Voiceless alveolo-palatal fricative
?
IPA Number	182
Audio sample
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Encoding
Entity (decimal)	ɕ
Unicode (hex)	U+0255
X-SAMPA	s\
Braille
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The voiceless alveolo-palatal sibilant fricative is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages . The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ⟨ ? ⟩ ("c", plus the curl also found in its voiced counterpart ⟨ ? ⟩). It is the sibilant equivalent of the voiceless palatal fricative , and as such it can be transcribed in IPA with ⟨ c? ⟩.

Features [ edit ]

Features of the voiceless alveolo-palatal fricative:

• Its manner of articulation is sibilant fricative , which means it is generally produced by channeling air flow along a groove in the back of the tongue up to the place of articulation, at which point it is focused against the sharp edge of the nearly clenched teeth, causing high-frequency turbulence .
• Its place of articulation is alveolo-palatal . This means that:
  • Its place of articulation is postalveolar , meaning that the tongue contacts the roof of the mouth in the area behind the alveolar ridge (the gum line).
  • Its tongue shape is laminal , meaning that it is the tongue blade that contacts the roof of the mouth.
  • It is heavily palatalized , meaning that the middle of the tongue is bowed and raised towards the hard palate .
• 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 intercostal muscles and abdominal muscles , as in most sounds.

In English [ edit ]

In British Received Pronunciation , /j/ after syllable-initial /p, t, k/ (as in T uesday ) is realized as a devoiced palatal fricative. The amount of devoicing is variable, but the fully voiceless variant tends to be alveolo-palatal [?] in the /tj/ sequence: [?t???uːzde?] ^ⓘ . It is a fricative, rather than a fricative element of an affricate because the preceding plosive remains alveolar, rather than becoming alveolo-palatal, as in Dutch . ^[1]

The corresponding affricate can be written with ⟨ t???? ⟩ or ⟨ c??? ⟩ in narrow IPA, though ⟨ t? ⟩ is normally used in both cases. In the case of English, the sequence can be specified as ⟨ t?? ⟩ as /t/ is normally apical (although somewhat palatalized in that sequence), whereas alveolo-palatal consonants are laminal by definition. ^{[2] [3]}

An increasing number of British speakers merge this sequence with the voiceless palato-alveolar affricate /t?/ : [?t??ːzde?] (see yod-coalescence ), mirroring Cockney , Australian English and New Zealand English . On the other hand, there is an opposite tendency in Canadian accents that have preserved /tj/ , where the sequence tends to merge with the plain /t/ instead: [?t???ːzde?] ^ⓘ (see yod-dropping ), mirroring General American which does not allow /j/ to follow alveolar consonants in stressed syllables. ^{[4] [5] [6]}

Occurrence [ edit ]

See also [ edit ]

• Index of phonetics articles
• Voiceless palato-alveolar sibilant

References [ edit ]

Sources [ edit ]

External links [ edit ]

• List of languages with [?] on PHOIBLE