Alveolo palatal fricative

Updated on Jan 15, 2024

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Alveolo-palatal fricative is a class of consonants in some oral languages. The consonants are sibilants, a variety of fricative. Their place of articulation is postalveolar. They differ in voicing.

The voiceless alveolo-palatal fricative is written ɕ in the International Phonetic Alphabet.

The voiced alveolo-palatal fricative, written ʑ, is similar to the voiced postalveolar fricative in English words such as Asia.

Features

Features of alveolo-palatal fricatives:

Its manner of articulation is fricative, which means it is produced by constricting air flow through a narrow channel at the place of articulation, causing turbulence.

Its place of articulation is alveolo-palatal. This means that:

Its place of articulation is postalveolar, meaning that the tongue contacts the roof of the mouth in the area behind the alveolar ridge (the gum line).

Its tongue shape is laminal, meaning that it is the tongue blade that contacts the roof of the mouth.

It is heavily palatalized, meaning that the middle of the tongue is bowed and raised towards the hard palate.

It is an oral consonant, which means air is allowed to escape through the mouth only.

It is a central consonant, which means it is produced by directing the airstream along the center of the tongue, rather than to the sides.

The airstream mechanism is pulmonic, which means it is articulated by pushing air solely with the lungs and diaphragm, as in most sounds.

References

Alveolo-palatal fricative Wikipedia

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