Svetlana Velmar-Janković

The alveolo-palatal ejective fricative is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ⟨ɕʼ⟩.

Features of the alveolo-palatal 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 alveolo-palatal. This means that:
  • Its place of articulation is postalveolar, meaning that the tongue contacts the roof of the mouth in the area behind the alveolar ridge (the gum line).
  • Its tongue shape is laminal, meaning that it is the tongue blade that contacts the roof of the mouth.
  • It is heavily palatalized, meaning that the middle of the tongue is bowed and raised towards the hard palate.
• 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 central consonant, which means it is produced by directing the airstream along the center of the tongue, rather than to the sides.
• The airstream mechanism is ejective (glottalic egressive), which means the air is forced out by pumping the glottis upward.

• Index of phonetics articles

• List of languages with [ɕʼ] on PHOIBLE