Voiceless postalveolar affricate

The voiceless palato-alveolar affricate or domed postalveolar affricate is a type of consonantal sound used in some spoken languages. It is familiar to English speakers as the "ch" sound in "chip".

Historically, this sound often derives from a former voiceless velar plosive (k, as in English, Slavic languages and Romance languages), or a voiceless dental plosive by way of palatalization, especially next to a front vowel.

Features

Features of the voiceless domed postalveolar 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 "palato-alveolar", that is, domed (partially palatalized) postalveolar, which means it is articulated with the front of the tongue behind the alveolar ridge, and the body of the tongue bunched up ("domed") at the palate.
* Its phonation type is voiceless, which means it is produced without vibrations 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.

Transcription

The International Phonetic Alphabet uses two symbols together to represent this sound: IPA|tʃ. They may be joined with a tiebar (IPA|t͡ʃ), and the IPA|t may sometimes be given the "retracted" diacritic (IPA|t̠ʃ). Formerly a ligature (IPA|ʧ) was used. Other phonetic transcriptions used include:
*c
*č
*ch
*cs
*cz
*tc (older Americanist transcription)
*tš
*tx

Occurrence

Mandarin Chinese, Russian, Japanese, Catalan, and Thai have a voiceless alveolo-palatal affricate IPA|/t͡ɕ/; this is technically postalveolar but it is less precise to use IPA|/t͡ʃ/.

Notes

Bibliography

* Harvard reference
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first=Plínio A.
last2=Albano
first2=Eleonora C.
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title=Brazilian Portuguese
journal=Journal of the International Phonetic Association
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*Harvard reference
last =Blevin
first= Juliette
year= 1994
title= The Bimoraic Foot in Rotuman Phonology and Morphology
journal= Oceanic Linguistics
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*Harvard reference
last = Martínez-Celdrán
first= Eugenio
last2 = Fernández-Planas
first2= Ana Ma.
last3 = Carrera-Sabaté
first3 = Josefina
year= 2003
title=Castilian Spanish
journal=Journal of the International Phonetic Association
volume=33
issue=2
pages=255-259
*Harvard reference
last = Rogers
first = Derek
last2 = d'Arcangeli
first2 = Luciana
year= 2004
title=Italian
journal=Journal of the International Phonetic Association
volume=34
issue=1
pages=117-121
*Harvard reference
last = Shosted
first = Ryan K.
last2 = Vakhtang
first2 = Chikovani
year= 2006
title=Standard Georgian
journal=Journal of the International Phonetic Association
volume=36
issue=2
pages=255-264
*Harvard reference
last = Watson
first= Janet
year= 2002
title= The Phonology and Morphology of Arabic
place=New York
publisher= Oxford University Press

See also

* List of phonetics topics