Voiced dental and alveolar lateral fricatives
The voiced alveolar lateral fricative is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents voiced dental, alveolar, and postalveolar lateral fricatives is ⟨ɮ⟩ (sometimes referred to as lezh), and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is K\.
| Voiced alveolar lateral fricative | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| ɮ | |||
| IPA Number | 149 | ||
| Audio sample | |||
|
source · help | |||
| Encoding | |||
| Entity (decimal) | ɮ | ||
| Unicode (hex) | U+026E | ||
| X-SAMPA | K\ | ||
| Braille |    | ||
| |||
Features
Features of the voiced 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 at the alveolar ridge, termed respectively apical and laminal.
- Its phonation is voiced, which means the vocal cords vibrate during the articulation.
- It is an oral consonant, which means air is allowed to escape through the mouth only.
- It is a lateral consonant, which means it is produced by directing the airstream over the sides of the tongue, rather than down the middle.
- The airstream mechanism is pulmonic, which means it is articulated by pushing air solely with the intercostal muscles and diaphragm, as in most sounds.
Occurrence
Alveolar
| Language | Word | IPA | Meaning | Notes | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Adyghe | къалэ | ⓘ | 'town' | Can also be pronounced as [l] | |
| Arabic | Classical Arabic | الأَرضِ | ⓘ | 'the earth' | |
| Bura[1] | Contrasts with [ɬ] and [ʎ̝̊].[1] | ||||
| Kabardian | блы | ⓘ | 'seven' | Can also be pronounced as [l] | |
| Ket | олын | [ɔɮɨn] | 'nose' | Can also be pronounced as [l] | |
| Moloko[2] | zlan | [ɮàŋ] | 'start, begin' | Contrasts with [ɬ], [l] and [ʒ] | |
| Mongolian | монгол | [mɔɴɢɔ̆ɮ] | 'Mongol' | Sometimes realized as [ɬ] | |
| Sassarese | caldhu | ⓘ | 'hot' | ||
| Tera[3] | dlepti | [ɮè̞pti] | 'planting' | Contrasts with both [ɬ] and [l] | |
| Zulu[4] | ukudla | [úɠù:ɮá] | 'to eat' | Contrasts with both [ɬ] and [l]; realized as [dɮ] after nasals | |
In addition, a pharyngealized voiced alveolar lateral fricative ⓘ is reconstructed to be the ancient Classical Arabic pronunciation of Ḍād; the letter is now pronounced in Modern Standard Arabic as a pharyngealized voiced coronal stop, as alveolar [dˤ] or denti-alveolar [d̪ˤ].
Related characters
There are several Unicode characters based on lezh (ɮ):
- U+1079E 𐞞 MODIFIER LETTER SMALL LEZH is a superscript IPA letter[5]
- U+1079F 𐞟 MODIFIER LETTER SMALL LEZH WITH RETROFLEX HOOK is a superscript IPA letter[5]
- U+1DF05 𝼅 LATIN SMALL LETTER LEZH WITH RETROFLEX HOOK is an extension to IPA for disordered speech (extIPA)[5][6]
Notation
In 1938, a symbol shaped similarly to heng ⟨ꜧ⟩ was approved as the official IPA symbol for the voiced alveolar lateral fricative, replacing ⟨ɮ⟩. It was suggested at the same time, however, that a compromise shaped like something between the two may also be used at the author's discretion. It was this compromise version that was included in the 1949 Principles of the International Phonetic Association and the subsequent IPA charts, until it was replaced again by ⟨ɮ⟩ at the 1989 Kiel Convention.[7] Despite the Association's prescription, ⟨ɮ⟩ is nonetheless seen in literature from the 1960s to the 1980s.[8][9][10][11][12]
Notes
- Grønnum (2005), pp. 154–155.
- Friesen (2017), p. 49.
- Tench (2007), p. 228.
- Poulos (1998), p. 548.
- Miller, Kirk; Ball, Martin (2020-07-11). "L2/20-116R: Expansion of the extIPA and VoQS" (PDF).
- Anderson, Deborah (2020-12-07). "L2/21-021: Reference doc numbers for L2/20-266R "Consolidated code chart of proposed phonetic characters" and IPA etc. code point and name changes" (PDF).
- Wells, John (3 November 2006). "The symbol ɮ". John Wells’s phonetic blog. Department of Phonetics and Linguistics, University College London. Retrieved 1 February 2018.
- Newman, Paul (1964). "A word list of Tera". Journal of West African Languages. 1 (2): 33–50.
- Catford, J. C.; Ladefoged, Peter (1968). Working Papers in Phonetics 11: Practical Phonetic Exercises. University of California, Los Angeles.
- Brosnahan, L. F.; Malmberg, Bertil (1970). Introduction to Phonetics. Cambridge University Press. p. 105. ISBN 0-521-21100-X.
- Ladefoged, Peter (1971). Preliminaries to Linguistic Phonetics. University of Chicago Press. p. 54. ISBN 0-226-46787-2.
- MacKay, Ian (1987). Phonetics: The Science of Speech Production (2nd ed.). Little, Brown and Company. p. 106. ISBN 0-316-54238-5.
References
- Friesen, Isaac (2017), A grammar of Moloko (1st ed.), Language Science Press
- Grønnum, Nina (2005), Fonetik og fonologi, Almen og Dansk (3rd ed.), Copenhagen: Akademisk Forlag, ISBN 87-500-3865-6
- Ladefoged, Peter (2005), Vowels and Consonants (2nd ed.), Blackwell
- Poulos, George; Msimang, Christian T. (1998), A Linguistic Analysis of Zulu (1st ed.), Via Afrika
- Tench, Paul (2007), "Tera", Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 37 (1): 228–234, doi:10.1017/s0025100307002952
