Alveolar lateral ejective fricative

The alveolar lateral ejective fricative is a type of consonantal sound, reported in the Northwest Caucasian languages and in Modern South Arabian languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ⟨ɬʼ⟩.

Alveolar lateral ejective fricative
ɬʼ
Audio sample
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Encoding
X-SAMPA	K_>

Features

Features of the alveolar lateral 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 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 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 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 ejective (glottalic egressive), which means the air is forced out by pumping the glottis upward.

Occurrence

[ɬʼ] occurs in the reconstructed Proto-Semitic language.^[1]

Language		Word	IPA	Meaning	Notes
Adyghe		лӀы	[ɬʼə]ⓘ	'man'
Kabardian		плӀы	[pɬʼə]ⓘ	'four'
Tlingit[2]		lʼook	[ɬʼuːkʰ]ⓘ	‘fish’

See also

• Index of phonetics articles