The voiceless retroflex sibilant affricate is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ⟨t̠͡ʂ⟩, sometimes simplified to ⟨tʂ⟩ or ⟨ꭧ⟩, and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is ts`. Its apical variant is ⟨ʈ̺͡ʂ̺⟩ and laminal variant ⟨ʈ̻͡ʂ̻⟩.
The affricate occurs in a number of languages:
Asturian: Speakers of the western dialects of this language use it instead of the voiced palatal fricative, writing ḷḷ instead of ll.
Slavic languages: Polish, Belarusian, Old Czech, Serbo-Croatian; some speakers of Russian may use it instead of the voiceless alveolo-palatal affricate.
a number of Northwest Caucasian languages have retroflex affricates that contrast in secondary articulations like labialization.
Mandarin and other Sinitic languages.
Features
Features of the voiceless retroflex affricate:
Its manner of articulation is sibilant affricate, which means it is produced by first stopping the air flow entirely, then directing it with the tongue to the sharp edge of the teeth, causing high-frequency turbulence.
Its place of articulation is retroflex, which prototypically means it is articulated subapical (with the tip of the tongue curled up)[citation needed], but more generally, it means that it is postalveolar without being palatalized. That is, besides the prototypical subapical articulation, the tongue contact can be apical (pointed) or laminal (flat).
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.
It is a central consonant, which means it is produced by directing the airstream along the center of the tongue, rather than to the sides.
^Academia de la Llingua Asturiana. Normes ortográfiques(PDF) (in Asturian) (6th revised ed.). p. 14. ISBN 84-8168-394-9. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2013-03-23.
^Lee, Wai-Sum (1999). An articulatory and acoustical analysis of the syllable-initial sibilants and approximant in Beijing Mandarin(PDF). Proceedings of the 14th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences. pp. 413–416. S2CID 51828449.
García Arias, Xosé Lluis (2003), Gramática Histórica de la Lengua Asturiana, Oviedo: Academia de la Llingua Asturiana, pp. 34–36, ISBN 84-8168-341-8
Hamann, Silke (2004), "Retroflex fricatives in Slavic languages" (PDF), Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 34 (1): 53–67, doi:10.1017/S0025100304001604, S2CID 2224095, archived from the original (PDF) on 2015-04-14, retrieved 2015-04-09
Hanulíková, Adriana; Hamann, Silke (2010), "Slovak" (PDF), Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 40 (3): 373–378, doi:10.1017/S0025100310000162
Jassem, Wiktor (2003), "Polish", Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 33 (1): 103–107, doi:10.1017/S0025100303001191
Ladefoged, Peter; Wu, Zongji (1984), "Places of Articulation: An Investigation of Pekingese Fricatives and Affricates", Journal of Phonetics, 11 (3): 267–278, doi:10.1016/S0095-4470(19)30883-6
Lunsford, Wayne A. (2001). An overview of linguistic structures in Torwali, a language of Northern Pakistan(PDF) (M.A. thesis). Arlington: University of Texas. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2007-06-12.
Landau, Ernestina; Lončarića, Mijo; Horga, Damir; Škarić, Ivo (1999), "Croatian", Handbook of the International Phonetic Association: A guide to the use of the International Phonetic Alphabet, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 66–69, ISBN 978-0-521-65236-0
