A fricative is a
consonant
In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract. Examples are and pronounced with the lips; and pronounced with the front of the tongue; and pronounced wi ...
produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two
articulators close together.
These may be the lower lip against the upper teeth, in the case of ; the back of the tongue against the
soft palate
The soft palate (also known as the velum, palatal velum, or muscular palate) is, in mammals, the soft tissue constituting the back of the roof of the mouth. The soft palate is part of the palate of the mouth; the other part is the hard palate. ...
in the case of
German (the final consonant of ''
Bach
Johann Sebastian Bach (28 July 1750) was a German composer and musician of the late Baroque period. He is known for his orchestral music such as the ''Brandenburg Concertos''; instrumental compositions such as the Cello Suites; keyboard wor ...
''); or the side of the tongue against the
molars, in the case of
Welsh (appearing twice in the name ''
Llanelli''). This turbulent airflow is called frication.
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.
English , , , and 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. "Strident" could mean just "sibilant", but some authors include also
labiodental
In phonetics, labiodentals are consonants articulated with the lower lip and the upper teeth.
Labiodental consonants in the IPA
The labiodental consonants identified by the International Phonetic Alphabet are:
The IPA chart shades out ''labio ...
and
uvular
Uvulars are consonants articulated with the back of the tongue against or near the uvula, that is, further back in the mouth than velar consonants. Uvulars may be stops, fricatives, nasals, trills, or approximants, though the IPA does not prov ...
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
*
voiceless coronal sibilant, as in English ''s''ip
*
voiced coronal sibilant, as in English ''z''ip
**
voiceless dental sibilant
**
voiced dental sibilant
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 ...
**
voiceless apical sibilant
**
voiced apical sibilant
** voiceless predorsal sibilant (
laminal, with tongue tip at lower teeth)
** voiced predorsal sibilant (laminal)
**
voiceless postalveolar sibilant (laminal)
**
voiced postalveolar sibilant (laminal)
*
voiceless palato-alveolar sibilant (
domed, partially palatalized), as in English ''sh''ip
*
voiced palato-alveolar sibilant (domed, partially palatalized), as the ''si'' in English vi''si''on
*
voiceless alveolo-palatal sibilant
The voiceless alveolo-palatal 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 ("c", plus the curl also found in its voiced counter ...
(laminal, palatalized)
*
voiced alveolo-palatal sibilant
The voiced alveolo-palatal 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 ("z", plus the curl also found in its voiceless counterp ...
(laminal, palatalized)
*
voiceless retroflex sibilant (
apical
Apical means "pertaining to an apex". It may refer to:
*Apical ancestor, refers to the last common ancestor of an entire group, such as a species (biology) or a clan (anthropology)
*Apical (anatomy), an anatomical term of location for features loc ...
or
subapical)
*
voiced retroflex sibilant (apical or subapical)
All
sibilants
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 ...
are
coronal, but may be
dental,
alveolar,
postalveolar, or
palatal
The palate () is the roof of the mouth in humans and other mammals. It separates the oral cavity from the nasal cavity.
A similar structure is found in crocodilians, but in most other tetrapods, the oral and nasal cavities are not truly separ ...
(
retroflex) within that range. However, at the postalveolar place of articulation, the tongue may take several shapes: domed,
laminal, or
apical
Apical means "pertaining to an apex". It may refer to:
*Apical ancestor, refers to the last common ancestor of an entire group, such as a species (biology) or a clan (anthropology)
*Apical (anatomy), an anatomical term of location for features loc ...
, 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
*
voiceless bilabial fricative
*
voiced bilabial fricative
*
voiceless labiodental fricative, as in English ''f''ine
*
voiced labiodental fricative, as in English ''v''ine
*
voiceless linguolabial fricative
*
voiced linguolabial fricative
*
voiceless dental non-sibilant fricative
The voiceless dental non-sibilant fricative is a type of consonantal sound used in some spoken languages. It is familiar to English speakers as the 'th' in ''think''. Though rather rare as a phoneme in the world's inventory of languages, it is en ...
, as in English ''th''ing
*
voiced dental non-sibilant fricative, as in English ''th''at
*
voiceless alveolar non-sibilant fricative
The voiceless alveolar fricatives are a type of fricative consonant pronounced with the tip or blade of the tongue against the alveolar ridge (gum line) just behind the teeth. This refers to a class of sounds, not a single sound. There are at lea ...
*
voiced alveolar non-sibilant fricative
*
voiceless trilled fricative
*
voiced trilled fricative
*
voiceless palatal fricative
The voiceless palatal fricative is a type of consonantal sound used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is C. It is the non-sibilant equi ...
*
voiced palatal fricative
*
voiceless velar fricative
*
voiced velar fricative
*
voiceless palatal-velar fricative
The ''sj''-sound ( sv, sj-ljudet ) is a voiceless fricative phoneme found in most dialects of the sound system of Swedish. It has a variety of realisations, whose precise phonetic characterisation is a matter of debate, but which usually featur ...
(articulation disputed)
The IPA also has letters for epiglottal fricatives,
*
voiceless epiglottal fricative
*
voiced epiglottal fricative
The voiced epiglottal or pharyngeal trill, or voiced epiglottal fricative,John Esling (2010) "Phonetic Notation", in Hardcastle, Laver & Gibbon (eds) ''The Handbook of Phonetic Sciences'', 2nd ed., p 695. is a type of consonantal sound, used in s ...
with allophonic trilling, but these might be better analyzed as pharyngeal trills.
*
voiceless velopharyngeal fricative (often occurs with a
cleft palate
A cleft lip contains an opening in the upper lip that may extend into the nose. The opening may be on one side, both sides, or in the middle. A cleft palate occurs when the palate (the roof of the mouth) contains an opening into the nose. The ...
)
*
voiced velopharyngeal fricative
Lateral fricatives
*
voiceless dental lateral fricative
*
voiced dental lateral fricative
*
voiceless alveolar lateral fricative
*
voiced alveolar lateral fricative
*
voiceless postalveolar lateral fricative
In linguistics, voicelessness is the property of sounds being pronounced without the larynx vibrating. Phonologically, it is a type of phonation, which contrasts with other states of the larynx, but some object that the word phonation implies v ...
(
Mehri)
*
voiced postalveolar lateral fricative
* or extIPA
voiceless retroflex lateral fricative
The voiceless retroflex lateral fricative is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The IPA has no symbol for this sound. However, the "belt" of the voiceless lateral fricative is combined with the tail of the retroflex con ...
* or extIPA
Voiced retroflex lateral fricative
The voiced retroflex lateral fricative is a type of consonantal sound. The IPA has no symbol for this sound, though there is an extIPA letter for it, , added to Unicode in 2021.
Features
Features of the voiced retroflex lateral fricative:
...
(in
Ao)
* or or extIPA
voiceless palatal lateral fricative
* or extIPA
voiced palatal lateral fricative (allophonic in
Jebero)
* or extIPA
voiceless velar lateral fricative
* or extIPA
voiced velar lateral fricative
The lateral fricative occurs as the ''ll'' of
Welsh, as in ''
Lloyd'', ''
Llewelyn'', and ''
Machynlleth
Machynlleth () is a market town, community and electoral ward in Powys, Wales and within the historic boundaries of Montgomeryshire. It is in the Dyfi Valley at the intersection of the A487 and the A489 roads. At the 2001 Census it had a pop ...
'' (, a town), as the unvoiced 'hl' and voiced 'dl' or 'dhl' in the several languages of Southern Africa (such as
Xhosa
Xhosa may refer to:
* Xhosa people, a nation, and ethnic group, who live in south-central and southeasterly region of South Africa
* Xhosa language, one of the 11 official languages of South Africa, principally spoken by the Xhosa people
See als ...
and
Zulu), and in Mongolian.
* or and
voiceless grooved lateral alveolar fricative
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 ''Larr ...
(a
laterally lisped or ) (Modern South Arabian)
* or and
voiced grooved lateral alveolar fricative (a laterally lisped or ) (Modern South Arabian)
IPA letters used for both fricatives and approximants
*
voiceless uvular fricative
The voiceless uvular fricative is a type of consonantal sound used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , the Greek chi. The sound is represented by (ex with underdot) in Am ...
*
voiced uvular fricative
The voiced uvular fricative is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , an inverted small uppercase letter , or in broad transcription if rhot ...
*
voiceless pharyngeal fricative
*
voiced pharyngeal fricative
No language distinguishes voiced 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, . Likewise, the
downtack may be added to specify an approximant realization, .
(The
bilabial approximant
The voiced bilabial fricative is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is B. The official symbol is the G ...
and
dental approximant
The voiced dental fricative is a consonant sound used in some spoken languages. It is familiar to English-speakers as the ''th'' sound in ''father''. Its symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet is eth, or and was taken from the Old Engl ...
do not have dedicated symbols either and are transcribed in a similar fashion: . However, the base letters are understood to specifically refer to the fricatives.)
Pseudo-fricatives
*
voiceless glottal transition, as in English ''hat''
*
breathy-voiced glottal transition
In many languages, such as English, the glottal "fricatives" are unaccompanied
phonation states of the glottis, without any accompanying
manner, fricative or otherwise. However, in languages such as Arabic, they are true fricatives.
In addition, is usually called a "
voiceless labial-velar fricative
In linguistics, voicelessness is the property of sounds being pronounced without the larynx vibrating. Phonologically, it is a type of phonation, which contrasts with other states of the larynx, but some object that the word phonation implies ...
", but it is actually an approximant. True doubly articulated fricatives may not occur in any language; but see
voiceless palatal-velar fricative
The ''sj''-sound ( sv, sj-ljudet ) is a voiceless fricative phoneme found in most dialects of the sound system of Swedish. It has a variety of realisations, whose precise phonetic characterisation is a matter of debate, but which usually featur ...
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. contrasts with a tense, unaspirated in
Korean
Korean may refer to:
People and culture
* Koreans, ethnic group originating in the Korean Peninsula
* Korean cuisine
* Korean culture
* Korean language
**Korean alphabet, known as Hangul or Chosŏn'gŭl
**Korean dialects and the Jeju language
** ...
; aspirated fricatives are also found in a few
Sino-Tibetan languages, in some
Oto-Manguean languages, in the Siouan language
Ofo ( and ), and in the (central?)
Chumash languages ( and ). The record may be
Cone Tibetan, which has four contrastive aspirated fricatives: , , and .
Nasalized fricatives
Phonemically
nasalized
In phonetics, nasalization (or nasalisation) is the production of a sound while the velum is lowered, so that some air escapes through the nose during the production of the sound by the mouth. An archetypal nasal sound is .
In the Internationa ...
fricatives are rare.
Umbundu
Umbundu, or South Mbundu (autonym umb, úmbúndú), one of many Bantu languages, is the most widely-spoken autochthonous language of Angola. Its speakers are known as ''Ovimbundu'' and are an ethnic group constituting a third of Angola's popula ...
has and Kwangali and
Souletin Basque have . In
Coatzospan Mixtec
Coatzospan Mixtec (Coatzóspam Mixtec) is a Mixtec language of Oaxaca spoken in the town of San Juan Coatzospan.
Phonology
Consonants in parentheses are marginal.
In women's speech, is realized as before front vowels.
Vowel qualities ar ...
, appear allophonically before a nasal vowel, and in Igbo nasality is a feature of the syllable; when occur in nasal syllables they are themselves nasalized.
----
Occurrence
Until its extinction,
Ubykh may have been the language with the most fricatives (29 not including ), 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. 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
New Guinea (; Hiri Motu: ''Niu Gini''; id, Papua, or , historically ) is the world's second-largest island with an area of . Located in Oceania in the southwestern Pacific Ocean, the island is separated from Australia by the wide Torr ...
and South America that have especially small numbers of consonants. However, whereas is ''entirely'' unknown in indigenous Australian languages, most of the other languages without true fricatives do have 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
Mandarin (; ) is a group of Chinese (Sinitic) dialects that are natively spoken across most of northern and southwestern China. The group includes the Beijing dialect, the basis of the phonology of Standard Chinese, the official language ...
,
Korean
Korean may refer to:
People and culture
* Koreans, ethnic group originating in the Korean Peninsula
* Korean cuisine
* Korean culture
* Korean language
**Korean alphabet, known as Hangul or Chosŏn'gŭl
**Korean dialects and the Jeju language
** ...
, the
Dravidian and
Austronesian languages, typically do not have such voiced fricatives as and , which are familiar to many European speakers. 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.
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.
This phenomenon occurs because voiced fricatives have developed from
lenition
In linguistics, lenition is a sound change that alters consonants, making them more sonorous. The word ''lenition'' itself means "softening" or "weakening" (from Latin 'weak'). Lenition can happen both synchronically (within a language at a pa ...
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 but lack . (Relatedly, several languages have the
voiced affricate but lack , and vice versa.) The fricatives that occur most often without a voiceless counterpart are – in order of ratio of unpaired occurrences to total occurrences – , , , and .
Acoustics
Fricatives appear in
waveforms
In electronics, acoustics, and related fields, the waveform of a signal is the shape of its graph as a function of time, independent of its time and magnitude scales and of any displacement in time.David Crecraft, David Gorham, ''Electron ...
as somewhat random noise caused by the turbulent airflow, upon which a periodic pattern is overlaid if voiced. Fricatives produced in the front of the mouth tend to have energy concentration at higher frequencies than ones produced in the back. 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.
See also
*
Apical consonant
*
Hush consonant
*
Laminal consonant
A laminal consonant is a phone (speech sound) produced by obstructing the air passage with the blade of the tongue, the flat top front surface just behind the tip of the tongue in contact
with upper lip, teeth, alveolar ridge, to possibly, a ...
*
List of phonetics topics
A
* Acoustic phonetics
* Active articulator
* Affricate
* Airstream mechanism
* Alexander John Ellis
* Alexander Melville Bell
* Alfred C. Gimson
* Allophone
* Alveolar approximant ()
* Alveolar click ()
* Alveolar consonant
* Alveolar ej ...
Notes
References
External links
Fricatives in English
{{DEFAULTSORT:Fricative Consonant
Manner of articulation