CHAPTER 6: FRICATIVES AND AFFRICATES

1. Production of Fricatives Affricates

fricatives and
- Fricative are consonants Affricates are rather complex
affricates
with the characterristic that air cosonants (begin as plosives
escapes through a narrow and end as fricatives)
passage and makes a hissing
e.g: church - /tʃɜ:tʃ/
sound.
- an affricate must be more
- Most fricatives commonly
restricted than what has been
found being something like
given so far. We would not
(s)
class all sequences of plosive
- Fricatives are continuant plus fricative as affricates.
consonants, you can making
e.g: “breakfast”
them without interuption as
- /k/: plossive
long as you have enough air in
your lungs. (Plosives are not - /f/: fricative
continuants) In generally not accept that kf
e.g: /s/ - sue - /su:/; form

/f/ - five - /faIv/ - The plosive and fricative

must be homorganic.

e.g: /t/, /d/ and /ʃ/, /Ʒ/

- /s/, /z/ - /ts/, /dz/, /tr/, /dr/

(affricates), but /tʃ/, /ʤ/ were
only counted as affricates
phonemes (single, independent
phonemes) of English.

e.g:

Church
 (three phonemes)

/tʃ/ /ɜ:/ /tʃ/

2. The fricatives of - English has quite a complex system of fricative phonems. With
English the exception of glottal, each of articulation has a pair of
phonemes, one fortis and one lenis.

Lenis (voiced) Fortis (voiceless)

- have very little or no voicing - greater force than lenis, their

in initial and final positions friction noise is louder.
but may be voiced when they e.g: eyes - /aIz/
occur between voiced sounds.

e.g: ice - /aIs/

- There is only one fricative with glottal place of articulation, it

would be rather misleading to call it fortis or lennis.
The fricatives seperately, according to their place of articulation

Labiodental The lower lips is in contact with

the upper teeth as shown in
(/f/, /v/)
Fig.18. The fricative noise is
never strong and is scarcely
audible in case of v.

e.g: fan, van, safer, saver, half,

halve

Dental - The tongue were placed

between the front teeth. However,
(/θ/, /ð/)
the tongue is normally placed
behind the teeth, with the tip
touching the inner side of the
lower teeth. -- - The air escapes
through the gaps between the
tongue and the teeth. Noise is
weak

e.g: thumb, thus, ether, father,

breath, breathe

Alveolar - The same place of articulations

as t, d. (miêu tả ra nữa)
(/s/, /z/)
The tip of the tongue is touched
 the veolar

- The air escapes through a

narrow passage along the center
of the tongue, and the sound
produced in comparatively
intense.

e.g: sip, zip, facing, phasing,

rice, rise

Post-alveolar - Which can be taken to mean

that the tongue is in contact with
(/ʃ/, /Ʒ/)
an area slightly further back than
that for /s/, /z/.

- If you make /s/ then /ʃ/, you

should be able to fell your tongue
move backwards.

e.g: ship, Russia, measure,

garage, Irish

- /ʃ/ is a common and widely distributed phoneme, but /Ʒ/ is more

limited.

- /f/, /v/, /θ/, /ð/, /s/, /z/, /ʃ/ can be found in initial, medial and final
positions

- /Ʒ/: very few English word have // in the initial position

measure /meƷə/, usual /ju: Ʒuəl/

- /h/: The place of articulation of this consonant is glottal. This

means that the narrowing that produces the friction noise is
between the vocal folds.
 - /h/ sound production: breathe out silently, then produce h, you
are moving your vocal folds from wide apart to close together.

e.g: “head”, “ahead”, “playhouse”

- Many different things happen in different contexts

e.g: hat - /æ/

- The same is found for all vowels following h; the consonant

always has the quality of the vowel it precedes – you could listen
to a recording of h-sounds cut off from the beginnings of different
vowels in the word.

e.g: “hit”, “hat”, “hot”, “hut”

- Phonetically h is a voiceless vowel with the quality of the voiced

vowel that follows it. (initial position)

e.g: “hour”, “honest”

- h is a consonant. It usually found before vowels (medially

position)

e.g: “ahead”, “greenhouse”, “boathook” – pronounced with

voicing – not the normal voicing of vowels but a weak, slightly
fricative sound called breathy voice.

- “wh” pronounced the initial sound (e.g: what, which, why,

whip, whale) as w – lip, tongue and jaw position as w.

- The phonetic symbol for this voicless fricative is

3. The affricates of - with the plosives and most of the fricatives, we have a fortis/lenis
English pair, and the voicing characteristics are the same as for these other
consonants.

e.g: church //tʃɜ:tʃ/ - slightly aspirated

touch /tʌtʃ/ - aspirated (p,t, k)

4. Fortis consonants - All the consonants (except h) belong to pairs distinguished by the
difference between fortis and lenis.

- The first point concerns the shortening of a preceding vowel by a

syllable-final fortis consonant. This arises in syllables ending with
l, m, n, ŋ followed by a fortis consonant such as p, t, k

e.g: belt /belt/; bump /bʌmp/; bent /bent/; bank /bæŋk/

- Fortis consonants are usually articulated with open glottis – that

is, with the vocal folds separated.

- With plosives an alternative possility is to produce the consonant

with completely closed glottis. (glottalisation)

- The glotta closure occurs immediately before p, t, k, tʃ.

- The most widespread glottalisation is that of tʃ at the end of a

stress syllable. If we use the symbol ? to represent a glottal
closure, the phonetic transcription for various words containing tʃ
can be given as follows: