Dental ejective fricative

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Dental ejective fricative
θʼ
Audio sample
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Encoding
X-SAMPAT_>

The dental ejective fricative is a rare type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is θʼ.

Features

Features of the alveolar ejective 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
    teeth, termed respectively apical and laminal. Note that most stops and liquids described as dental are actually denti-alveolar
    .
  • Its phonation 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 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 ejective (glottalic egressive), which means the air is forced out by pumping the glottis upward.

Occurrence

[θʼ] occurs in Modern South Arabian languages and is also reconstructed for the hypothetical Proto-Semitic language.[1]

Language Word IPA Meaning
Mehri diśkhawt̠̣'ā [diɬχɑʊ̯θʼɑː] 'to hate'
Yapese th'abii [θʼabiː] 'most'

See also

References

  1. ^ Simeone-Senelle, Marie-Claude (1997), "The Modern South Arabian Languages", in Hetzron, Robert (ed.), The Semitic Languages, London: Routledge, pp. 381–382

External links