A voiceless 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:
- A voiceless alveolar sibilant affricate is the most common type, similar to the ts in English cats.
- A voiceless alveolar non-sibilant affricate . It is found as a regional realization of the sequence in some Sicilian dialects of Standard Italian.
- A voiceless alveolar retracted sibilant affricate , also called apico-alveolar or grave, has a weak hushing sound reminiscent of affricates. One language in which it is found is Basque, where it contrasts with a more conventional non-retracted laminal alveolar affricate.
This article discusses the first two.
Voiceless alveolar sibilant affricate
A voiceless 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. A voiceless alveolar affricate occurs in many Indo-European languages, such as German (which was also part of the High German consonant shift), Kashmiri, Marathi,
Pashto, Russian and most other Slavic languages such as Polish and Serbo-Croatian; also, among many others, in Georgian, in Mongolia, and Tibetan Sanskrit, in Japanese, in Mandarin Chinese, and in Cantonese. Some international auxiliary languages, such as Esperanto, Ido and Interlingua also include this sound.
Features
Features of a voiceless 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 described by 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
{| class="wikitable"
!colspan=2| Language !! Word !! IPA !! Meaning !! Notes
|-
| Armenian || Eastern || /canc
| || 'net' || Contrasts aspirated and unaspirated forms
|-
| colspan=2| Basque || || || 'cold' || Contrasts with a sibilant affricate with an apical fricative component. || || || ||
|-
| colspan=2| Kazakh || rowspan="2" | /investitsiya || rowspan="2" | || rowspan="2" | 'price' || rowspan="2" | Only in loanwords from Russian See Kazakh phonology and Kyrgyz phonology
|-
| colspan=2| Kyrgyz
|-
| colspan=2| Latvian || || || 'price' || See Latvian phonology
|-
| colspan=2| Macedonian || /cvet || || 'flower' || See Macedonian phonology
|-
| colspan=2| Pashto || /śalor || || 'four' || See Pashto phonology
|-
| colspan=2| Polish || || || 'what' || See Polish phonology
|-
| colspan=2| Romanian || || || 'price' || See Romanian phonology
|-
| colspan=2| Russian || /caŕ || || 'Tsar' || See Russian phonology
|-
| colspan=2| Serbo-Croatian || / / ڄیڵ || || 'target' || See Serbo-Croatian phonology
|-
| colspan=2| Slovak || || || 'emperor' || See Slovak phonology
|-
| colspan=2| Slovene || || || 'bloom' || See Slovene phonology
|-
| Spanish || Andalusian || || || 'rest' || See Andalusian Spanish
|-
|colspan=2| Tyap || || || 'to begin' ||
|-
| colspan=2| Ukrainian || /cej || || 'this one' || Contrasting palatalization. See Ukrainian phonology
|-
| colspan=2| Upper Sorbian || || || 'onion' ||
|-
| colspan=2| Uzbek || || || ||
|-
|}
Non-retracted alveolar
{| class="wikitable"
!colspan=2| Language !! Word !! IPA !! Meaning !! Notes
|-
| Arabic || Najdi || /tsalb || || 'dog' || Corresponds to and in other dialects
|-
| rowspan="2" | Asturian || Some dialects || || || 'eight' || Corresponds to standard
|-
|Ḷḷena, Mieres, and others
| ḷḷuna
|
| 'moon'
| Alveolar realization of che vaqueira instead of normal retroflex
|-
| colspan=2| Basque || / || || 'original person' or 'Blackfoot Person' ||
|-
| colspan=2| Catalan || || || 'maybe' || The fricative component is apical. Only restricted to morpheme boundaries, some linguistics do not consider it a phoneme (but a sequence of + ). Long and short versions of intervocalic affricates are in free variation in Central Catalan ~ . See Catalan phonology
|-
| colspan=2| Central Alaskan Yup'ik || || || 'four' || Allophone of before schwa
|-
| colspan=2| Chamorro || || || 'Chamorro' || Spelled in the orthography used in the Northern Mariana Islands.
|-
| colspan="2" | Chechen || / / || || 'sieve' ||
|-
|colspan=2| Cherokee || ' || || 'Cherokee' ||
|-
| Danish || Standard || || || 'two' || The fricative component is apical. In some accents, it is realized as . Usually transcribed or . Contrasts with the unaspirated stop , which is usually transcribed or . See Danish phonology
|-
| colspan="2" | Dargwa || / / || || 'unity, oneness' ||
|-
| Dutch || Orsmaal-Gussenhoven dialect || mat || || 'market' || Optional pre-pausal allophone of . See Orsmaal-Gussenhoven dialect phonology
|-
| rowspan="8" |English || Broad Cockney || rowspan="7" | tea || || rowspan="7" | 'tea' || rowspan=2 | Possible word-initial, intervocalic and word-final allophone of . See English phonology
|-
| Received Pronunciation || rowspan=3 |
|-
| New York || Possible syllable-initial and sometimes also utterance-final allophone of . See English phonology
|-
| New Zealand || Word-initial allophone of . See English phonology
|-
| North Wales || rowspan="3" | || Word-initial and word-final allophone of ; in free variation with a strongly aspirated stop . See English phonology
|-
|Port Talbot<!-- A locale in South West Wales. Do not merge with North Wales. -->
|Allophone of . In free variation with .
|-
| colspan="2" | Hebrew || /tzel || || ||
|-
| colspan="2" | Hmong Daw || || || || Contrast aspirated and non-aspirated versions.
|-
| Korean
| North Korean || / || || 'North Korea'|| Corresponds to /t͡ɕ/ in South Korean. See Korean phonology
|-
| colspan=2| Luxembourgish || || || 'train' || See Luxembourgish phonology
|-
| colspan="2" |Marathi
| चमचा/tsamtsā
|
| 'spoon'
| Represented by , which also represents . It is not a marked difference.
|-
| colspan="2" |Nepali
| /tsāp
|
| 'pressure'
| Contrasts aspirated and unaspirated versions. The unaspirated is represented by . The aspirated sound is represented by . See Nepali phonology
|-
| rowspan=3| Portuguese || European || || || 'lifeless part' || rowspan=2| Allophone of before , or assimilation due to the deletion of . Increasingly used in Brazil.
|-
| Brazilian || || || 'shiatsu' || Marginal sound. Many Brazilians might break the affricate with epenthetic , often subsequently palatalizing , specially in pre-tonic contexts (e.g. ). See Portuguese phonology
|-
| rowspan="4" | Spanish || Madrid || rowspan=2| || rowspan=2| || rowspan=2| 'wide' || rowspan=3| Palatalized;
|-
| colspan=2| Telugu
| /ĉaṭṭi
|
| 'pot'
|
|}
Variable
{| class="wikitable"
!colspan=2| Language !! Word !! IPA !! Meaning !! Notes
|-
| German || Standard || || || 'time' || The fricative component varies between dentalized laminal, non-retracted laminal and non-retracted apical. See Standard German phonology
|-
| Italian || Standard || || || 'grace' || The fricative component varies between dentalized laminal and non-retracted apical. In the latter case, the stop component is laminal denti-alveolar. See Italian phonology
|}
Voiceless alveolar non-sibilant affricate
Features
Occurrence
{| class="wikitable"
!colspan=2| Language !! Word !! IPA !! Meaning !! Notes
|-
| Dutch || Orsmaal-Gussenhoven dialect || || || 'passer-by' || A possible realization of word-final before pauses.
|-
| rowspan=2 | English || General American || rowspan=2 | tree || rowspan=2 | || rowspan=2 | 'tree' || rowspan=2 | Phonetic realization of the stressed, syllable-initial sequence ; more commonly postalveolar . See English phonology
|-
| Received Pronunciation
|-
| Italian || Sicily || || || 'foreign' || Apical. Regional realization of the sequence ; may be a sequence or instead (spaces added for distinction). See Italian phonology
|}
See also
- Index of phonetics articles