Affricate consonant


An []affricate is a consonant that begins as a stop and releases as a fricative, generally with the same place of articulation. It is often difficult to decide if a stop and fricative form a single phoneme or a consonant pair. English has two affricate phonemes, and, often spelled ch and j, respectively.

Examples

The English sounds spelled "ch" and "j", German and Italian z and Italian z are typical affricates, and sounds like these are fairly common in the world's languages, as are other affricates with similar sounds, such as those in Polish and Chinese. However, voiced affricates other than are relatively uncommon. For several places of articulation they are not attested at all.
Much less common are labiodental affricates, such as in German and Izi, or velar affricates, such as in Tswana or in High Alemannic Swiss German dialects. Worldwide, relatively few languages have affricates in these positions even though the corresponding stop consonants, and, are common or virtually universal. Also less common are alveolar affricates where the fricative release is lateral, such as the sound found in Nahuatl and Navajo. Some other Athabaskan languages, such as Dene Suline, have unaspirated, aspirated, and ejective series of affricates whose release may be dental, alveolar, postalveolar, or lateral:,,,,,,,,,,, and.

Notation

Affricates are transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet by a combination of two letters, one for the stop element and the other for the fricative element. In order to show that these are parts of a single consonant, a tie bar is generally used. The tie bar appears most commonly above the two letters, but may be placed under them if it fits better there, or simply because it is more legible. Thus:
or
A less common notation indicates the release of the affricate with a superscript:
This is derived from the IPA convention of indicating other releases with a superscript. However, this convention is more typically used for a fricated release that is too brief to be considered a true affricate.
Though they are no longer standard IPA, ligatures are available in Unicode for eight common affricates
Any of these notations can be used to distinguish an affricate from a sequence of a stop plus a fricative, which exists in some languages such as Polish. However, in languages where there is no such distinction, such as English, the tie bars are commonly dropped.
In other phonetic transcription systems, such as the Americanist system, affricates may be transcribed with single letters. The affricates,,,,, are transcribed respectively as or ;,, or ; or ;,, or ; ; and or. Within the IPA, and are sometimes transcribed with the symbols for the palatal stops, and.

Affricates vs. stop–fricative sequences

In some languages, affricates contrast phonemically with stop–fricative sequences:
The exact phonetic difference varies between languages. In stop–fricative sequences, the stop has a release burst before the fricative starts; but in affricates, the fricative element is the release. Phonologically, stop–fricative sequences may have a syllable boundary between the two segments, but not necessarily.
In English, and are considered phonemically stop–fricative sequences. They often contain a morpheme boundary. The English affricate phonemes and do not generally contain morpheme boundaries. Depending on dialect, English speakers may distinguish an affricate from a stop–fricative sequence in some contexts such as when the sequence occurs across syllable boundaries:
The in 'bent shudder' debuccalizes to a glottal stop before in many dialects, making it phonetically distinct from.
One acoustic criterion for differentiating affricates and stop–fricative sequences is the rate of amplitude increase of the frication noise, which is known as the rise time. Affricates have a short rise time to the peak frication amplitude; stop–fricative sequences have longer rise times.

List of affricates

In the case of coronals, the symbols are normally used for the stop portion of the affricate regardless of place. For example, is commonly seen for.
The exemplar languages are ones that have been reported to have these sounds, but in several cases they may need confirmation.

Sibilant affricates

VoicelessLanguagesVoicedLanguages
Voiceless alveolar affricate
German z, tz
Japanese つ/ツ
K'iche'
Mandarin c
Italian z
Pashto څ		Voiced alveolar affricate
Japanese
Italian z
Pashto ځ
Voiceless dental affricate
Hungarian c
Macedonian ц
Serbo-Croatian c/ц
Polish c		Voiced dental affricate
Hungarian dz
Macedonian ѕ
Bulgarian дз
Polish dz
Voiceless alveolo-palatal affricate
Japanese ち/チ
Mandarin q
Polish ć, ci
Serbo-Croatian ć/ћ
Thai จ		Voiced alveolo-palatal affricate
Japanese じ/ジ, ぢ/ヂ
Polish dź, dzi
Serbo-Croatian đ/ђ
Korean ㅈ
Voiceless palato-alveolar affricate
English ch, tch
French tch
German tsch
Hungarian cs
Italian ci, ce
K'iche' ch
Persian چ
Spanish ch
Voiced postalveolar affricate
Arabic ج
English j, g
French dj
Hungarian dzs
Italian gi, ge
Voiceless retroflex affricate
Mandarin ch
Polish cz
Serbo-Croatian č/ч
Slovak č
Vietnamese tr		Voiced retroflex affricate
Polish dż
Serbo-Croatian dž/џ
Slovak dž

The Northwest Caucasian languages Abkhaz and Ubykh both contrast sibilant affricates at four places of articulation: alveolar, postalveolar, alveolo-palatal and retroflex. They also distinguish voiceless, voiced, and ejective affricates at each of these.
When a language only has one type of affricate, it is usually a sibilant; this is the case in e.g. Arabic, most dialects of Spanish, and Thai.

Non-sibilant affricates

Lateral affricates

SoundIPALanguages
Voiceless alveolar lateral affricateCherokee, Nahuatl, Navajo, Tswana, etc.
Voiced alveolar lateral affricateGwich'in, Sandawe. Not reported to ever contrast with a voiced alveolar lateral fricative.
Voiceless palatal lateral affricatealso Doulos SIL, serif">; as ejective = in Dahalo; as = in Hadza.
Voiceless velar lateral affricatealso ; as a prevelar in Archi and as an ejective = in Zulu, also exist in the Laghuu language.
Voiced velar lateral affricateLaghuu.

Trilled affricates

Sound IPALanguagesSound IPALanguages
Voiced trilled bilabial affricateNot attested in any natural language.Voiced trilled bilabial affricateKele and Avava. Only reported in an allophone of before or
Voiceless trilled alveolar affricateNgkothVoiced trilled alveolar affricateNias. Fijian and Avava also have this sound after .
Voiceless epiglottal affricateNot attested in any natural language.Voiced epiglottal affricateHydaburg Haida. Cognate to Southern Haida, Masset Haida.

Pirahã and Wari’ have a dental stop with bilabial trilled release.

Heterorganic affricates

Although most affricates are homorganic, Navajo and Chiricahua Apache have a heterorganic alveolar-velar affricate . Wari’ and Pirahã have a voiceless dental bilabially trilled affricate . Other heterorganic affricates are reported for Northern Sotho and other Bantu languages such as Phuthi, which has alveolar–labiodental affricates and, and Sesotho, which has bilabial–palatoalveolar affricates and. Djeoromitxi has and.

Phonation, coarticulation and other variants

The more common of the voiceless affricates are all attested as ejectives as well:. Several Khoisan languages such as !Xóõ are reported to have voiced ejective affricates, but these may actually be consonant clusters:. Affricates are also commonly aspirated:, occasionally murmured:, and sometimes prenasalized:. Labialized, palatalized, velarized, and pharyngealized affricates also occur. Affricates may also have phonemic length, that is, affected by a chroneme, as in Italian and Karelian.

Phonological representation

In phonology, affricates tend to behave similarly to stops, taking part in phonological patterns that fricatives do not. Kehrein analyzes phonetic affricates as phonological stops. A sibilant or lateral stop can be realized phonetically only as an affricate and so might be analyzed phonemically as a sibilant or lateral stop. In that analysis, affricates other than sibilants and laterals are a phonetic mechanism for distinguishing stops at similar places of articulation. For example, Chipewyan has laminal dental vs. apical alveolar ; other languages may contrast velar with palatal and uvular.
Affricates may also be a strategy to increase the phonetic contrast between aspirated or ejective and tenuis consonants.
According to Kehrein, no language contrasts a non-sibilant, non-lateral affricate with a stop at the same place of articulation and with the same phonation and airstream mechanism, such as and or and.
In feature-based phonology, affricates are distinguished from stops by the feature .

Affrication is a sound change by which a consonant, usually a stop or fricative, changes into an affricate. Examples include:
In rare instances, a fricative–stop contour may occur. This is the case in dialects of Scottish Gaelic that have velar frication where other dialects have pre-aspiration. For example, in the Harris dialect there is 'seven' and 'eight'.