Dental ejective fricative

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 place of articulation is dental, which means it is articulated with either the tip or the blade of the tongue at the upper 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.

Language		Word	IPA	Meaning
Yapese		th'abii	[θʼabiː]	'most'

See also

• Index of phonetics articles