Syllabic consonant

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A syllabic consonant is a consonant which either forms a syllable of its own, or is the nucleus of a syllable. The diacritic for this in the International Phonetic Alphabet is the under-stroke, < ̩>.

Examples from English are button [bɐt̚n̩], bottle [bɒɾl̩]. Note that all of these consonants are sonorants.

Sanskrit ṛ [r̩] (and Vedic Sanskrit ḷ [l̩]) are syllabic consonants, allophones of consonantal r and l. This continues the reconstruced situation of Proto-Indo-European, where both nasals and liquids had syllabic allophones, r̥, l̥, m̥, n̥.

The Czech r [ɾ] and l [l] may also be syllabic, as in the phrase - Strč prst skrz krk.

The only time obstruents are used syllabically in English is in onomatopoeia, such as sh! [ʃ̩] (a command to be quiet), sss [s̩] (the hiss of a snake), zzz [z̩] (the sound of a bee buzzing or someone sleeping), and tsk tsk! [ (used to express disapproval or pity), though it's not certain how to define what a syllable is in such cases.

Berber, Salish, and Wakashan languages are sometimes used to illustrate syllabic obstruents in normal vocabulary, such as Bella Coola [pʰtʰkʰtsʰ], [spʰs] "northeast wind", [sχs] "seal blubber", [ɬqʰ] "wet", [ťɬɬ] "dry", or [nujamɬɬɬɬ] "we (ɬ) used to (ɬɬ) sing (nujamɬ)". However, it is not clear how one would define a syllable or a syllabic nucleus in such cases, and it's therefore not clear whether any of these consonants should be considered syllabic.

There are "fricative vowels" in several languages, which are actually syllablic fricatives. In Mandarin these are written sī [ś], shī [ś̠], rī [ź̠]. Standard Liangshan Yi has two "buzzed" vowels, written ṳ, i̤, which are also syllabic fricatives, [β, ɹ̝], and may even be trilled [ʙ̝, r̝].