Fricative
Template:Short description Template:IPA notice A fricative is a consonant produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together.<ref name=":0">Template:SOWL</ref> These may be the lower lip against the upper teeth, in the case of Template:IPA; the back of the tongue against the soft palate in the case of German Template:IPA (the final consonant of Bach); or the side of the tongue against the molars, in the case of Welsh Template:IPA (appearing twice in the name Llanelli). This turbulent airflow is called frication.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
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.<ref name=":0" /> English Template:IPA, Template:IPA, Template:IPA, and Template:IPA 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 for non-sibilant fricatives.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> "Strident" could mean just "sibilant", but some authorsTemplate:Who include also labiodental and uvular fricatives in the class.
Types
[edit]The airflow is not completely stopped in the production of fricative consonants. In other words, the airflow experiences friction.
Sibilants
[edit]- Template:IPA voiceless coronal sibilant, as in English sip
- Template:IPA voiced coronal sibilant, as in English zip
- Template:IPA voiceless dental sibilant
- Template:IPA voiced dental sibilant
- Template:IPA voiceless apical sibilant
- Template:IPA voiced apical sibilant
- Template:IPA voiceless predorsal sibilant (laminal, with tongue tip at lower teeth)<ref>Pountain (2014) Exploring the Spanish Language, p. 18</ref>
- Template:IPA voiced predorsal sibilant (laminal)
- Template:IPA voiceless postalveolar sibilant (laminal)
- Template:IPA voiced postalveolar sibilant (laminal)
- Template:IPA voiceless palato-alveolar sibilant (domed, partially palatalized), as in English ship
- Template:IPA voiced palato-alveolar sibilant (domed, partially palatalized), as the si in English vision
- Template:IPA voiceless alveolo-palatal sibilant (laminal, palatalized)
- Template:IPA voiced alveolo-palatal sibilant (laminal, palatalized)
- Template:IPA voiceless retroflex sibilant (apical or subapical)
- Template:IPA voiced retroflex sibilant (apical or subapical)
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
[edit]- Template:IPA voiceless bilabial fricative
- Template:IPA voiced bilabial fricative
- Template:IPA voiceless labiodental fricative, as in English fine
- Template:IPA voiced labiodental fricative, as in English vine
- Template:IPA voiceless linguolabial fricative
- Template:IPA voiced linguolabial fricative
- Template:IPA voiceless dental non-sibilant fricative, as in English thing
- Template:IPA voiced dental non-sibilant fricative, as in English that
- Template:IPA voiceless alveolar non-sibilant fricative
- Template:IPA voiced alveolar non-sibilant fricative
- Template:IPA Voiceless alveolar fricative trill
- Template:IPA Voiced alveolar fricative trill
- Template:IPA voiceless palatal fricative
- Template:IPA voiced palatal fricative
- Template:IPA voiceless velar fricative
- Template:IPA voiced velar fricative
- Template:IPA voiceless palatal-velar fricative (articulation disputed)
The IPA also has letters for epiglottal fricatives,
with allophonic trilling, but these might be better analyzed as pharyngeal trills.<ref>John Esling (2010) "Phonetic Notation", in Hardcastle, Laver & Gibbon (eds) The Handbook of Phonetic Sciences, 2nd ed., p 695.</ref>
- Template:IPA voiceless velopharyngeal fricative (often occurs with a cleft palate)
- Template:IPA voiced velopharyngeal fricative
Lateral fricatives
[edit]- Template:IPA voiceless dental lateral fricative
- Template:IPA voiced dental lateral fricative
- Template:IPA voiceless alveolar lateral fricative
- Template:IPA voiced alveolar lateral fricative
- Template:IPA voiceless postalveolar lateral fricative (Mehri)
- Template:IPA voiced postalveolar lateral fricative
- Template:IPA or extIPA Template:IPA voiceless retroflex lateral fricative
- Template:IPA or extIPA Template:IPA Voiced retroflex lateral fricative (in Ao)
- Template:IPA or Template:IPA or extIPA Template:IPA voiceless palatal lateral fricative
- Template:IPA or extIPA Template:IPA voiced palatal lateral fricative (allophonic in Jebero)
- Template:IPA or extIPA Template:IPA voiceless velar lateral fricative
- Template:IPA or extIPA Template:IPA voiced velar lateral fricative
The lateral fricative occurs as the ll of Welsh, as in Lloyd, Llewelyn, and Machynlleth (Template:IPA, 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.
- Template:IPA or Template:IPA and Template:IPA voiceless lateral-median fricative (a laterally lisped Template:IPA or Template:IPA) (Modern South Arabian)
- Template:IPA or Template:IPA and Template:IPA voiced lateral-median fricative (a laterally lisped Template:IPA or Template:IPA) (Modern South Arabian)
IPA letters used for both fricatives and approximants
[edit]- Template:IPA voiceless uvular fricative
- Template:IPA voiced uvular fricative
- Template:IPA voiceless pharyngeal fricative
- Template:IPA voiced pharyngeal fricative
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, Template:IPA. Likewise, the downtack may be added to specify an approximant realization, Template:IPA.
(The bilabial approximant and dental approximant do not have dedicated symbols either and are transcribed in a similar fashion: Template:IPA. However, the base letters are understood to specifically refer to the fricatives.)
Pseudo-fricatives
[edit]- Template:IPA voiceless glottal transition, as in English hat
- Template:IPA breathy-voiced glottal transition
In many languages, such as English or Korean, 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.<ref>Template:Harvcoltxt</ref>
Template:AnchorAspirated fricatives
[edit]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. Template:IPA contrasts with a tense, unaspirated Template:IPA in Korean; aspirated fricatives are also found in a few Sino-Tibetan languages, in some Oto-Manguean languages, in the Siouan language Ofo (Template:IPA and Template:IPA), and in the (central?) Chumash languages (Template:IPA and Template:IPA). The record may be Cone Tibetan, which has four contrastive aspirated fricatives: Template:IPA Template:IPA, Template:IPA, and Template:IPA.<ref>Guillaume Jacques 2011. A panchronic study of aspirated fricatives, with new evidence from Pumi, Lingua 121.9:1518-1538</ref>
Nasalized fricatives
[edit]Phonemically nasalized fricatives are rare. Umbundu has Template:IPA and Kwangali and Souletin Basque have Template:IPA. In Coatzospan Mixtec, Template:IPA appear allophonically before a nasal vowel, and in Igbo nasality is a feature of the syllable; when Template:IPA occur in nasal syllables they are themselves nasalized.<ref>Laver (1994: 255–256) Principles of Phonetics</ref>
Occurrence
[edit]Until its extinction, Ubykh may have been the language with the most fricatives (29 not including Template:IPA), 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.<ref>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.</ref> 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 Template:IPA is entirely unknown in indigenous Australian languages, most of the other languages without true fricatives do have Template:IPA 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 Template:IPA and Template:IPA, 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.<ref>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. Template:ISBN.</ref>
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.<ref>Maddieson, Ian. Patterns of Sounds. Cambridge University Press, 1984. Template:ISBN.</ref>
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 Template:IPA but lack Template:IPA. (Relatedly, several languages have the voiced affricate Template:IPAblink but lack Template:IPA, and vice versa.) The fricatives that occur most often without a voiceless counterpart are – in order of ratio of unpaired occurrences to total occurrences – Template:IPA, Template:IPA, Template:IPA, Template:IPA and Template:IPA.
Acoustics
[edit]Fricatives appear in waveforms as somewhat random noise caused by the turbulent airflow, upon which a periodic pattern is overlaid if voiced.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> Fricatives produced in the front of the mouth tend to have energy concentration at higher frequencies than ones produced in the back.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> 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.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
See also
[edit]Notes
[edit]References
[edit]Sources
[edit]External links
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