Fricative

A particular subset of fricatives are sibilants, produced with higher amplitude and pitch, and with the airflow going on to strike the edge of some obstruction (such as the teeth). Examples of sibilants in English are .

The usage of two other terms is less standardized: "Spirant" is an older term used by some American and European phoneticians and phonologists for non-sibilant fricatives. It contrasts with the term "strident", which could just mean "sibilant", but some authors also include labiodental and uvular fricatives in the class.

Types

The airflow is not completely stopped in the production of fricative consonants. In other words, the airflow experiences friction.

Sibilant fricatives

• voiceless coronal sibilant, as in English sip
• voiced coronal sibilant, as in English zip
• voiceless palato-alveolar sibilant, as in English ship
• voiced palato-alveolar sibilant, as in English measure
• voiceless alveolo-palatal sibilant
• voiced alveolo-palatal sibilant
• voiceless retroflex sibilant
• voiced retroflex sibilant

All sibilants are coronal, but may be dental, alveolar, postalveolar, or palatal (retroflex) within that range. However, alongside the differences in place of articulation, they exhibit a variety of tongue shapes. Prototypical retroflexes are subapical and palatal, but they are usually written with the same symbol as the apical postalveolars. The alveolars and dentals may also be either apical or laminal, but this difference is indicated with diacritics rather than with separate symbols.

Non-sibilant fricatives

Median fricatives

• voiceless bilabial fricative
• voiced bilabial fricative
• voiceless labiodental fricative, as in English fine
• voiced labiodental fricative, as in English vine
• voiceless linguolabial fricative
• voiced linguolabial fricative
• voiceless dental non-sibilant fricative, as in English thing
• voiced dental non-sibilant fricative, as in English that
• voiceless alveolar non-sibilant fricative
• voiced alveolar non-sibilant fricative
• Voiceless alveolar fricative trill
• Voiced alveolar fricative trill
• voiceless palatal fricative
• voiced palatal fricative
• voiceless velar fricative
• voiced velar fricative
• voiceless palatal-velar fricative (articulation disputed)

Epiglottal fricatives

• voiceless epiglottal fricative
• voiced epiglottal fricative

Epiglottal fricatives have also been re-analyzed instead as pharyngeal trills.

Velopharyngeal fricatives

• in extIPA voiceless velopharyngeal fricative (often occurs with a cleft palate)
• in extIPA voiced velopharyngeal fricative

Lateral fricatives

• voiceless dental lateral fricative
• voiced dental lateral fricative
• voiceless alveolar lateral fricative
• voiced alveolar lateral fricative
• voiceless postalveolar lateral fricative (Mehri)
• voiced postalveolar lateral fricative
• or extIPA voiceless retroflex lateral fricative
• or extIPA Voiced retroflex lateral fricative (in Ao)
• or or extIPA voiceless palatal lateral fricative
• or extIPA voiced palatal lateral fricative (allophonic in Jebero)
• or extIPA voiceless velar lateral fricative
• or extIPA voiced velar lateral fricative

The lateral fricative occurs as the ll of Welsh, as in Lloyd, Llewelyn, and Machynlleth (, a town), as the unvoiced 'hl' and voiced 'dl' or 'dhl' in the several languages of Southern Africa (such as Xhosa and Zulu), and in Mongolian.

• or and voiceless lateral-median fricative (a laterally lisped or ) (Modern South Arabian)
• or and voiced lateral-median fricative (a laterally lisped or ) (Modern South Arabian)

Guttural fricatives

• voiceless uvular fricative
• voiced uvular fricative
• voiceless pharyngeal fricative
• voiced pharyngeal fricative

No language distinguishes fricatives from approximants at these places, so the same symbol is used for both (depending on the recognition of voiceless approximants for the voiceless fricatives). For the pharyngeals, approximants are generally more common than fricatives. A fricative realization may be specified by adding an uptack to the letters, , or conversely, a downtack may be added to specify an approximant realization, .

(The bilabial approximant and dental approximant do not have dedicated symbols either and are transcribed in a similar fashion: . However, the base letters are generally understood to specifically refer to the fricatives.)

Glottal pseudo-fricatives

• voiceless glottal transition, as in English hat
• breathy-voiced glottal transition

In many languages, such as English or Korean, the glottal "fricatives" are unaccompanied phonation states of the glottis, without any accompanying manner, fricative or otherwise. They may be mistaken for real glottal constrictions in a number of languages, such as Finnish.

Aspirated fricatives

Fricatives are very commonly voiced, though cross-linguistically voiced fricatives are not nearly as common as tenuis ("plain") fricatives. Other phonations are common in languages that have those phonations in their stop consonants. However, phonemically aspirated fricatives are rare. contrasts with a tense, unaspirated in Korean; aspirated fricatives are also found in a few Sino-Tibetan languages, in some Oto-Manguean languages, in the Siouan language Ofo ( and ), and in the (central?) Chumash languages ( and ). The record may be Cone Tibetan, which has four contrastive aspirated fricatives: , , and .

Nasalized fricatives

Phonemically nasalized fricatives are rare. Umbundu has , Kwangali and Souletin Basque have . In Coatzospan Mixtec, appear allophonically before a nasal vowel, and in Igbo nasality is a feature of the syllable; when occur in nasal syllables they are themselves nasalized. A similar feature exists in Eperara, where is an allophone of in nasal syllables.

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