(Redirected from Voiceless lateral fricative)
The 'voiceless alveolar lateral fricative' is a type of
consonantal sound, used in some
spoken languages. The symbol in the
International Phonetic Alphabet that represents voiceless
dental,
alveolar, and
postalveolar fricatives is , and the equivalent
X-SAMPA symbol is
K. The symbol is called "belted l" and should not be confused with "l with tilde", , which corresponds to a different sound, the
velarized alveolar lateral approximant. It should also be distinguished from a voiceless
alveolar lateral approximant, although the fricative is sometimes incorrectly often described as a "voiceless l", a description fitting only of the approximant.
Features
Features of the voiceless alveolar lateral fricative:
★ Its
manner of articulation is
fricative, which means it is produced by constricting air flow through a narrow channel at the place of articulation, causing
turbulence.
★ Its
place of articulation is
alveolar, which means it is articulated with either the tip or the blade of the tongue against the
alveolar ridge, termed respectively ''
apical'' and ''
laminal''.
★ 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
lateral consonant, which means it is produced by allowing the airstream to flow over the sides of the tongue, rather than the middle of the tongue.
★ 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
Semitic languages
The sound is conjectured as a phoneme for
Proto-Semitic, usually transcribed as ; it has evolved into
Arabic ,
Hebrew, :
Amongst
Semitic languages, the sound still exists in contemporary
Soqotri. In Ge'ez, it is written with the letter
Åšawt.
See also
★
List of phonetics topics