Advanced and retracted tongue root
contrasting states of the root of the tongue during the pronunciation of vowels
In phonetics, advanced tongue root (ATR or +ATR), or expanded pharynx, and retracted tongue root (RTR or −ATR) are contrasting states of the pharynx during the pronunciation of vowels in some languages, especially in West and East Africa, but also in Kazakh, Mongolian and Qiangic languages. ATR vs RTR was once suggested to be the basis for the distinction between tense and lax vowels in European languages such as German, but Ladefoged and Maddieson have found that the tongue root position in Germanic languages is not an independent gesture.
Advanced tongue root
Advanced tongue root, abbreviated ATR or +ATR, also called expanded, involves the expansion of the pharyngeal cavity by moving the base of the tongue forward, lowering the larynx, and otherwise expanding the walls of the pharynx during the pronunciation of a vowel. This may result in +ATR vowels being longer than −ATR vowels. The lowering of the larynx sometimes adds a breathy quality to the vowel.
Voiced stops such as [b], [d], [ɡ] can often involve non-contrastive tongue root advancement. Results can be seen occasionally in sound changes relating stop voicing and vowel frontness, such as voicing stop consonants before front vowels in the Oghuz Turkic languages; or in Adjarian's law (the fronting of vowels after voiced stops in certain dialects of Armenian).
True uvular consonants appear to be incompatible with advanced tongue root, i.e. they are inherently [−ATR]. Combined with the above tendency for voiced stops to be [+ATR], that motivates the extreme rarity of the voiced uvular stop [ɢ] compared to its voiceless counterpart [q].
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