Cover symbol

In linguistics, cover symbols (sometimes informally called wildcards, analogous to wildcard characters in computing) are broad letters or symbols used to represent classes of sounds. Such systems are useful for describing sound changes in historical linguistics, phonotactics in phonology, and ambiguous or underspecified identification in phonetics.

Tables

Consonants

The symbols below are defined for indeterminate sounds by the Extensions to the International Phonetic Alphabet (extIPA), which recommends the use of a surrounding circle ⟨◯⟩.

Symbol Definition
C Any consonant.
Ȼ Any obstruent.
F Any fricative.
G Any glide.
Ʞ Any click.
L Any liquid or lateral.
N Any nasal.
P Any plosive.

R

 Any rhotic.

Any resonant or sonorant.

S
Any sibilant.

Those reconstructing Proto-Indo-European phonology use the following cover symbols, which may somewhat differ from the extIPA examples above.

Symbol Definition
H Any laryngeal.
M Any labial sonorant.
P Any bilabial plosive.
R Any non-labial sonorant.
T Any coronal or dental plosive.

Vowels

Capitalized vowels are commonly used in discussions of languages with vowel harmony. They often indicate different harmonic variants of an underlying archiphonemic vowel.

Symbol Description
A Any open vowel.
O Any rounded mid vowel.
U Any rounded close vowel.
V Any vowel.
Ṽ Any nasal vowel.

Syllables

In phonotactics, cover symbols for syllable structures are often written with Greek letters.

Symbol Description
σ A syllable.
μ A mora.
ω An onset.
ρ A rime.
ν A nucleus.
κ A coda.

Other symbols

Symbol Description
T Any tone or pitch accent.
X Any sound.
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