Palato-alveolar ejective fricative

The palato-alveolar ejective fricative is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ⟨ʃʼ⟩.

palato-alveolar ejective fricative
ʃʼ
Audio sample
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Encoding
X-SAMPA	S_>

Features

Features of the palato-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 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 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

Language		Word	IPA	Meaning
Adyghe		пшӏы	[pʃʼə]ⓘ	'ten'
Gullah[1]		shew	[ʃʼɛw]	'shave'

See also

• Index of phonetics articles