Voiceless alveolar fricative
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Voiceless_alveolar_fricative".

It has been suggested that alveolar ejective fricative be merged into this article or section. (Discuss)

IPA – number	132
IPA – text	s
IPA – image
Entity	s
X-SAMPA	s
Kirshenbaum	s
Sound sample (help·info)

The voiceless 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 s, and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is s. The IPA symbol [s] is not normally used for dental or postalveolar sibilants unless modified by a diacritic ([s̪] and [s̠] respectively).
• The IPA symbol for the alveolar non-sibilant fricative is derived by means of diacritics; it can be θ̠ or ɹ̝̊, or it can be [θ͇], using the alveolar diacritic from the Extended IPA. ^[1]

Voiceless alveolar sibilant

The voiceless alveolar sibilant is one of the most common consonants. If a language has fricatives, it will most likely have an [s].^[2] However, [s] is absent from Australian Aboriginal languages, where fricatives are rare, and the few languages that have developed fricatives do not have sibilants.

Features

Features of the voiceless alveolar sibilant:

• 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 voiceless, which means it is produced without vibrations of the vocal cords.
• 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 [s̺] and laminal [s̻].

Voiceless alveolar non-sibilant fricative

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

• Apical consonant
• Laminal consonant
• List of phonetics topics

References

Bibliography

• Adams, Douglas Q. (1975), "The Distribution of Retracted Sibilants in Medieval Europe", Language 51 (2): 282-292
• Carbonell, Joan F. & Joaquim Llisterri (1992), "Catalan", Journal of the International Phonetic Association 22 (1-2): 53-56
• Cruz-Ferreira, Madalena (1995), "European Portuguese", Journal of the International Phonetic Association 25 (2): 90-94
• Fougeron, Cecile & Caroline L Smith (1993), "Illustrations of the IPA:French", Journal of the International Phonetic Association 23 (2): 73-76
• Gussenhoven, Carlos (1992), "Dutch", Journal of the International Phonetic Association 22 (2): 45-47
• Honeybone, P (2001), "Lenition inhibition in Liverpool English", English Language and Linguistics 5 (2): 213-249
• Jassem, Wiktor (2003), "Polish", Journal of the International Phonetic Association 33 (1): 103-107
• Jones, Daniel & Ward Dennis (1969), The Phonetics of Russian, Cambridge University Press
• Maddieson, Ian (1984), Patterns of Sound, Camebridge University Press
• Marotta, Giovanna & Marlen Barth (2005), "Acoustic and sociolingustic aspects of lenition in Liverpool English", Studi Linguistici e Filologici Online 3 (2): 377-413
• Martínez-Celdrán, Eugenio; Ana Ma. Fernández-Planas & Josefina Carrera-Sabaté (2003), "Castilian Spanish", Journal of the International Phonetic Association 33 (2): 255-259
• Okada, Hideo (1991), "Phonetic Representation:Japanese", Journal of the International Phonetic Association 21 (2): 94-97
• Pandeli, H; J Eska & Martin Ball et al., "Problems of phonetic transcription: the case of the Hiberno-English slit-t", Journal of the International Phonetic Association'' 27: 65-75
• Recasens, Daniel & Maria Dolores Pallarès (2001), "Coarticulation, Assimilation and Blending in Catalan Consonant Clusters", Journal of Phonetics 29 (3): 273-301
• Rogers, Derek & Luciana d'Arcangeli (2004), "Italian", Journal of the International Phonetic Association 34 (1): 117-121
• Shosted, Ryan K. & Chikovani Vakhtang (2006), "Standard Georgian", Journal of the International Phonetic Association 36 (2): 255-264
• Thelwall, Robin (1990), "Illustrations of the IPA: Arabic", Journal of the International Phonetic Association 20 (2): 37-41
• Torreblanca, Máximo (1988), "Latín Basium, Castellano Beso, Catalán Bes, Portugués Beijo", Hispanic Review 56 (3): 343-348