Dental ejective fricative
Dental ejective fricative | |
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θʼ | |
Audio sample | |
help | |
Encoding | |
X-SAMPA | T_> |
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 | |
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Mehri | diśkhawt̠̣'ā | [diɬχɑʊ̯θʼɑː] | 'to hate' | |
Yapese | th'abii | [θʼabiː] | 'most' |
See also
References
- ^ Simeone-Senelle, Marie-Claude (1997), "The Modern South Arabian Languages", in Hetzron, Robert (ed.), The Semitic Languages, London: Routledge, pp. 381–382