Alveolo-palatal fricative

Alveolo-palatal fricatives are 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 and voiced alveolo-palatal fricative are written ⟨ɕ⟩ and ⟨ʑ⟩ in the International Phonetic Alphabet.

Features

alveolo-palatal sibilant fricatives [ɕ, ʑ]

Features of alveolo-palatal fricatives:^[1]

• 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.
• Its airstream mechanism is pulmonic, which means it is articulated by pushing air solely with the intercostal muscles and abdominal muscles, as in most sounds.

Examples

IPA	Description	Example
		Language	Orthography	IPA	Meaning
ɕ	Voiceless alveolo-palatal sibilant	Mandarin	小 (xiǎo)	[ɕiɑu˨˩˦]	small
ʑ	Voiced alveolo-palatal sibilant	Polish	zioło	[ʑɔwɔ]	herb

See also

• Alveolo-palatal consonant
• Alveolar consonant
• Palatal consonant

References

1. Brinton, Donna & Laurel J. (2010). The Linguistic Structure of Modern English. Netherlands: John Benjamins Publishing. pp. 32, 294. ISBN 9789027211712.