The voiceless alveolo-palatal sibilant fricative is a type of

consonant In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract, except for the h sound, which is pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Examples are and pronou ...

al sound, used in some

spoken language A spoken language is a form of communication produced through articulate sounds or, in some cases, through manual gestures, as opposed to written language. Oral or vocal languages are those produced using the vocal tract, whereas sign languages ar ...

s. The symbol in the

International Phonetic Alphabet The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is an alphabetic system of phonetic notation based primarily on the Latin script. It was devised by the International Phonetic Association in the late 19th century as a standard written representation ...

that represents this sound is ("c", plus the curl also found in its

voiced Voice or voicing is a term used in phonetics and phonology to characterize speech sounds (usually consonants). Speech sounds can be described as either voiceless (otherwise known as ''unvoiced'') or voiced. The term, however, is used to refe ...

counterpart ). It is the

sibilant Sibilants (from 'hissing') are fricative and affricate 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 w ...

equivalent of the voiceless palatal fricative, and as such it can be transcribed in IPA with .

Features

Features of the voiceless alveolo-palatal fricative:

In English

In British

Received Pronunciation Received Pronunciation (RP) is the Accent (sociolinguistics), accent of British English regarded as the Standard language, standard one, carrying the highest Prestige (sociolinguistics), social prestige, since as late as the beginning of the 2 ...

, after syllable-initial (as in ''Tuesday'') is realized as a devoiced palatal fricative. The amount of devoicing is variable, but the fully voiceless variant tends to be alveolo-palatal in the sequence: . It is a fricative, rather than a fricative element of an

affricate An affricate is a consonant that begins as a stop and releases as a fricative, generally with the same place of articulation (most often coronal). It is often difficult to decide if a stop and fricative form a single phoneme or a consonant pai ...

because the preceding plosive remains alveolar, rather than becoming alveolo-palatal, as in Dutch., . The first source specifies the place of articulation of after as more front than the main allophone of . The corresponding affricate can be written with or in narrow IPA, though is normally used in both cases. In the case of English, the sequence can be specified as as is normally apical (although somewhat palatalized in that sequence), whereas alveolo-palatal consonants are

laminal 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, ...

by definition. An increasing number of British speakers merge this sequence with the voiceless palato-alveolar affricate : (see yod-coalescence), mirroring

Cockney Cockney is a dialect of the English language, mainly spoken in London and its environs, particularly by Londoners with working-class and lower middle class roots. The term ''Cockney'' is also used as a demonym for a person from the East End, ...

Australian English Australian English (AusE, AusEng, AuE, AuEng, en-AU) is the set of variety (linguistics), varieties of the English language native to Australia. It is the country's common language and ''de facto'' national language. While Australia has no of ...

and

New Zealand English New Zealand English (NZE) is the variant of the English language spoken and written by most English-speaking New Zealanders. Its language code in ISO and Internet standards is en-NZ. It is the first language of the majority of the populati ...

. On the other hand, there is an opposite tendency in

Canadian Canadians () are people identified with the country of Canada. This connection may be residential, legal, historical or cultural. For most Canadians, many (or all) of these connections exist and are collectively the source of their being ''C ...

accents that have preserved , where the sequence tends to merge with the plain instead: (see

yod-dropping The phonological history of English includes various changes in the phonology of consonant clusters. H-cluster reductions The H-cluster reductions are various consonant reductions that have occurred in the history of English, involving conso ...

), mirroring

General American General American English, known in linguistics simply as General American (abbreviated GA or GenAm), is the umbrella accent of American English used by a majority of Americans, encompassing a continuum rather than a single unified accent. ...

which does not allow to follow alveolar consonants in stressed syllables.

Occurrence

References

Sources

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External links