Voiced alveolar fricative

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The voiced alveolar fricatives are consonantal sounds. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents these sounds depends on whether a sibilant or non-sibilant fricative is being described.

• The symbol for the alveolar sibilant is z, and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is z. The IPA symbol [z] is not normally used for dental or postalveolar sibilants unless modified by a diacritic ([z̪] and [z̠] respectively).
• The IPA symbol for the alveolar non-sibilant fricative is derived by means of diacritics; it can be ð̠ or ɹ̝.

Coronal fricatives

	Dental	Alveolar	Postalveolar
				retroflex	palato- alveolar	alveolo- palatal
sibilant	z̪	z͇	z̠	ʐ	ʒ	ʑ
non-sibilant	ð	ð̠/ð͇/ɹ̝		ɻ̝

Voiced alveolar sibilant

The voiced alveolar sibilant is common across European language but is relatively uncommon cross-linguistically compared to the voiceless variant. Only about 28% of the world's languages contain a voiced dental or alveolar sibilant. Moreover, 85% of the languages with some form of [z] are languages of Europe, Africa or Western Asia.

In the eastern half of Asia, the Pacific and the Americas, [z] is very rare as a phoneme. The presence of [z] in a given language always implies the presence of a voiceless [s].

Features

Features of the voiced alveolar 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 alveolar, which means it is articulated with either the tip or the blade of the tongue against the alveolar ridge, termed respectively apical and laminal.
• Its phonation type is voiced, which means the vocal cords are vibrating during the articulation.
• 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.

Occurrence

In the following transcriptions, diacritics may be used to distinguish between apical [z̺] and laminal [z̻].

Language		Word	IPA	Meaning	Notes
Albanian		zjarr	[zjar]	'fire'
Catalan		zero	[z̺ɛɾu]	'zero'	See Catalan phonology
Chechen		?/zurma	[zuɾma]	'music'
Czech		zima		'winter'	See Czech phonology
Dutch		zee	[zeː]	'sea'	See Dutch phonology
English		size	[saɪz]	'size'	See English phonology
French		zèbre	[zɛbʀ]	'zebra'	See French phonology
Georgian		ზარი	[ˈzɑɾi]	'bell'
German		süß		'sweet'	See German phonology
Greek	Athens dialect	ζάλη	[ˈz̻ali]	'dizziness'	See Modern Greek phonology
Hungarian		zálog		'escrow'	See Hungarian phonology
Italian		casa	[kaza]	'house'	See Italian phonology
Japanese		全部/zenbu	[zembɯ]	'everything'	See Japanese phonology
Kala Lagaw Ya		zilamiz	[zilʌmiz]	'go'
Occitan	Gascon	casèrna	[kaz̺ɛrno]	'barracks'
	Languedocien	véser	[bez̺e]	'to see'
	Limousin	jòune	[ˈzɒwne]	'young'
Polish		zero		'zero'	See Polish phonology
Portuguese		cazo	[ˈkazu]	'I marry'	See Portuguese phonology
Russian		заезжать	[zəɪˈʑʑætʲ]	'to pick up'	Contrasts with palatalized version. See Russian phonology
Spanish	Latin American	desde	[ˈd̪e̞z̻ð̞e̞]	'since'	See Spanish phonology and seseo.
	Peninsular		[ˈd̪e̞z̺ð̞e̞]
Swahili		lazima	[lɑzimɑ]]]	'must'
Turkish		göz	[gœz]	'eye'	See Turkish phonology
Vietnamese		gio	[zɔ]	'ashes'	See Vietnamese phonology

Voiced alveolar non-sibilant fricative

The nonsibilant alveolar fricative is very rare, and almost always occurs as an allophone of dental fricatives.

Features

The features of the voiceless alveolar non-sibilant fricative are identical to those above, except that,

• Its manner of articulation is simple fricative, which means it is produced by constricting air flow through a narrow channel at the place of articulation, causing turbulence, but without the grooved tongue and directed airflow, or the high frequencies, of a sibilant.

Occurrence

Language		Word	IPA	Meaning	Notes
Icelandic		þakið		'roof'	See Icelandic phonology
English	Scouse	maid		'maid'	Allophone of /t/ See English phonology
	South Africa	round		'round'

See also

• List of phonetics topics

References

Bibliography

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Last updated on Friday February 29, 2008 at 12:08:26 PST (GMT -0800)
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