FRICATIVES & AFFRICATES

1. Fricatives are consonants with the characteristic that air escapes _____________________
______________________________ and makes a ___________________________ sound.
They are ______________________________ sounds, which means that you can continue
producing them for __________________________________________________________.
2. Affricates are more complex consonant articulations. They begin as _________________,
with both phases 1 and 2 as in a plosive articulation, but the release phase is realised differently:
the air escapes producing ____________________ instead of plosion. Consequently, the first
2/3s of the articulation of an affricate consist of a plosive articulation, while the last third of it
consists of a fricative articulation.
3. There are _____________ fricative articulations in English, with _____________ of them
being arranged into voiced/voiceless pairs, and one being alone as a single voiceless
articulation.
4. As we move from the larynx to the lips, the points of articulation for the English fricative
consonants are the following:
a. _________________________: /
/
b. _________________________: /
/, /
/
c. _________________________: /
/, /
/
d. _________________________: /
/, /
/
e. _________________________: /
/, /
/
5. The voiceless fricatives have the effect of _______________________ the preceding vowel.
So in the minimal pairs /li:v/ - /li:f/, the second /i:/ articulation is noticeably shorter. This is a
rather important phenomenon, since /v/ (and all voiced consonants) suffers considerable
devoicing in final position, so native speakers often rely on the length of the vowel preceding
the final consonant for identifying the word. In the following pairs, it is the length of the vowel
rather than the final consonant which distinguishes one member from the other:
/si:d/-/si:t/
/sad/-/sat/
/pli:z/-/pli:s/
/s: /-/s: /
In the pair /l:f/-/lv/, for example, the characteristically long vowel /:/ is shortened to such
an extent that it is quite similar in length to the normally short //.
Find minimal pairs differing only in the voicing of the last consonant, and practice making the
difference in length.
6. What are some very frequent words in English containing the sound //?
7. Find words which contain the sound //.