The voiceless labiodental affricate ( in
IPA) is a rare
affricate consonant
An affricate is a consonant that begins as a stop and releases as a fricative, generally with the same place of articulation (most often coronal). It is often difficult to decide if a stop and fricative form a single phoneme or a consonant pair. ...
that is initiated as a
labiodental stop and released as a
voiceless labiodental fricative .
The XiNkuna dialect of
Tsonga
Tsonga may refer to:
* Tsonga language, a Bantu language spoken in southern Africa
* Tsonga people, a large group of people living mainly in southern Mozambique and South Africa.
* Jo-Wilfried Tsonga
Jo-Wilfried Tsonga (; born 17 April 1985) i ...
has this affricate, as in "hippopotamuses" and
aspirated "distance" (compare "tortoise", which shows that the stop is not
epenthetic), as well as a
voiced labiodental affricate, , as in "chin". There is no
voiceless labiodental fricative in this dialect of Tsonga, only a
voiceless bilabial fricative, as in "finished". (Among voiced fricatives, both and occur, however.)
German has a similar sound in ''Pfeffer'' ('pepper') and ''Apfel'' ('apple').
Phonotactically
Phonotactics (from Ancient Greek "voice, sound" and "having to do with arranging") is a branch of phonology that deals with restrictions in a language on the permissible combinations of phonemes. Phonotactics defines permissible syllable stru ...
, this sound does not occur after
long vowel
In linguistics, vowel length is the perceived length of a vowel sound: the corresponding physical measurement is duration. In some languages vowel length is an important phonemic factor, meaning vowel length can change the meaning of the word, f ...
s,
diphthong
A diphthong ( ; , ), also known as a gliding vowel, is a combination of two adjacent vowel sounds within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: that is, the tongue (and/or other parts of the speech o ...
s or . It differs from a true labiodental affricate in that it starts out bilabial but then the lower lip retracts slightly for the frication.
The sound occurs occasionally in English, in words where one syllable ends with "p" and the next starts with "f", like in "helpful" or "stepfather".
Features
Features of the voiceless labiodental affricate:
*There are two variants of the
stop component:
**
bilabial, which means it is articulated with both
lips. The affricate with this stop component is called ''bilabial-labiodental''.
**
labiodental, which means it is articulated with the lower lip and the upper
teeth.
*The
fricative component of this affricate is
labiodental, articulated with the lower lip and the upper teeth.
Occurrence
Notes
References
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External links
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Voiceless Labiodental Affricate
Affricates
Pulmonic consonants
Voiceless oral consonants
Labiodental consonants
Central consonants