The alveolar lateral ejective fricative is a type of consonantal sound, reported in the Northwest Caucasian languages and in Modern South Arabian languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ⟨ɬʼ⟩.

Features[edit]

Features of the alveolar lateral ejective fricative:

• Its manner of articulation is fricative, which means it is produced by constricting air flow through a narrow channel at the place of articulation, causing turbulence.
• Its place of articulation is alveolar, which means it is articulated with either the tip or the blade of the tongue at the alveolar ridge, termed respectively apical and laminal.
• Its phonation is voiceless, which means it is produced without vibrations of the vocal cords.
• It is an oral consonant, which means air is allowed to escape through the mouth only.
• It is a lateral consonant, which means it is produced by directing the airstream over the sides of the tongue, rather than down the middle.
• The airstream mechanism is ejective (glottalic egressive), which means the air is forced out by pumping the glottis upward.

Occurrence[edit]

[ɬʼ] occurs in the reconstructed Proto-Semitic language.^[1]

See also[edit]

• Index of phonetics articles

References[edit]

External links[edit]

• List of languages with [ɬʼ] on PHOIBLE