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Fricative

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This article containsphonetic transcriptionsin theInternational Phonetic Alphabet(IPA).For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, seeHelp:IPA.For the distinction between[ ],/ /and ⟨⟩, seeIPA § Brackets and transcription delimiters.

Africativeis aconsonantproducedby forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing twoarticulatorsclose together.[1]These may be the lower lip against the upper teeth, in the case of[f];the back of the tongue against thesoft palatein the case ofGerman[x](the final consonant ofBach); or the side of the tongue against themolars,in the case ofWelsh[ɬ](appearing twice in the nameLlanelli). This turbulent airflow is calledfrication.[2]

A particular subset of fricatives are thesibilants.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 alsolabiodentalanduvularfricatives in the class.

Types[edit]

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

Sibilants[edit]

Allsibilantsarecoronal,but may bedental,alveolar,postalveolar,orpalatal(retroflex) within that range. However, at the postalveolar place of articulation, the tongue may take several shapes: domed,laminal,orapical,and each of these is given a separate symbol and a separate name. Prototypical retroflexes aresubapicaland 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[edit]

The IPA also has letters for epiglottal fricatives,

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

Lateral fricatives[edit]

The lateral fricative occurs as thellofWelsh,as inLloyd,Llewelyn,andMachynlleth([maˈxənɬɛθ],a town), as the unvoiced 'hl' and voiced 'dl' or 'dhl' in the several languages of Southern Africa (such asXhosaandZulu), and in Mongolian.

IPA letters used for both fricatives and approximants[edit]

No language distinguishes fricatives fromapproximantsat 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 theuptackto the letters,[χ̝,ʁ̝,ħ̝,ʕ̝].Likewise, thedowntackmay be added to specify an approximant realization,[χ̞,ʁ̞,ħ̞,ʕ̞].

(Thebilabial approximantanddental approximantdo 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[edit]

In many languages, such as English or Korean, the glottal "fricatives" are unaccompaniedphonationstates of the glottis, without any accompanyingmanner,fricative or otherwise. They may be mistaken for real glottal constrictions in a number of languages, such asFinnish.[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 seevoiceless palatal-velar fricativefor a putative (and rather controversial) example.

Aspirated fricatives[edit]

Fricatives are very commonly voiced, though cross-linguistically voiced fricatives are not nearly as common astenuis( "plain" ) fricatives. Otherphonationsare common in languages that have those phonations in their stop consonants. However, phonemicallyaspiratedfricatives are rare./s~sʰ/contrasts with a tense, unaspirated/s͈/inKorean;aspirated fricatives are also found in a fewSino-Tibetan languages,in someOto-Manguean languages,in the Siouan languageOfo(/sʰ/and/fʰ/), and in the (central?)Chumash languages(/sʰ/and/ʃʰ/). The record may beCone Tibetan,which has four contrastive aspirated fricatives:/sʰ//ɕʰ/,/ʂʰ/,and/xʰ/.[7]

Nasalized fricatives[edit]

Phonemicallynasalizedfricatives are rare.Umbunduhas/ṽ/and Kwangali andSouletin Basquehave/h̃/.InCoatzospan 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[a]
bilabial labio-
dental		 linguo-
labial		 inter-
dental		 dental denti-
alveolar		 alveolar post-
alveolar		 palatal/
retroflex		 velar uvular pharyn-
geal		 glottal
central non-sibilant ɸβ fv
fʰvʱ		 θ̼ð̼ θ̟ð̟(θ̪͆ð̪͆) θð θ̠ð̠ θ͇ð͇(laminal)
ɹ̝̊ɹ̝(apical)		 ɹ̠̊˔ɹ̠˔ çʝ(laminal)
ɻ̝̊ɻ̝(apical)		 xɣ
xʰɣʱ		 χ̝ʁ̝ ħ̝ʕ̝ h̝
ɦ̝
lateral fricative ɬ̪ɮ̪ ɬɮ
ɬʰɮʱ		 ɬ̠ɮ̠ 𝼆ʎ̝(laminal)
ꞎɭ˔(apical)		 𝼄ʟ̝
laminalsibilant s̻̪z̻̪ s̄z̄(s̟z̟) s͇z͇
s͇ʰz͇ʱ		 s̠z̠(s̻̠z̻̠)
ʃ̻ʒ̻(domed)
ŝẑ(ʆʓ)(closed)		 ɕʑ
ɕʰʑʱ
apical sibilant s̺̪z̺̪ s̺z̺ ṣẓ(s̺̠z̺̠)
ʃ̺ʒ̺
ʃʰ ʒʱ		 ʂʐ
ʂʰʐʱ
fricative trill r̝̊r̝ ʀ̝̊ʀ̝ ʜʢ
fricative flap ɾ̞̊ɾ̞
nasalized fricative ɸ̃β̃ f̃ṽ θ̃ð̃ s̃z̃ ʃ̃ʒ̃ h̃

Occurrence[edit]

Until its extinction,Ubykhmay have been the language with the most fricatives (29 not including/h/), some of which did not have dedicated symbols or diacritics in theIPA.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 ofAustralian Aboriginal languages,where the few fricatives that exist result from changes toplosivesorapproximants,but also occurs in some indigenous languages ofNew Guineaand South America that have especially small numbers of consonants. However, whereas[h]isentirelyunknown 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 asMandarin Chinese,Korean,and theAustronesian languages,typically do not have such voiced fricatives as[z]and[v],which are familiar to many European speakers. In someDravidian languagesthey 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, haveunpaired 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 fromlenitionof plosives orfortitionof 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 thevoiced 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[edit]

Fricatives appear inwaveformsas 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 asspectral mean), may be used to determine the place of articulation of a fricative relative to that of another.[14]

See also[edit]

Notes[edit]

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

References[edit]

  1. ^abLadefoged, Peter;Maddieson, Ian(1996).The Sounds of the World's Languages.Oxford: Blackwell.ISBN0-631-19815-6.
  2. ^"Definition of Frication".Merriam-Webster.Retrieved27 May2021.
  3. ^Lodge, Ken (2009).A Critical Introduction to Phonetics.New York: Continuum International Publishing Group. p. 36.ISBN978-0-8264-8873-2.
  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,Lingua121.9:1518-1538
  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.ISBN0-19-925591-1.
  11. ^Maddieson, Ian.Patterns of Sounds.Cambridge University Press, 1984.ISBN0-521-26536-3.
  12. ^Zsiga, Elizabeth C.(2013).The Sounds of Language: An Introduction to Phonetics and Phonology.Wiley-Blackwell. p. 129.ISBN978-1-4051-9103-6.
  13. ^Johnson, Keith (2012).Acoustic and Auditory Phonetics(3rd ed.). Wiley-Blackwell. pp. 162–3.ISBN978-1-4051-9466-2.
  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.

Sources[edit]

External links[edit]

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