Re: Stupid Question of the Week
Rob Zook 
Thu, 06 Nov 1997 08:52:45 -0600

At 06:19 AM 11/6/97 M, you wrote:
>Here goes:  What is a fricative?  Perhaps for the benefit of those of us
>who didn't pay attention in grammar classes (that were a thousand years 
>ago), some of these terms should be defined.  The conversation is 
>interesting, but I can't follow the terms used as I don't know what they 
>mean.  It's like another language.  I guess I should have paid 
>attention.....

No worries, I had the same trouble at first. 

"Fricative" refers to how much "closure" your mouth has when you say
a consonant. A stop means total closure - the sound eventually stops
altogether. With a fricative the sound does not stop but makes a 
friction noise from the air passing around some obstruction. 

When you say <f> for example, you put your upper teeth on your lower lip, 
then expel air around the restricted opening this makes. But you don't 
make any noise with your vocal cords when doing that. Which makes <f> a 
voiceless labial-dental fricative (no vocal noise, lips & teeth, air
friction).

Linguists measure sounds with several rulers. They measure the place
of the articulation (or air obstruction):

   labial: lips (A. English p), or lips and tongue
   labio-dental: lips + teeth (A. English f) 
   dental: tongue + teeth (A. English th) 
   alveolar: tongue behind teeth (A. English t) 
   postalveolar: In between the back of the teeth and the top
      of the mouth (A. English sh)
   palatal: top of mouth (German ch) 
   velar: behind the top of the mouth but before the soft 
      part (A. English k) 
   uvular: way back in the mouth (Arabic q, French r) 
   glottal: back in the throat (British tt in  bottle glottal 
      stop). 

Linguists also measure how much the air is obstructed, from completely
to just a bit:

   stop: the air flow ceases altogether: p b, t d
   fricative: the air is obstructed enough to cause friction noise: f v
     
   approximate: the air is barely impeded: r w
   affricative: a stop plus a fricative ch sound in church (t + sh)

Lastly, Linguists measure whether or not the vocal cords vibrate or
not while saying the consonant. If the vocal cords vibrate, they call
the sound Voiced. If not, then they call the sound Voiceless. When air 
travels thru the nasal passages as well as the mouth, we call those 
sounds Nasal (like n and m). When one releases the stops lightly with a 
puff of air, we call those sounds Aspirated ( Saul why don't you describe
this one). When one raises the tongue towards the top of the mouth when 
saying the consonant, we call it Palatalized (like the A. English r).

Saul, if you could give us a review of how Linguists measure vowels,
I'd appreciate it. I still get confused about those.

Rob Z.
--------------------------------------------------------
Men are born ignorant, not stupid; they are made stupid
by education.
-- Bertrand Russell