Affricate consonant An affricate is a

Affricate consonant

An affricate is a consonant that begins as a stop and releases as a fricative, generally with the same place of articulation (most often coronal). It is often difficult to decide if a stop and fricative form a single phoneme or a consonant pair.[1] English has two affricate phonemes, [t͡ʃ] and [d͡ʒ], often spelled ch and j.

Examples[edit]

The English sounds spelled "ch" and "j" (transcribed [t͡ʃ] and [d͡ʒ] in the IPA), German and Italian z [t͡s] and Italian z [d͡z] are typical affricates and have sounds that are fairly common in the world's languages, as are other affricates with similar sounds, such as those in Polish and Chinese. However, other than [d͡ʒ], voiced affricates are relatively uncommon. For several places of articulation, they are not attested at all.
Much less common are labiodental affricates, such as [p͡f] in German and Izi, or velar affricates, such as [k͡x] in Tswana (written kg) or High Alemannic Swiss German dialects. Worldwide, relatively few languages have affricates in these positions even though the corresponding stop consonants, [p] and [k], are common or virtually universal. Also less common are alveolar affricates where the fricative release is lateral, such as the [t͡ɬ] 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: [t̪͡θ], [t̪͡θʰ], [t̪͡θʼ], [t͡s], [t͡sʰ], [t͡sʼ], [t͡ʃ], [t͡ʃʰ], [t͡ʃʼ], [t͡ɬ], [t͡ɬʰ], and [t͡ɬʼ].
Notation[edit]
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 this is more legible.[2] Thus:
⟨p͡f, t͡sʼ, d͡z, t͡ɬ, d͡ɮ, t͡ʃʼ, d͡ʒ, t͡ɕʼ, d͡ʑ, t͡ʂʼ, d͡ʐ , k͡xʼ⟩
or
⟨p͜f, t͜sʼ, d͜z, t͜ɬ, d͜ɮ, t͜ʃʼ, d͜ʒ, t͜ɕʼ, d͜ʑ, t͜ʂʼ, d͜ʐ , k͜xʼ⟩.
A less common notation is to indicate the release of the affricate with a superscript:
⟨pᶠ, tˢ, dᶻ, tᶴ, dᶾ, kˣ⟩.
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 the six common affricates
⟨ʦ, ʣ, ʧ, ʤ, ʨ, ʥ⟩.
Any of these notations can be used to distinguish affricates from sequences of stop plus fricative, a difference that distinguishes words in 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, the affricates [t͡s], [d͡z], [t͡ʃ], [d͡ʒ], [t͡ɬ], [d͡ɮ] are transcribed respectively as ⟨c⟩ or ⟨¢⟩; ⟨j⟩, ⟨ƶ⟩, or (older) ⟨ʒ⟩; ⟨c⟩ or ⟨č⟩; ⟨ǰ⟩, ⟨ǧ⟩, or (older) ⟨ǯ⟩; ⟨ƛ⟩; and ⟨λ⟩ or ⟨dl⟩. Within the IPA, [tʃ] and [dʒ]are sometimes transcribed with the symbols for the palatal stops, ⟨c⟩ and ⟨ɟ⟩.
Affricates vs. stop–fricative sequences[edit]
In some languages (but not all), affricates contrast phonemically with stop–fricative sequences:
Polish affricate /t͡ʂ/ in czysta 'clean (f.)' versus stop–fricative /tʂ/ in trzysta 'three hundred'.
Klallam affricate /t͡s/ in k’ʷə́nc 'look at me' versus stop–fricative /ts/ in k’ʷə́nts 'he looks at it'.
In the stop–fricative sequence, the stop has a release burst before the fricative starts; but in the affricate, the fricative element is the release. Stop–fricative sequences may have a syllable boundary between the two segments, but not necessarily.
In English, /ts/ and /dz/ (nuts, nods) are considered phonemically stop–fricative sequences because they usually contain a morpheme boundary (for example, nuts = nut + s), but the sounds are phonetically affricates.[citation needed] The English affricate phonemes /t͡ʃ/ and /d͡ʒ/ are generally not at a morpheme boundary. However, 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:
cat shit /kæt.ʃɪt/ → [kʰæʔʃɪt̚]
catch it /kæt͡ʃ.ɪt/ → [kʰæt͡ʃɪt̚]
/t/ there debuccalizes to a glottal stop before /ʃ/ in many dialects, making it phonetically distinct from /t͡ʃ/.
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 (Howell & Rosen 1983, Johnson 2003, Mitani et al. 2006).
List of affricates[edit]
In the case of coronals, the symbols ⟨t, d⟩ are normally used for the stop portion of the affricate regardless of place. For example, [t͡ʂ] is commonly seen for [ʈ͡ʂ].
The exemplar languages are ones that have been reported to have these sounds, but in several cases they may need confirmation.