The voiceless palatal lateral 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 a few
spoken language
Language is a structured system of communication that consists of grammar and vocabulary. It is the primary means by which humans convey meaning, both in spoken and signed language, signed forms, and may also be conveyed through writing syste ...
s.
This sound is somewhat rare;
Dahalo has both a palatal lateral fricative and 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 ...
;
Hadza has a series of palatal lateral affricates. In
Bura, it is the realization of palatalized and contrasts with .
The
extensions to the IPA transcribes this sound with the letter ( with a belt, analogous to for the
voiceless alveolar lateral fricative), which was added to Unicode in 2021.
If distinction is necessary, the voiceless alveolo-palatal lateral fricative may be transcribed as (
retracted and
palatalized ) or as advanced ; these are essentially equivalent, since the contact includes both the blade and body (but not the tip) of the tongue. The equivalent X-SAMPA symbols are
K_-_j or
K_-' and
L_0_+_r, respectively. A non-IPA letter (devoiced and raised , which is an ordinary "l", plus the curl found in the symbols for alveolo-palatal sibilant fricatives ) can be used.
Some scholars also posit a voiceless palatal lateral approximant distinct from the fricative. The approximant may be represented in the IPA as .
Features
Features of the voiceless palatal lateral fricative:
Occurrence
Notes
References
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See also
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Index of phonetics articles
External links
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Lateral consonants
Pulmonic consonants
Voiceless oral consonants
Palatal consonants
Voiceless lateral approximants