Voiceless retroflex affricate
The voiceless retroflex affricate is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbols in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound are [ʈ͡ʂ], sometimes simplified to [tʂ],[1] and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is ts`.
The affricate occurs in a number of languages:
- some Slavic languages: Polish and in Old Czech language
- Mandarin Chinese (contrasts an aspirated and non-aspirated form (ch and zh respectively))
- a number of Northwest Caucasian languages have retroflex affricates that contrast in secondary articulations like labialization.
Features
Features of the voiceless retroflex affricate:
- Its manner of articulation is sibilant affricate, which means it is produced by first stopping the airflow entirely, then directing it through a groove in the tongue and over the sharp edge of the teeth, causing high-frequency turbulence.
- Its place of articulation is retroflex, which prototypically means it is articulated with the tip of the tongue curled up, but more generally means that it is postalveolar without being palatalized.
- Its phonation type is voiceless, which means it is produced without vibration of the vocal cords.
- 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
| Language | Word | IPA | Meaning | Notes | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chinese | Mandarin[2] | [[[Chinese characters|中文]]] Error: {{Lang}}: unrecognized language tag: zh-cmn-Hani (help)/[[[Hanyu Pinyin|Zhōngwén]]] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) | [ʈ͡ʂʊŋ˥ u̯ən˧˥] | 'Chinese' | Contrasts with aspirated form. See Mandarin phonology |
| Polish[3][4] | [[[Polish orthography|czas]]] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) | ⓘ | 'time' | See Polish phonology | |
References
- ^ As an affricate, which is considered a double articulation by the IPA, it doesn't appear in the IPA Unicode 5.1 Chart Appendix. ʂ appears as 136, but unlike the palato-alveolar and alveolar affricates, there is no unified glyph.
- ^ Ladefoged & Wu (1984:?)
- ^ Jassem (2003:103)
- ^ Hamann (2004:65)
Bibliography
- Hamann, Silke (2004), "Retroflex fricatives in Slavic languages", Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 34 (1): 53–67, doi:10.1017/S0025100304001604
- Jassem, Wiktor (2003), "Polish", Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 33 (1): 103–107
- Ladefoged, Peter; Wu, Zongji (1984), "Places of Articulation: An Investigation of Pekingese Fricatives and Affricates", Journal of Phonetics, 11: 267–278
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