Affricates
Affricates are consonant sounds that begin as a plosive (complete closure of the vocal tract) and then release into a fricative (partial closure causing turbulence). They are produced by briefly stopping the airflow and then releasing it with friction. Examples of affricates include the "ch" sound in "church" and the "j" sound in "judge."
7 Key excerpts on "Affricates"
eBook - ePub- R.L. Trask, Peter Stockwell, Peter Stockwell(Authors)
- 2007(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...AFFRICATE A term relating to the manner of articulation of consonants. When the air behind a closure is gradually released, friction of the airstream results. The sounds made by this sustained friction are Affricates: /s/, /z/, /ʃ/, /ʒ/, /θ/, /ð/ and so on. Even when a plosive is produced (/t/, /d/), there is often a very brief affrication that follows the release: this can be sustained in certain accents such as London Cockney /t s / in Tuesday. Affricates are distinguishable in phonetics, but cause problems in phonology, where the phonemic value of the sounds is debatable. For example, /tʃ/ could be treated contrastively in English (chip/ship, match/mats) since it alters the meaning wherever it occurs in the word, and is clearly phonologically permitted in any position. However, /pr/ cannot occur at the end of an English word (print, leprosy) and /tθ/ can only occur at the end (fifth in most accents that pronounce the second /f/, and eighth). So should these examples be treated as single phonological units or as separate sounds consisting of a plosive plus an affricate? See also : accent ; phonology Further reading : Ball and Rahilly 1999; Collins and Mees 2003; Ladefoged and Maddieson 1996....
eBook - ePubPhonetics
The Science of Speech
- Martin J Ball, Joan Rahilly(Authors)
- 2014(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...Clearly, Affricates are stop–fricative combinations where the two elements are homorganic (i.e. articulated at the same place), whereas stops can be followed by fricatives at other places of articulation: ‘caps’, ‘lacks’, ‘length’ and so on. Normally, phoneticians suggest that where we have two separate sounds (homorganic or not), the duration of the fricative element is longer than in any kind of affricate, or affricated release. English has voiceless and voiced post-alveolar Affricates in words such as ‘church’, ‘catches’, ‘judge’ and ‘cadges’, and these sounds operate as contrastive units in the sound system (as we can see from the examples, they can be both word-initial, word-medial and word-final). As it is typographically easier, these sounds are often transcribed in books on English phonetics as [ tʃ, dʒ ], but are normally treated phonologically as single units. Other affricate combinations are regularly used in English, however, including the initial sounds of ‘train’ and ‘drain’. Phonetically, the ‘r’ element here has a narrower channel than the normal approximant-r, which means that the [ t ] and [ d ] are released with an affricated airflow. We can transcribe these as [ ṯɹ̥̝̯, ḏ̥̝̯ ] but, as they only occur syllable-initially, phonologists normally treat them as sequences of stop + ‘r’. Affricates at a range of places of articulation can be found in other languages, and Table 4.2 lists some of these. For example, German has both [ p f̯ ] and [ t s̯ ]; Polish has [ tȱɕ̯ ], and [ kx̯ ] occurs for [ k ] in some varieties of Liverpool English. Table 4.2 also includes a lateral affricate, and an aspirated affricate. Most of the examples are full Affricates, but we also include a couple of stops with affricate release. Incomplete stops Oral stops can also have their stage 3 modified so that no audible release occurs...
eBook - ePub- Mike Davenport, S.J. Hannahs(Authors)
- 2020(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...Discussion of this phenomenon will be taken up again in Chapter 10. 3.2 Affricates Affricates are produced like plosives, in that they involve a closing stage, a closure stage and a release stage. The difference lies in the nature of the release: where for a ‘standard’ plosive, the active articulator is lowered swiftly and fully, allowing a sudden, unhindered explosion of air, for Affricates the active articulator remains close to the passive articulator, resulting in friction as the air passes between them, as for fricatives (see Sections 2.1.5 and 3.3). Phonetically, then, Affricates are similar to a stop followed by a fricative; they do not, however, behave like a sequence of two segments. Consider ‘catch it’ and ‘cat shit’; the sound represented by ‘tch’ ([ʧ) is noticeably shorter than the sequence of sounds represented by ‘t sh’ ([t + ʃ]). English has only two Affricates, the voiceless palato-alveolar [ʧ], as the first sound in ‘ ch impanzee’, and its voiced counterpart [ʤ] as in the first sound in ‘jaguar’. Both Affricates can appear in all positions; word-initially, word-medially and word-finally; ‘[ʧ]eetah’ (‘cheetah’), ‘lo[ʤ]er’ (‘lodger’), ‘fu[ʤ]’ (‘fudge’). (The non-IPA symbols [č] and [ȷͮ] may also be encountered for these sounds, as may IPA [tʃ] and [dʒ].) Affricates at other places of articulation are found in many languages; German has voiceless labio-dental [p f ]in Pf erd ‘horse’ and voiceless alveolar [t s ]in Ẕ ug ‘train’; Italian has a voiced alveolar [d z ]in ẕ ona ‘zone’. 3.2.1 Voicing and variation As with all obstruents, the voiced affricate lengthens a preceding sonorant segment (nasal, liquid or vowel); compare the sonorants underlined in ‘lu ṉ ch’ versus ‘lu ṉ ge’, ‘be ḻ ching’ versus ‘Be l gian’, ‘ ai tch’ versus ‘ a ge’. There is little assimilation of the Affricates in English, though the oral stop part of the articulation may be missing when they follow [n], as ‘lun[ʃ]’ (vs. ‘lun[ʧ]’) or ‘spon[ʒ]’ (vs. ‘spon[ʤ]’)...
eBook - ePub- William F. Katz(Author)
- 2013(Publication Date)
- For Dummies(Publisher)
...In this chapter, I walk you through some different types of consonant manners (stops, fricatives, Affricates, and approximants), zeroing in on those mouth and throat details that make big perceptual differences in the English language. Stopping Your Airflow Stop consonants (sounds made by completely blocking oral airflow) are part of a larger group called obstruents, which are sounds formed by shaping airflow via obstruction (this group also includes fricatives and Affricates). Fricatives are made when air is blown through a space tight enough to cause friction (or hissiness). Affricates are sounds that begin as a stop, then release into a fricative. Refer to Chapters 4 and 5 for more information on these types of sounds. When airflow is completely stopped, several different things can happen: Air can be released into the vocal tract in different ways. Air can flow into different regions when the sound is released. The duration of the closure itself can last for longer or shorter periods. Some of these puzzling mechanics are revealed in the following sections. Huffing and puffing: Aspiration when you need it Aspiration is the airy event that takes place just after the burst of the articulators blasting open and before the voicing of the vowel. Aspirated voiceless stop consonants are made with an audible puff of breath. Aspiration, represented by the raised letter “h” ([ ʰ ]) occurs for a brief period of time starting just after the beginning of a stop consonant...
- David Hornsby(Author)
- 2014(Publication Date)
- Teach Yourself(Publisher)
...Some consonants, known as Affricates, combine a plosive and a fricative at the same place of articulation, as in the case of [ t ] and [ d Ʒ ] in English. The plosive sounds we identified earlier involve a complete closure of the vocal tract: they are, in other words, kinds of stop consonants. But not all stops are plosives: another set of consonants involves complete closure but these consonants are nonetheless continuous sounds: these are the nasals [ m, n, ŋ ], which are produced by allowing air to pass through the nasal cavity. A final group of consonants, known as approximants, do not require closure of the vocal tract at all: the sounds are produced instead via the passage of air between articulators, which are close but not touching. Try producing the sound at the start of leap, and you’ll notice that the tip of the tongue touches the roof of the mouth around the alveolar ridge, but the passage of air which produces the sound actually passes along the sides of the tongue: for this reason this sound [l] is known as a lateral approximant. For most English speakers, the r sound in road is also an approximant, but this time the sides of the tongue are raised and the air passes through the gap between to produce a central approximant [ ɹ ] (see Spotlight below). Spotlight: r -sounds Cross-linguistically, there are a lot of different types of r sound. The Scots trilled r [r], for example, is produced by repeated beating of the tongue tip against the alveolar ridge in intervocalic positions; the French r is usually a uvular fricative [ ʁ ], produced by bringing the base of the tongue close to the uvula at the back of the soft palate (a similar variant is used in some Northumbrian English accents). Some Scots use a flapped or tapped r [ ], produced by rapidly striking the hard palate with the tongue tip, in intervocalic positions, e.g...
eBook - ePubRelevant Acoustic Phonetics of L2 English
Focus on Intelligibility
- Ettien Koffi(Author)
- 2021(Publication Date)
- CRC Press(Publisher)
...The immovable articulators are the upper lip, the teeth, the alveolar ridge, the hard palate, the velum, and the pharyngeal wall. In the production of stops, a moveable articulator and an immovable articulator seal off, albeit momentarily, outgoing (or incoming) air molecules. However, in the production of fricatives, there is no complete obstruction. The articulators simply come into a very close proximity to each other so as to narrow the air passage by varying degrees. As a result of these synchronized articulatory gestures, a hissing sound is made when fricatives are produced. It has been noted that fricatives call for the type of articulatory precision not commonly found in the production of other consonants. Ladefoged and Maddieson (1996:137) observe that “a variation of one millimeter in the position of the target for the crucial part of the vocal tract makes a great difference. There has to be a very precisely shaped channel for a turbulent airstream to be produced.” Table 6-1 displays the consonants of GAE that are classified as “fricatives”: Table 6-1: English Fricatives. POA Laryngeal Feature Labio-dental Interdental Alveolar Palatal Glottal MOA Fricative − voice f θ s ʃ h + voice v ð z ʒ Phoneticians rely on the amount or the force of the “hissing” sound to classify fricatives cross-linguistically. The segments [s, z, ʃ, ʒ] are labeled “sibilant” or “strident” because a greater amount of turbulence is generated when they are produced. Their counterparts, [f, y, θ, ð, v, h], are called “non-sibilant” or “non-strident.” The labels “sibilant” and “strident” are used interchangeably in the literature. In keeping with Maddieson (1984), sibilant is used instead of strident throughout this chapter. 6.2 An Overview of the Acoustics of English Fricatives When it comes to the acoustic study of fricatives, experts are at a loss as to which correlate is the most robust. Some focus on intensity, others on duration, while others investigate F2...
- Manuel Díaz-Campos, Manuel Díaz-Campos(Authors)
- 2021(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...Duration of fricative noise during the production of these segments was found to be a differentiating acoustic cue between them: fricatives displayed longer mean duration for Affricates than for fricatives. The findings of this study contribute greatly to the methodology used in the present investigation by providing procedures based on duration measurements, as well as a general perspective of fricatives and how they are examined in languages other than Spanish. Similar to previous analyses, duration measurements were central to the experimental design of the study. Chang (2007) examined laryngeal contrasts of Korean fricatives based on perceptual and acoustic data. The author describes how Korean fricatives differ acoustically from one another, as well as determining which acoustic cues are key to the perception of Korean fricatives. Seven acoustic cues were considered: 1) total segment duration, 2) aspiration duration, 3) F0 onset, 4) F1 onset, 5) intensity buildup, 6) voice quality, and 7) length of the following vowel. The findings indicate that fortis fricatives are longer in duration than non-fortis fricatives in Korean and that there were not differences in F0 onset between the two fricatives. Specifically, aspiration was longer for the non-fortis fricatives in Korean, based on the results regarding the duration of VOT. This is consistent with Ladefoged and Maddieson’s (1996) characterization of fortis/lenis in languages such as Ojibwa, Zapotec, and Djauan as a difference in duration. This finding directly informs the analysis of the Spanish fricative variant [tʃ] by highlighting the importance of durational measurements in acoustic analyses of frication. An investigation by Nowak (2006) examines the contrast between Polish fricative sibilants and Affricates at three different places of articulation (i.e., dental, retroflex, and alveopalatal), and focuses on the acoustic cues that are used by native speakers to distinguish between them...
