Fricative (definition)

A fricative is a sound produced with a narrow opening in the vocal tract that allows air to pass only while causing frication. Frication is the audible, constrained rush of air characteristic of these sounds. Sibilants [s] and [ʃ] create a special subset of fricatives; they have an additional hissing quality caused by the airstream hitting the back of the teeth.

Fricatives in English include [f, v, s, z, ʒ, ʃ, θ, ð]; Gaelic fricatives include [f, v, s, ʃ, ç, ʝ, x, ɣ].

See Also

• Obstruant (definition)
• Consonant (definition)
• Manner of Articulation (definition)
• Sounds of Scottish Gaelic

External Links

• http://akerbeltz.org/index.php?title=Fricatives
• http://www.linguistics.ucsb.edu/faculty/gordon/fricativeacoustics.pdf

The link below takes you away from the Gaelic Wiki to Wikipedia. Since wikipedia pages can be edited by anyone, they often contain inaccurate information. So be careful!

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fricative_consonant

References

• Matthews, P. H. (1997) The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Linguistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Ladefoged, D. (2010) A Course in Phonetics. 6th Edition. Wadsworth Publishing.