, Welsh and Zulu. In Adyghe and some Athabaskan languages like Hän, both voiceless and voiced alveolar lateral fricatives occur, but there is no approximant. Many of these languages also have lateral affricates. Some languages have palatal or velar voiceless lateral fricatives or affricates, such as Dahalo and Zulu, but the IPA has no symbols for these sounds. However, appropriate symbols are easy to make by adding a lateral-fricative belt to the symbol for the corresponding lateral approximant (see below). Failing that, a devoicing diacritic is added to the approximant. Nearly all languages with such lateral obstruents also have the approximant. However, there are a number of exceptions, many of them located in the Pacific Northwest area of the United States. For example, Tlingit has but no .〔Some older Tlingit speakers do have , as an allophone of . This can also be analyzed as phonemic with an allophone .〕 Other examples from the same area include Nuu-chah-nulth and Kutenai, and elsewhere, Chukchi and Kabardian. Standard Tibetan has a voiceless lateral approximant, usually romanized as ''lh'', as in the name Lhasa. A uvular lateral approximant has been reported to occur in some speakers of American English. Pashto has a retroflex lateral flap. There are a large number of lateral click consonants; seventeen occur in !Xóõ. Lateral trills are also possible, though they do not occur in any known language. They may be pronounced by initiating or with an especially forceful airflow. There is no symbol for them in the IPA. They are sometimes used to imitate bird calls, and are a component of Donald Duck talk. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「lateral consonant」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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