Andizhan state institute of foreign languages faculty of english and literature department of english and literature

CLASSIFICATION OF FRICATIVES IN ENGLISH
A fricative is a consonant sound that is created by constricting the vocal tract, causing friction as the air passes through it. The nine English fricative sounds:
1.v sound /v/
2.f sound /f/
3.voiced th sound /ð/
4.unvoiced th sound /θ/
5.z sound /z/
6.s sound /s/
7.zh sound /ʒ/
8.sh sound /ʃ/
9.h sound /h/
often do not correlate exactly with any particular sound in an English as a Second Language/English as a Foreign Language student's native language. This causes substitutions to occur, and those substitutions often have significant differences from the intended English sound.
There are three major points that beginner ESL/ELL students should understand about fricative sounds:
To produce fricatives, air travels smoothly through a small, constricted opening in the vocal tract. The friction of the air causes the sound.
Fricatives are capable of being formed continuously, with no complete blockage of the vocal tract (unlike stops and affricates).
Except for /h/, fricatives occur in voiced/unvoiced pairs.
There is one subtle, additional aspect of fricative sounds:
The duration of a vowel sound before a voiced fricative is greater than the duration of a vowel sound before an unvoiced fricative.
Voiced and unvoiced sounds
Of the nine fricative sounds in English, four are voiced (meaning that the vocal cords vibrate while producing the sound) and five are unvoiced (meaning that the vocal cords do not vibrate while producing the sound). Voiced and unvoiced sounds usually occur in pairs, with the major difference between the sounds in the pair being the use of the vocal cords or not.
Vowel lengthening
The vowel sound before voiced consonant sounds has a longer duration than the vowel sound before its unvoiced counterpart. This change in vowel duration subtly helps listeners of English to determine which fricative sound was spoken. Some dictionaries will use a colon-like symbol of stacked triangles (ː) to note a vowel with increased duration.
Notice the difference in vowel duration in the following minimal pairs.
face /feɪs/ — phase /feɪːz/
bus /bʌs/ — buzz /bʌːz/
safe /seɪf/ — save /seɪːv/
leaf /lif/ — /liːv/
Since vowel duration is also influenced by word stress within a sentence, vowel duration due to voicing/unvoicing can be difficult to notice during a conversation.
Fricatives are produced by creating a turbuleance in the airflow by passing it through a stricture in the vocal tract cav- ity. Fricatives are characterized by their noise–like behavior, which makes it difficult to analyze. Difference in the place of articulation leads to different classes of fricatives. Identifi- cation of fricative segment boundaries in speech helps in im- proving the performance of several applications.Fricatives comprise the largest set of consonants in English lan- guage, given the different manners of articulation. Fricative sounds in speech are produced by forcing the air through a con- struction in the oral cavity. A turbulence is generated in the air– flow at this constriction, which serves as the source for fricative sounds. The cavity following the constriction or the place of articulation dictates the system response. Different classes of fricatives are dependent of the pair of articulators forming the constriction. The English language has fricatives produced with constrictions mainly at four places, namely, labiodental (voiced /v/, voiceless /f/), linguadental (voiced /dh/,voiceless /th/), alve- olar (voiced /z/, voiceless /s/) and palatal (voiced /zh/, voiceless /sh/) [1–3]. The present study spans around these classes of fricatives.
The glottal fricative sound (voiceless /h/) exhibits spectral characteristics closer to the abutting vowels and there- fore is not included in the present study. The alveolar and palatal fricative classes are called sibilants, and the other two classes are called nonsibilants. Sibilants are identified with rel- atively high intensity and a defined spectral structure. The dis- tinction in the acoustic properties of these two classes arise due to the difference in cavity structures. Fricatives are also dis- tinguished as voiced or voiceless depending on the presence of phonation (vocal fold vibration) during their production.
one of the major ways that consonants differ from each other is in the accompanying action of the larynx, with the most typical larynx settings being one which allows air to flow freely between the vocal folds vs. one in which the vocal folds vibrate to produce regular voicing. One aspect of this opposition between voiced and voiceless consonants is discussed.The distribution of a contrast between voiced and voiceless counterparts in the two major classes of consonants within which this contrast commonly occurs will be discussed. These two classes of consonants are the plosives and fricatives. Plosives are the kinds of sounds usually associated with the letters p, t, k; b, d, g, in which air flow from the lungs is interrupted by a complete closure being made in the mouth. Fricatives are the kinds of sounds usually associated with letters such as f, s; v, z, in which the air passes through a narrow constriction that causes the air to flow turbulently and thus create a noisy sound.
The other classes of consonants which are found in the majority of languages (nasals, "liquids" and vowel-like approximants) are voiced in the overwhelming majority of cases.Voiceless plosive and fricative consonants occur in more languages than voiced ones, but voiced types are nonetheless relatively common. How frequent it is for a contrast between voiced and voiceless plosives and fricatives to occur in languages and how such contrasts are distributed will be the focus of this chapter. A language will only be counted as having a contrast between voiced and voiceless plosives or fricatives if there is a pair of sounds in which the place of articulation and all other principal characteristics of the pair apart from the voicing category are the same.
Fricative consonants are made by squeezing air between a small gap as it leaves the body. In English pronunciation, there are 9 fricative phonemes: /f,v,θ,ð,s,z,ʃ,ʒ,h/ made in 5 positions of the mouth:The fricative sounds /v,ð,z,ʒ/ are voiced, they are pronounced with vibration in the vocal cords, whilst the sounds /f,θ,s,ʃ,h/ are voiceless; produced only with air.
Fricative Sound Spellings
Common spellings for each fricative sound are underlined below:
/f/: far
/v/: save, of
/θ/: think
/ð/: those
/s/: sir, race
/z/: zoo, rise
/ʃ/: sharp, chef, pressure, sugar, motion
/ʒ/: beige, Asia, pleasure
/h/: ahead
English has voiceless labiodental /f/, voiceless dental /θ/, voiceless alveolar /s/, voiceless palato-alveolar (post-alveolar) /ʃ/, voiced labiodental /v/, voiced dental /ð/, voiced alveolar /z/, and voiced palato-alveolar (post-alveolar) /ʒ/. In English there are many sounds symbolized by palato alveolar /ʃ/ and /ʒ/, and dental /θ/ and /ð/.
1. Articulation of Labiodental fricatives
θ, ð (example words: ‘thumb,’ ‘thus;’ ‘either,’ ‘father;’ ‘breath,’ ‘beathe’). The dental fricatives have sometimes been described as if the tongue was actually placed between the teeth, and it is common for teachers to make their students do this when they are trying to teah them to make this sound (Road, 1987). In fact, however, the tongue is placed inside the teeth, as shown in Figure 2, with the tip touching the inside of the lower front teeth and the blade touching the inside of the upper teeth. The air escapes through the gaps between the tongue and the teeth (Road, 1987)
2. Articulation of dental fricatives
s, z (example words: ‘sip,’ ‘zip;’ ‘facing,’ ‘phasing;’ ‘rice,’ ‘rise’). These are alveolar fricatives, with the same place of articulation as t and d (Roach, 1987). He adds that to produce alveolar fricaatives, the air escapes through a narrow passage along the centre of the tongue, and the sound produced is comparatively intense.
3. Articulation of alveolar fricatives
ʃ, ʒ (example words: ‘ship,’ (initial ʒ is very rare in English); ‘Russia,’ ‘ measure’; ‘Irish,’ ‘garage’). These fricatives are called palato-alveolar, which can be taken to mean that their place of articulation ia partly palatal, partly alveolar (Roach, 1987). He then adds that the tongue is in contact with an area slightly further back than that: for s, z as revealed in Figure 4. Roach also suggests that if we make s, then ʃ, we should be able to feel our tongue move backwards in which the air escapes through a passage along the centre of the tongue, as in s and z, but the passage is a little wider.
4. Articulation of palato-alveolar fricatives
h (example words: ‘head,’ ‘ahead, ‘playhouse’). The place of articulation of this consonant is glottal. This means that the narrowing that produces the friction noise is between the vocal cords (Roach, 1987). Roach then adds that if we breathe out silently, then produce h, we are moving our vocal cords from wide apart to close together. Phonologically, h is a consonant. It is usually found before vowels. As well as being found in initial position it is found medially in words such as: ‘ahead’ ǝhed, ‘greenhouse’ gri:nhaʊs (Roach, 1987).