Labiodental ejective fricative

Labiodental ejective fricative
Labiodental ejective fricative
fʼ
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X-SAMPA	f_>

The labiodental 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 ⟨fʼ⟩.

Features

Features of the labiodental 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 labiodental, which means it is articulated with the lower lip and the upper teeth.
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.
Because the sound is not produced with airflow over the tongue, the central–lateral dichotomy does not apply.
The airstream mechanism is ejective (glottalic egressive), which means the air is forced out by pumping the glottis upward.

Occurrence

Family	Language	Word	IPA	Meaning	Notes
Northwest Caucasian	Abkhaz	апа	[afʼa]	'thin'	Only found in this word, which is pronounced as [afʼa] only by some speakers, pronounced [apʼa] by the majority. ^[1]
Chontal	Highland Oaxaca Chontal	ɫof'aneh	[ɬofʼaneʔ]	'corn cob'
Northwest Caucasian	Kabardian	фӏыцӏэ / ḟıše / ڡ‍ہ‍ڗە	[fʼət͡sʼa]^ⓘ	'black'	Corresponds to [ʃʷʼ] in Adyghe.^[2]
Oceanic	Yapese^[3]	f'aang	[fʼaːŋ]	'type of eel'

Notes

^ p257, Hewitt, B. G. 1989. Abkhaz. Croom Helm Descriptive Grammars.
^ Colarusso, John. 1992. A Grammar of the Kabardian Language.
^ p32, Ballantyne, Keira Gebbie. 2005. Textual Structure and Discourse Prominence in Yapese Narrative. Doctoral dissertation, University of Hawai'i.