Fricative

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A fricative is a consonant produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together. [1] These may be the lower lip against the upper teeth, in the case of [f]; the back of the tongue against the soft palate in the case of German [x] (the final consonant of Bach ); or the side of the tongue against the molars, in the case of Welsh [ɬ] (appearing twice in the name Llanelli ). This turbulent airflow is called frication. [2]

Contents

A particular subset of fricatives are the sibilants. When forming a sibilant, one still is forcing air through a narrow channel, but in addition, the tongue is curled lengthwise to direct the air over the edge of the teeth. [1] English [s], [z], [ʃ], and [ʒ] are examples of sibilants.

The usage of two other terms is less standardized: "Spirant" is an older term for fricatives used by some American and European phoneticians and phonologists. [3] "Strident" could mean just "sibilant", but some authors[ who? ] include also labiodental and uvular fricatives in the class.

Types

The airflow is not completely stopped in the production of fricative consonants. In other words, the airflow experiences friction.

Sibilants

All sibilants are coronal, but may be dental, alveolar, postalveolar, or palatal (retroflex) within that range. However, at the postalveolar place of articulation, the tongue may take several shapes: domed, laminal, or apical, and each of these is given a separate symbol and a separate name. Prototypical retroflexes are subapical and palatal, but they are usually written with the same symbol as the apical postalveolars. The alveolars and dentals may also be either apical or laminal, but this difference is indicated with diacritics rather than with separate symbols.

Central non-sibilant fricatives

The IPA also has letters for epiglottal fricatives,

with allophonic trilling, but these might be better analyzed as pharyngeal trills. [5]

Lateral fricatives

The lateral fricative occurs as the ll of Welsh, as in Lloyd , Llewelyn , and Machynlleth ([maˈxənɬɛθ], a town), as the unvoiced 'hl' and voiced 'dl' or 'dhl' in the several languages of Southern Africa (such as Xhosa and Zulu), and in Mongolian.

IPA letters used for both fricatives and approximants

No language distinguishes fricatives from approximants at these places, so the same symbol is used for both. For the pharyngeal, approximants are more numerous than fricatives. A fricative realization may be specified by adding the uptack to the letters, [χ̝,ʁ̝,ħ̝,ʕ̝]. Likewise, the downtack may be added to specify an approximant realization, [χ̞,ʁ̞,ħ̞,ʕ̞].

(The bilabial approximant and dental approximant do not have dedicated symbols either and are transcribed in a similar fashion: [β̞,ð̞]. However, the base letters are understood to specifically refer to the fricatives.)

Pseudo-fricatives

In many languages, such as English, the glottal "fricatives" are unaccompanied phonation states of the glottis, without any accompanying manner, fricative or otherwise. They may be mistaken for real glottal constrictions in a number of languages, such as Finnish. [6]

In addition, [ʍ] is usually called a "voiceless labial-velar fricative", but it is actually an approximant. True doubly articulated fricatives may not occur in any language; but see voiceless palatal-velar fricative for a putative (and rather controversial) example.

Aspirated fricatives

Fricatives are very commonly voiced, though cross-linguistically voiced fricatives are not nearly as common as tenuis ("plain") fricatives. Other phonations are common in languages that have those phonations in their stop consonants. However, phonemically aspirated fricatives are rare. /s~sʰ/ contrasts with a tense, unaspirated /s͈/ in Korean; aspirated fricatives are also found in a few Sino-Tibetan languages, in some Oto-Manguean languages, in the Siouan language Ofo (/sʰ/ and /fʰ/), and in the (central?) Chumash languages (/sʰ/ and /ʃʰ/). The record may be Cone Tibetan, which has four contrastive aspirated fricatives: /sʰ//ɕʰ/, /ʂʰ/, and /xʰ/. [7]

Nasalized fricatives

Phonemically nasalized fricatives are rare. Umbundu has /ṽ/ and Kwangali and Souletin Basque have /h̃/. In Coatzospan Mixtec, [β̃,ð̃,s̃,ʃ̃] appear allophonically before a nasal vowel, and in Igbo nasality is a feature of the syllable; when /fvszʃʒ/ occur in nasal syllables they are themselves nasalized. [8]

Types of fricative [lower-alpha 1]
bilabiallabio-
dental		linguo-
labial		inter-
dental		dentaldenti-
alveolar		alveolarpost-
alveolar		palatal/
retroflex		velaruvularpharyn-
geal		glottal
central non-sibilantɸβfv
fʰvʱ		θ̼ð̼θ̟ð̟(θ̪͆ð̪͆)θðθ̠ð̠θ͇ð͇(laminal)
ɹ̝̊ɹ̝(apical)		ɹ̠̊˔ɹ̠˔çʝ(laminal)
ɻ̝̊ɻ̝(apical)		xɣ
xʰɣʱ		χ̝ʁ̝ħ̝ʕ̝h̝
ɦ̝
lateral fricative ɬ̪ɮ̪ɬɮ
ɬʰɮʱ		ɬ̠ɮ̠𝼆ʎ̝(laminal)
ꞎɭ˔(apical)		𝼄ʟ̝
laminal sibilant s̻̪z̻̪s̄z̄ (s̟z̟)s͇z͇
s͇ʰz͇ʱ		s̠z̠ (s̻̠z̻̠)
ʃ̻ʒ̻(domed)
ŝẑ (ʆʓ) (closed)		ɕʑ
ɕʰʑʱ
apical sibilants̺̪z̺̪s̺z̺ṣẓ (s̺̠z̺̠)
ʃ̺ʒ̺
ʃʰ ʒʱ		ʂʐ
ʂʰʐʱ
fricative trill r̝̊r̝ʀ̝̊ʀ̝ʜʢ
fricative flap ɾ̞̊ɾ̞
nasalized fricativeβ̃f̃ṽð̃s̃z̃ʃ̃ʒ̃h̃

Occurrence

Until its extinction, Ubykh may have been the language with the most fricatives (29 not including /h/), some of which did not have dedicated symbols or diacritics in the IPA. This number actually outstrips the number of all consonants in English (which has 24 consonants). By contrast, approximately 8.7% of the world's languages have no phonemic fricatives at all. [9] This is a typical feature of Australian Aboriginal languages, where the few fricatives that exist result from changes to plosives or approximants, but also occurs in some indigenous languages of New Guinea and South America that have especially small numbers of consonants. However, whereas [h] is entirely unknown in indigenous Australian languages, most of the other languages without true fricatives do have [h] in their consonant inventory.

Voicing contrasts in fricatives are largely confined to Europe, Africa, and Western Asia. Languages of South and East Asia, such as Mandarin Chinese, Korean, and the Austronesian languages, typically do not have such voiced fricatives as [z] and [v], which are familiar to many European speakers. In some Dravidian languages they occur as allophones. These voiced fricatives are also relatively rare in indigenous languages of the Americas. Overall, voicing contrasts in fricatives are much rarer than in plosives, being found only in about a third of the world's languages as compared to 60 percent for plosive voicing contrasts. [10]

About 15 percent of the world's languages, however, have unpaired voiced fricatives, i.e. a voiced fricative without a voiceless counterpart. Two-thirds of these, or 10 percent of all languages, have unpaired voiced fricatives but no voicing contrast between any fricative pair. [11]

This phenomenon occurs because voiced fricatives have developed from lenition of plosives or fortition of approximants. This phenomenon of unpaired voiced fricatives is scattered throughout the world, but is confined to nonsibilant fricatives with the exception of a couple of languages that have [ʒ] but lack [ʃ]. (Relatedly, several languages have the voiced affricate [ dʒ ] but lack [tʃ], and vice versa.) The fricatives that occur most often without a voiceless counterpart are – in order of ratio of unpaired occurrences to total occurrences – [ʝ], [β], [ð], [ʁ] and [ɣ].

Acoustics

Fricatives appear in waveforms as somewhat random noise caused by the turbulent airflow, upon which a periodic pattern is overlaid if voiced. [12] Fricatives produced in the front of the mouth tend to have energy concentration at higher frequencies than ones produced in the back. [13] The centre of gravity (CoG), i.e. the average frequency in a spectrum weighted by the amplitude (also known as spectral mean), may be used to determine the place of articulation of a fricative relative to that of another. [14]

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ There are likely to be more aspirated, murmured and nasal fricatives than shown here. ⟨s̄ ṣ ŝ⟩ are not IPA transcription.

Related Research Articles

Approximants are speech sounds that involve the articulators approaching each other but not narrowly enough nor with enough articulatory precision to create turbulent airflow. Therefore, approximants fall between fricatives, which do produce a turbulent airstream, and vowels, which produce no turbulence. This class is composed of sounds like and semivowels like and, as well as lateral approximants like.

A lateral is a consonant in which the airstream proceeds along one or both of the sides of the tongue, but it is blocked by the tongue from going through the middle of the mouth. An example of a lateral consonant is the English L, as in Larry. Lateral consonants contrast with central consonants, in which the airstream flows through the center of the mouth.

An affricate is a consonant that begins as a stop and releases as a fricative, generally with the same place of articulation. It is often difficult to decide if a stop and fricative form a single phoneme or a consonant pair. English has two affricate phonemes, and, often spelled ch and j, respectively.

Sibilants are fricative consonants of higher amplitude and pitch, made by directing a stream of air with the tongue towards the teeth. Examples of sibilants are the consonants at the beginning of the English words sip, zip, ship, and genre. The symbols in the International Phonetic Alphabet used to denote the sibilant sounds in these words are, respectively,. Sibilants have a characteristically intense sound, which accounts for their paralinguistic use in getting one's attention.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pharyngealization</span> Articulation of consonants or vowels

Pharyngealization is a secondary articulation of consonants or vowels by which the pharynx or epiglottis is constricted during the articulation of the sound.

In phonetics, ejective consonants are usually voiceless consonants that are pronounced with a glottalic egressive airstream. In the phonology of a particular language, ejectives may contrast with aspirated, voiced and tenuis consonants. Some languages have glottalized sonorants with creaky voice that pattern with ejectives phonologically, and other languages have ejectives that pattern with implosives, which has led to phonologists positing a phonological class of glottalic consonants, which includes ejectives.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Digraph (orthography)</span> Pair of characters used to write one phoneme

A digraph or digram is a pair of characters used in the orthography of a language to write either a single phoneme, or a sequence of phonemes that does not correspond to the normal values of the two characters combined.

Postalveolar or post-alveolar consonants are consonants articulated with the tongue near or touching the back of the alveolar ridge. Articulation is farther back in the mouth than the alveolar consonants, which are at the ridge itself, but not as far back as the hard palate, the place of articulation for palatal consonants. Examples of postalveolar consonants are the English palato-alveolar consonants, as in the words "ship", "'chill", "vision", and "jump", respectively.

In phonetics, palato-alveolar or palatoalveolar consonants are postalveolar consonants, nearly always sibilants, that are weakly palatalized with a domed (bunched-up) tongue. They are common sounds cross-linguistically and occur in English words such as ship and chip.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Retroflex consonant</span> Type of consonant articulation

A retroflex, apico-domal, or cacuminalconsonant is a coronal consonant where the tongue has a flat, concave, or even curled shape, and is articulated between the alveolar ridge and the hard palate. They are sometimes referred to as cerebral consonants—especially in Indology.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Palatal click</span> Consonantal sound

The palatal or palato-alveolar clicks are a family of click consonants found, as components of words, only in southern Africa. The tongue is nearly flat, and is pulled back rather than down as in the postalveolar clicks, making a sharper sound than those consonants. The tongue makes an extremely broad contact across the roof of the mouth, making correlation with the places of articulation of non-clicks difficult, but Ladefoged & Traill (1984:18) find that the primary place of articulation is the palate, and say that "there is no doubt that should be described as a palatal sound".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Voiceless retroflex fricative</span> Consonantal sound represented by ⟨ʂ⟩ in IPA

The voiceless retroflex sibilant fricative is a type of consonantal sound used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ⟨ʂ⟩ which is a Latin letter s combined with a retroflex hook. Like all the retroflex consonants, the IPA letter is formed by adding a rightward-pointing hook to the bottom of ⟨s⟩. A distinction can be made between laminal, apical, and sub-apical articulations. Only one language, Toda, appears to have more than one voiceless retroflex sibilant, and it distinguishes subapical palatal from apical postalveolar retroflex sibilants; that is, both the tongue articulation and the place of contact on the roof of the mouth are different.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Apical consonant</span> Phone (speech sound)

An apical consonant is a phone produced by obstructing the air passage with the tip of the tongue (apex) in conjunction with upper articulators from lips to postalveolar, and possibly prepalatal. It contrasts with laminal consonants, which are produced by creating an obstruction with the blade of the tongue, just behind the tip. Sometimes apical is used exclusively for an articulation that involves only the tip of the tongue and apicolaminal for an articulation that involves both the tip and the blade of the tongue. However, the distinction is not always made and the latter one may be called simply apical, especially when describing an apical dental articulation. As there is some laminal contact in the alveolar region, the apicolaminal dental consonants are also labelled as denti-alveolar.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">History of the International Phonetic Alphabet</span> History of the IPA phonetic representation system

The International Phonetic Alphabet was created soon after the International Phonetic Association was established in the late 19th century. It was intended as an international system of phonetic transcription for oral languages, originally for pedagogical purposes. The Association was established in Paris in 1886 by French and British language teachers led by Paul Passy. The prototype of the alphabet appeared in Phonetic Teachers' Association (1888b). The Association based their alphabet upon the Romic alphabet of Henry Sweet, which in turn was based on the Phonotypic Alphabet of Isaac Pitman and the Palæotype of Alexander John Ellis.

Doubly articulated consonants are consonants with two simultaneous primary places of articulation of the same manner. They are a subset of co-articulated consonants. They are to be distinguished from co-articulated consonants with secondary articulation; that is, a second articulation not of the same manner. An example of a doubly articulated consonant is the voiceless labial–velar plosive, which is a and a pronounced simultaneously. On the other hand, the voiceless labialized velar plosive has only a single stop articulation, velar, with a simultaneous approximant-like rounding of the lips. In some dialects of Arabic, the voiceless velar fricative has a simultaneous uvular trill, but this is not considered double articulation either.

The phonological system of the Polish language is similar in many ways to those of other Slavic languages, although there are some characteristic features found in only a few other languages of the family, such as contrasting postalveolar and alveolo-palatal fricatives and affricates. The vowel system is relatively simple, with just six oral monophthongs and arguably two nasals in traditional speech, while the consonant system is much more complex.

The voiceless alveolar fricatives are a type of fricative consonant pronounced with the tip or blade of the tongue against the alveolar ridge just behind the teeth. This refers to a class of sounds, not a single sound. There are at least six types with significant perceptual differences:

References

  1. 1 2 Ladefoged, Peter; Maddieson, Ian (1996). The Sounds of the World's Languages. Oxford: Blackwell. ISBN   0-631-19815-6.
  2. ↑ "Definition of Frication". Merriam-Webster . Retrieved 27 May 2021.
  3. ↑ Lodge, Ken (2009). A Critical Introduction to Phonetics. New York: Continuum International Publishing Group. p. 36. ISBN   978-0-8264-8873-2.
  4. ↑ Pountain (2014) Exploring the Spanish Language, p. 18
  5. ↑ John Esling (2010) "Phonetic Notation", in Hardcastle, Laver & Gibbon (eds) The Handbook of Phonetic Sciences, 2nd ed., p 695.
  6. ↑ Laufer (1991 :91)
  7. ↑ Guillaume Jacques 2011. A panchronic study of aspirated fricatives, with new evidence from Pumi, Lingua 121.9:1518-1538
  8. ↑ Laver (1994: 255–256) Principles of Phonetics
  9. ↑ Maddieson, Ian. 2008. "Absence of Common Consonants". In: Haspelmath, Martin & Dryer, Matthew S. & Gil, David & Comrie, Bernard (eds.) The World Atlas of Language Structures Online. Munich: Max Planck Digital Library, chapter 18. Accessed on 2008-09-15.
  10. ↑ Maddieson, Ian. "Voicing in Plosives and Fricatives", in Martin Haspelmath et al. (eds.) The World Atlas of Language Structures, pp. 26–29. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. ISBN   0-19-925591-1.
  11. ↑ Maddieson, Ian. Patterns of Sounds. Cambridge University Press, 1984. ISBN   0-521-26536-3.
  12. ↑ Zsiga, Elizabeth C. (2013). The Sounds of Language: An Introduction to Phonetics and Phonology. Wiley-Blackwell. p. 129. ISBN   978-1-4051-9103-6.
  13. ↑ Johnson, Keith (2012). Acoustic and Auditory Phonetics (3rd ed.). Wiley-Blackwell. pp. 162–3. ISBN   978-1-4051-9466-2.
  14. ↑ Kiss, Zoltán G. (2013). "Measuring acoustic correlates of voicing in stops and fricatives". In Szigetvári, Péter (ed.). VLlxx: Papers Presented to László Varga on His 70th Birthday. Budapest: Department of English Linguistics, Eötvös Loránd University.
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