Voiceless dental and alveolar lateral fricatives

A voiceless alveolar lateral fricative is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages.

The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents voiceless dental, alveolar, and postalveolar lateral fricatives is . The symbol is called "belted l" and is distinct from "l with tilde", , which transcribes a different soundthe velarized (or pharynɡealized) alveolar lateral approximant, often called "dark L".

A voiceless alveolar lateral approximant is transcribed in IPA as . In Sino-Tibetan languages,

argue that Burmese and Standard Tibetan have voiceless lateral approximants and Li Fang-Kuei & William Baxter contrast apophonically the voiceless alveolar lateral approximant from its voiced counterpart in the reconstruction of Old Chinese. A voiceless dental or alveolar lateral approximant is found as an allophone of its voiced counterpart in British English and Philadelphia English after voiceless coronal and labial stops, and it is velarized before back vowels; the allophone of after is most commonly as a voiceless velar lateral approximant. See English phonology.

Features

Features of a voiceless alveolar lateral fricative:

Occurrence

Lateral fricatives are common among indigenous languages of western North America, such as Nahuatl, Tlingit and Navajo, and in North Caucasian languages, such as Avar. It is also found in African languages, such as Zulu, and Asian languages, such as Chukchi, some Yue dialects like Taishanese, the Hlai languages of Hainan, and several Formosan languages and dialects in Taiwan.

Lateral fricatives are rare in European languages outside the Caucasus, but it is found notably in Welsh, in which it is written . Several Welsh names beginning with this sound (Llwyd , Llywelyn ) have been borrowed into English and then retain the Welsh spelling but are pronounced with an (Lloyd, Llewellyn), or they are substituted with (pronounced ) (Floyd, Fluellen). It was also found in certain dialects of Lithuanian Yiddish.

Modern South Arabian languages are known for their apparent archaic Semitic features, especially in their system of phonology. For example, they preserve the lateral fricatives and / of Proto-Semitic. Except for the Modern South Arabian languages, every other extant Semitic language has merged Proto-Semitic *s2 into one of the two other plain sibilants.

The phoneme was reconstructed for the most ancient Hebrew speech of the Ancient Israelites. The orthography of Biblical Hebrew, however, did not directly indicate it. It is, however, attested by later developments: was written with , but the letter was also used for the sound . Later, merged with , a sound that had been written only with . As a result, three etymologically distinct modern Hebrew phonemes can be distinguished: written , written (with later niqqud pointing שׁ), and evolving from and written (with later niqqud pointing שׂ). The specific pronunciation of evolving to from is known based on comparative evidence since is the corresponding Proto-Semitic phoneme and is still attested in Modern South Arabian languages, and early borrowings indicate it from Ancient Hebrew (e.g. < Greek < Hebrew ). The phoneme began to merge with in Late Biblical Hebrew, as is indicated by interchange of orthographic and , possibly under the influence of Aramaic, and became the rule in Mishnaic Hebrew. In all Jewish reading traditions, and have merged completely, but in Samaritan Hebrew has instead merged into . In Sindarin, it is written as initially and medially and finally, and in Quenya, it appears only initially and is written .

Dental or denti-alveolar

{| class="wikitable"

!colspan=2| Language

! Word

! IPA

! Meaning

! Notes

| Amis

| Kangko dialect

| 'bowl'

| Allophonic variation of word-final and sometimes word-initial .

|colspan=2| Mapudungun

| 'phlegm that is spit'

| Interdental; possible utterance-final allophone of .

| Norwegian

| Trondheim dialect

| 'sold'

| Laminal denti-alveolar; allophone of . Also described as an approximant. See Norwegian phonology

|colspan=2| Sahaptin

| colspan="2" |

| 'moccasins'

| Contrasts approximant .

Alveolar

{| class="wikitable"

!colspan=2| Language

! Word

! IPA

! Meaning

! Notes

|colspan=2| Adyghe

| / /

| 'red'

|colspan=2| Ahtna

| 'mountain'

|colspan=2| Avar

| / /

| 'three'

|colspan=2| Basay

| 'water'

| Berber

| Ait Seghrouchen

| 'not yet'

| Allophone of .

|colspan=2| Brahui

| / teļ

| 'scorpion'

| Contrasts with .

| Bunun

| Isbukun dialect

| 'mountain'

| Voiceless allophone of among some speakers.

|colspan=2| Bura

|batli

|'early forenoon (7-9am)'

| Contrasts with and .

| colspan="2" | Central Alaskan Yup'ik

| 'arm'

| Cherokee

| Oklahoma Cherokee

| ,

| 'not', 'dog'

| In free variation with affricate among some speakers. Also an alternative pronunciation of voiceless lateral approximant , a realization of cluster .

|colspan=2| Chickasaw

| 'it is dry'

|rowspan=3 | Chinese

| Taishanese

| rowspan="2" | 三

| rowspan="2" |

| rowspan="2" | 'three'

| Corresponds to in Standard Cantonese

| Pinghua

| Pu-Xian Min

| 'sand'

|colspan=2| Chipewyan

| 'fish'

|colspan=2| Chukchi

| colspan="2" |

| 'shoes'

|colspan=2| Dahalo

|colspan=2|

| 'stew'

| Contrasts palatal and labialized .

|colspan=2| Damin

| l*i

| 'fish'

| Ingressive with egressive glottalic release

|colspan=2| Deg Xinag

| 'she is teaching them'

|colspan=2| Dogrib

| 'smoke'

| Contrasts voiced .

|colspan=2| Eyak

| 'woman'

| Contrasts approximant .

|colspan=2| Fali

|colspan=2|

| 'shoulder'

|colspan=2| Forest Nenets

| 'rain'

| Contrasts palatalized .

|colspan=2| Greenlandic

| 'house'

| Realization of underlying geminate . See Greenlandic phonology

|colspan=2| Hadza

| 'man'

|colspan=2| Haida

| 'six'

|colspan=2| Halkomelem

| 'wet'

| Attested in at least the Musqueam dialect.

| colspan="2" |Hla'alua

|'vegetable'

| colspan="2" |Hlai

| colspan="2" |

|'fish'

| Contrasts voiced approximant .

|colspan=2| Hmong

| 'moon'

|colspan=2| Inuktitut

| 'grizzly bear'

| See Inuit phonology

|colspan=2| Kabardian

| / /

| 'blood'

| Contrasts voiced and glottalic .

|colspan=2| Kaska

| tsį̄ł

| 'axe'

|Kham

|Gamale Kham

|'leaf'

|colspan=2| Khroskyabs

| 'kill' (causative)

|colspan=2| Lillooet

| 'rash'

|colspan=2| Lushootseed

| 'sun'

|colspan=2| Mapudungun

| 'a different song'

| Possible utterance-final allophone of .

| colspan="2" |Mehri

|'milk'

|Contrasts with , and .

|colspan=2| Mochica

| Phaseolus lunatus

|colspan=2| Moloko

| 'cow'

|colspan=2| Mongolian

| 'Wednesday'

| Only in loanwords from Tibetan; here from ལྷག་པ (lhag-pa)

|colspan=2| Muscogee

| 'grape'

|colspan=2| Nahuatl

| 'city'

| Allophone of

|colspan=2| Navajo

| 'some'

| See Navajo phonology

|colspan=2| Nisga'a

| 'sun'

| Norwegian

| Trøndersk

| 'weak', 'small'

| Contrasts alveolar approximant , apical postalveolar approximant , and laminal postalveolar approximant .

| colspan="2" |Nuosu

| colspan="2" |

| 'to fry'

| Contrasts approximant .

|colspan=2| Nuxalk

| 'thick'

| Contrasts with affricates and , and approximant .

|colspan=2| Saanich

| 'splash'

|colspan=2| Sandawe

| 'goat'

|colspan=2| Sassarese

| 'dead'

|colspan=2| Sawi

| 'three'

| Contrasts approximant . Developed from earlier *tr- consonant cluster.

| colspan="2" |Shehri

|'old'

|Contrasts with , and .

| rowspan="2" | Swedish

| Jämtlandic

| 'cold'

| Also occurs in dialects in Dalarna and Härjedalen. See Swedish phonology

|Västerbotten dialect

|[beɬː]

|'bridle'

|colspan=2| Taos

| 'wife'

| See Taos phonology

|colspan=2| Tera

| 'side'

|colspan=2| Thao

| 'star'

|colspan=2| Tlingit

| 'Tlingit'

|colspan=2| Toda

| 'to learn'

| Contrasts .

|Ukrainian

|Poltava subdialect

|'milk'

|Occurs only in Poltava subdialect of Central Dniprovian dialect.

|colspan=2| Tsez

| 'water'

| Vietnamese

| Gin dialect

| 'small'

|colspan=2| Welsh

| 'kettle'

| See Welsh phonology

|colspan=2| Xhosa

| 'we stay'

| colspan="2" |Yurok

|'earring'

|colspan=2| Zulu

| 'twig'

| Contrasts voiced .

|colspan=2| Zuni

| 'ten'

Alveolar approximant

{| class="wikitable"

! colspan="2" | Language

! Word

! IPA

! Meaning

! Notes

| Aleut

| Western Aleut

| 'boy'

| Contrasts with voiced /l/. Merged in Eastern Aleut.

| colspan=2| Burmese

| 'beautiful'

| Contrasts with voiced /l/.

| Danish

| Standard

| 'square'

| Before , aspiration of is realized as devoicing of . See Danish phonology

| rowspan="2" | English|| Cardiff || rowspan="2" | plus || rowspan="2" | || rowspan="2" | 'plus' ||rowspan="2" | See English phonology

| Norfolk

|colspan=2| Estonian

| 'juice'

| Word-final allophone of after . See Estonian phonology

|colspan=2| Faroese

| 'to help'

| Allophone of before fortis plosives.

|colspan=2| French

| 'people'

| Devoiced allophone of , occurs after voiceless obstruents. Often gains voicing midway.

| colspan="2" |Iaai

| colspan="2" |

|'black'

|Contrasts with voiced /l/.

|colspan=2| Icelandic

| 'barn'

| Realisation of underlying . Allophone of before fortis plosives and utterance finally. In free variation with the globaly more common fricative.

| colspan="2" |Kildin Sámi

|тоӆсэ

|[ˈtol̥sɛ]

|'to keep the flame alive'

|Contrasts with /l/, /l̥ʲ/, /lʲ/, and /ʎ/.

| Northern Sámi

| Eastern Inland

| 'salary'

| Allophone of underlying cluster .

| colspan="2" |Pipil

| colspan="3" |

| Contrasted voiced in some now-extinct dialects.

|colspan=2| Scottish Gaelic

| 'blow, knock'

| Allophone of before a pre-aspirated plosive.

| colspan="2" | Southern Nambikwara

| colspan="2" |

| 'cane toad'

| Allophonic variation of .

| colspan="2" |Tibetan

|'Lhasa'

|Ukrainian

|Standard

|'sense'

|Word-final allophone of after voiceless consonants. See Ukrainian phonology

| rowspan="2" |Xumi

|Lower

| colspan="2" |[ʁul̥o˦]

|'head'

|Upper

| colspan="2" |[bə˦l̥ä̝˦]

|'to open a lock'

|Described as an approximant. Contrasts with the voiced .

Velarized dental or alveolar approximant

{| class="wikitable" style="clear: both;"

! colspan="2"|Language !! Word !! IPA!! Meaning !! Notes

| rowspan="1" | English

| Some Philadelphia speakers || plus || || 'plus' || See English phonology

| colspan="2" |Georgian

| colspan="3" rowspan="5" |

|Allophonic

| colspan="2" |Irish Gaelic

|Phonemic

| colspan="2" |Ket

|Allophonic

| colspan="2" |Moksha

| Phonemic, but may be [ɬˠ] instead

| colspan="2" |Russian

|Allophonic

|colspan=2| Scottish Gaelic

| 'hair'

| Allophone of before a pre-aspirated plosive or in word-final position.

|Sámi

|Ter

| colspan="3" |

| Phonemic

|colspan=2| Turkish

| 'way'

| Devoiced allophone of velarized dental , frequent finally and before voiceless consonants. See Turkish phonology

Voiceless lateral-median fricative

A voiceless alveolar lateral–median fricative (also known as a "lisp" fricative) is a consonantal sound pronounced with simultaneous lateral and central airflow.

Features

However, it does not have the grooved tongue and directed airflow, or the high frequencies, of a sibilant.

Occurrence

{| class="wikitable"

! colspan="2" |Language !! Word !! IPA !! Meaning !! Notes

|rowspan=2| Arabic

| Al-Rubūah dialect

| 'anguish'

| Classical Arabic and Modern Standard Arabic

| [dialect missing]

| 'thirsty'

| Classical and Modern Standard Arabic

|English

|Lateral lisp

|send

|'send'

|Occurs as a replacement for

Capital letter

thumb|upright=0.5|Capital letter L with belt|class=skin-invert-image

Since the IPA letter "ɬ" has been adopted into the standard orthographies for many native North American languages, a capital letter L with belt "Ɬ" was requested by academics and added to the Unicode Standard version 7.0 in 2014 at U+A7AD. This is distinct from the small capital used for a voiceless velar lateral fricative.

Notes

References

Official database:

Voiceless dental and alveolar lateral fricatives

Features

Occurrence

Dental or denti-alveolar

Alveolar

Alveolar approximant

Velarized dental or alveolar approximant

Voiceless lateral-median fricative

Features

Occurrence

Capital letter

See also

Notes

References

Further reading

External links