Voiceless bilabial fricative

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This article is about the consonantal sound. For the Greek letter, see Phi (letter). For the Cyrillic letter, see Ef (Cyrillic).
Voiceless bilabial fricative
ɸ
IPA number126
Encoding
Entity (decimal)ɸ
Unicode (hex)U+0278
X-SAMPAp\
KirshenbaumP
Braille⠨ (braille pattern dots-46)⠋ (braille pattern dots-124)
Listen

The voiceless bilabial fricative is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ⟨ɸ⟩. For English-speakers, it is easiest to think of the sound as an f-sound made only with the lips, instead of the upper teeth and lower lip, or a blowing sound.

Features[edit]

Features of the voiceless bilabial 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 bilabial, which means it is articulated with both lips.
  • Its phonation is voiceless, which means it is produced without vibrations of the vocal cords. In some languages the vocal cords are actively separated, so it is always voiceless; in others the cords are lax, so that it may take on the voicing of adjacent sounds.
  • 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 pulmonic, which means it is articulated by pushing air solely with the lungs and diaphragm, as in most sounds.

Occurrence[edit]

Language Word IPA Meaning Notes
Ainu[citation needed] フチ [ɸu̜tʃi] 'grandmother'
Angor[citation needed] fi [ɸi] 'body'
Bengali Eastern dialects ফল [ɸɔl] 'fruit' Allophone of /f/ in Bangladesh and Tripura, /pʰ/ used in Western dialects.
Ewe[1] éƒá [éɸá] 'he polished' Contrasts with /f/
Italian Tuscan[2] i capitani [iˌhäɸiˈθäːni] 'the captains' Intervocalic allophone of /p/.[2] See Italian phonology and Tuscan gorgia.
Itelmen чуфчуф [tʃuɸtʃuɸ] 'rain'
Japanese[3] 腐敗 / fuhai [ɸɯhai] 'decay' Allophone of /h/ before /ɯ/. See Japanese phonology
Kaingang fy [ɸɨ] 'seed'
Kwama[citation needed] [kòːɸɛ́] 'basket'
Mao[citation needed] [ʔɑ̄ˈɸɑ́ŋ] 'empty'
Māori whakapapa [ɸakapapa] 'genealogy'
Odoodee[citation needed] pagai [ɸɑɡɑi] 'coconut'
Spanish Some dialects [4][5] fuera [ˈɸwe̞ɾa̠] 'outside' Non-standard variant of /f/. See Spanish phonology
Standard European[6] pub [ˈpa̠ɸ̞] 'pub' An approximant; allophone of /b/ before a pause.[6]
North-Central Peninsular[7] abdicar [a̠ɸðiˈka̠ɾ] 'abdicate' Allophone of /b/ in the coda. In this dialect, the unvoiced coda obstruents - /p, t, k/ - are realized as fricatives only if they precede a voiced consonant; otherwise, they emerge as stops.
Southern Peninsular[8] los vuestros [lɔʰ ˈɸːwɛʰtːɾɔʰ] 'yours' It varies with [βː] in some accents. Allophone of /b/ after /s/.
Shompen[9] [koɸeoi] 'bench'
Sylheti ꠙꠥꠀ [ɸua] 'boy'
Tahitian ʻōfī [ʔoːɸiː] 'snake' Allophone of /f/
Turkish Some speakers[10] ufuk [uˈɸuk] 'horizon' Allophone of /f/ before rounded vowels and, to a lesser extent, word-finally after rounded vowels.[10] See Turkish phonology
Turkmen fabrik [ɸabrik] 'factory'

See also[edit]

Notes[edit]

  1. ^ Ladefoged (2005:156)
  2. ^ a b Hall (1944:75)
  3. ^ Okada (1991:95)
  4. ^ Boyd-Bowman (1953:229)
  5. ^ Cotton & Sharp (1988:15)
  6. ^ a b Wetzels & Mascaró (2001), p. 224.
  7. ^ [1]
  8. ^ Pérez, Aguilar & Jiménez (1998:225–228)
  9. ^ "The language of the Shom Pen: a language isolate in the Nicobar Islands" (PDF). Mother Tongue XII: 179–202.
  10. ^ a b Göksel & Kerslake (2005:6)

References[edit]

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Voiceless_bilabial_fricative&oldid=881495163"