Voiceless alveolo-palatal affricate

The voiceless alveolo-palatal affricate is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The sound is transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet with ⟨t͡ɕ⟩ (formerly ⟨ʨ⟩). The voiceless alveolo-palatal affricate occurs in languages such as Mandarin Chinese and Serbo-Croatian.

Features

Features of the voiceless alveolo-palatal affricate:

• Its manner of articulation is sibilant affricate, which means it is produced by first stopping the air flow entirely, then directing it with the tongue to the sharp edge of the teeth, causing high-frequency turbulence.
• Its place of articulation is alveolo-palatal. This means that:
  • Its tongue shape is alveolo-palatal, which means that the tongue is convex V-shaped, with the middle of the tongue highly bowed (and raised) towards the hard palate, producing strong palatalization (often most audible as a y-like transition after the sound).
  • Its place of passive articulation is postalveolar, meaning that the tongue contacts the roof of the mouth in the area behind the alveolar ridge (the gum line).
  • Its place of active articulation is laminal, meaning that it is the tongue blade that contacts the roof of the mouth.
• Its phonation is voiceless, which means it is produced without vibrations of the vocal cords. In some languages the vocal cords are actively separated, so it is always voiceless; in others the cords are lax, so that it may take on the voicing of adjacent sounds.
• 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.
• The airstream mechanism is pulmonic, which means it is articulated by pushing air solely with the lungs and diaphragm, as in most sounds.

Occurrence

See also

• List of phonetics topics

References

Bibliography

• Jassem, Wiktor (2003), "Polish", Journal of the International Phonetic Association 33 (1): 103–107, doi:10.1017/S0025100303001191 
• Tingsabadh, M.R. Kalaya; Abramson, Arthur S. (1993), "Thai", Journal of the International Phonetic Association 23 (1): 24–26, doi:10.1017/S0025100300004746 
• Wheeler, Max W. (2005), The Phonology of Catalan, Oxford: Oxford University Press, ISBN 0199258147