Voiced apicoalveolar fricative
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IPA – number	133
IPA – text	z
IPA – image
Entity	z
X-SAMPA	z
Kirshenbaum	z
Sound sample (help·info)

The voiced alveolar fricatives are consonantal sounds. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents these sounds depends on whether a sibilant or non-sibilant fricative is being described.

• The symbol for the alveolar sibilant is z, and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is z. The IPA symbol [z] is not normally used for dental or postalveolar sibilants unless modified by a diacritic ([z̪] and [z̠] respectively).
• The IPA symbol for the alveolar non-sibilant fricative is derived by means of diacritics; it can be ð̠ or ɹ̝.

Voiced alveolar sibilant

The voiced alveolar sibilant is common across European language but is relatively uncommon cross-linguistically compared to the voiceless variant. Only about 28% of the world's languages contain a voiced dental or alveolar sibilant. Moreover, 85% of the languages with some form of [z] are languages of Europe, Africa or Western Asia.

In the eastern half of Asia, the Pacific and the Americas, [z] is very rare as a phoneme. The presence of [z] in a given language always implies the presence of a voiceless [s].^{citation needed}

Features

Features of the voiced alveolar fricative:

• Its manner of articulation is sibilant fricative, which means it is produced by directing air flow through a groove in the tongue at the place of articulation and directing it over the sharp edge of the teeth, causing high-frequency turbulence.
• Its place of articulation is alveolar, which means it is articulated with either the tip or the blade of the tongue against the alveolar ridge, termed respectively apical and laminal.
• Its phonation type is voiced, which means the vocal cords are vibrating during the articulation.
• It is an oral consonant, which means air is allowed to escape through the mouth.
• It is a central consonant, which means it is produced by allowing the airstream to flow over the middle of the tongue, rather than the sides.
• The airstream mechanism is pulmonic egressive, which means it is articulated by pushing air out of the lungs and through the vocal tract, rather than from the glottis or the mouth.

Occurrence

In the following transcriptions, diacritics may be used to distinguish between apical [z̺] and laminal [z̻].

Voiced alveolar non-sibilant fricative

The nonsibilant alveolar fricative is very rare, and almost always occurs as an allophone of dental fricatives.^{citation needed}

Features

The features of the voiceless alveolar non-sibilant fricative are identical to those above, except that,

• Its manner of articulation is simple fricative, which means it is produced by constricting air flow through a narrow channel at the place of articulation, causing turbulence, but without the grooved tongue and directed airflow, or the high frequencies, of a sibilant.

Occurrence

See also

• List of phonetics topics

References

Bibliography

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