A voiced alveolar affricate is a type of affricate consonant pronounced with the tip or blade of the tongue against the alveolar ridge (gum line) just behind the teeth. There are several types of median affricates with significant perceptual differences:
Voiced alveolar sibilant affricate
A voiced alveolar sibilant affricate is a type of consonantal sound used in some spoken languages. The sound is transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet with or . The tie bar may be omitted, yielding . There is also a ligature , which has been retired by the International Phonetic Association but is still used.
Features
Features of a voiced alveolar sibilant affricate:
- The stop component of this affricate is laminal alveolar, which means it is articulated with the blade of the tongue at the alveolar ridge. For simplicity, this affricate is usually called after the sibilant fricative component.
- There are at least three specific variants of the fricative component:
- Dentalized laminal alveolar (commonly called "dental"), which means it is articulated with the tongue blade very close to the upper front teeth, with the tongue tip resting behind lower front teeth. The hissing effect in this variety of is very strong.
- Non-retracted alveolar, which means it is articulated with either the tip or the blade of the tongue at the alveolar ridge, termed respectively apical and laminal.
- Retracted alveolar, which means it is articulated with either the tip or the blade of the tongue slightly behind the alveolar ridge, termed respectively apical and laminal. Acoustically, it is close to or laminal .
Occurrence
The following sections are named after the fricative component.
Dentalized laminal alveolar
Non-retracted alveolar
Retracted alveolar
Variable
Voiced alveolar non-sibilant affricate
Features
Occurrence
See also
Notes
References
External links