 | Voiced postalveolar fricative: Encyclopedia - Voiced postalveolar fricative
Voiced postalveolar fricative
The voiced palato-alveolar fricative or domed postalveolar fricative is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ʒ, and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is Z. An alternative commonly used in linguistic works, particularly in older or American literature, is ž.
Voiced postalveolar fricative - Features
Features of the voiced postalveolar fricative:
- Its manner of articulation is sibilant fricative, which means it is produced by directing air flow through a groove in the tongue at the place of articulation and directing it over the sharp edge of the teeth, causing high-frequency turbulence.
- Its place of articulation is palato-alveolar, that is, domed (partially palatalized) postalveolar, which means it is articulated with the front of the tongue behind the alveolar ridge, and the body of the tongue bunched up ("domed") at the palate.
- It is an oral consonant, which means air is allowed to escape through the mouth.
- It is a central consonant, which means it is produced by allowing the airstream to flow over the middle of the tongue, rather than the sides.
- The airstream mechanism is pulmonic egressive, which means it is articulated by pushing air out of the lungs and through the vocal tract, rather than from the glottis or the mouth.
Ezh, List of phonetics topics
Voiced postalveolar fricative - In English
The voiced postalveolar fricative occurs in English, although in only a handful of words, and is the sound denoted by the letter 's' in treasure and the final sound of the word mirage. One of the very few minimal contrasts of the voiced and voiceless postalveolar fricatives (for some dialects only) is the pair of words allusion and Aleutian. It usually occurs medially, but may occur word-initially or word-finally in relatively recent borrowings from French.
In English the sound is labialized, [ʒʷ], although few transcriptions bother with this level of detail.
Voiced postalveolar fricative - In other languages
The sound is more common in French, where it is represented by the letter j. The French consonant is labialized, [ʒʷ], as in English.
It also occurs in Russian and Bulgarian as a realization of /ʐ/, represented by the letter Ж (zhe).
It also occurs in Croatian, where it is represented by the letter ž.
It also occurs in Esperanto, represented by the letter Ĵ.
It also occurs word-initially and word-medially in Ladino.
See also
- Ezh
- List of phonetics topics
Categories: Pages containing IPA | Fricative
Other related archivesʒ, Bulgarian, Croatian, English, Esperanto, Ezh, French, Fricative, International Phonetic Alphabet, Ladino, List of phonetics topics, Pages containing IPA, Russian, X-SAMPA, airstream mechanism, alveolar ridge, central consonant, consonantal, fricative, glottis, j, languages, lungs, manner of articulation, oral consonant, palatalized, palate, place of articulation, postalveolar, pulmonic egressive, sibilant, spoken, tongue, turbulence, Ĵ, Ж
 Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Voiced postalveolar fricative", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki |
