Alveolar Fricatives Research Articles

An Analysis of Dental Fricative Sound’s Production

This research was motivated by the problems of students of the English education study program at UIN Sjech M. Djamil Djambek Bukittinggi. Some students pronounce the dental fricative sound in various ways. First, some students pronounce the sound /?/ correctly, however, there are also some students pronounce the sound /?/ by replacing it with the sound /t/. Second, some students pronounce the sound /ð/ correctly, however, there are also some students pronounce the sound /ð/ by replacing it with the sound /d/. The researcher's question in this study was how students pronounce the dental fricatives sound at the initial, medial and final position of a word based on the PRAAT application. The purpose of this study was to analyze the way students pronounce the dental fricative sound at the initial, middle and final of a word based on the PRAAT application. This study uses a qualitative research method with seventh semester students as the research population. The research sample amounted to 13. Data was collected through audio recordings. Students are asked to pronounce 12 words that contain the sound of dental fricative sound. The sound is uploaded to the PRAAT software. The results showed that some of the students pronounce the dental fricative sound correctly, showed by a spectogram display like a scribble pattern in the focus phoneme. others pronounce the dental fricative sound incorrectly, showed by an empty area on spectrogram in the focus phoneme. It showed that they replaced the phoneme with another phoneme such as /t/ or /d/. Researchers can conclude as follows. First, some students pronounce the dental fricative sound correctly. Second, most of the students pronounce the dental fricative sound incorrectly.

Identifying Acoustic Variability Patterns in Spoken English of Fricative Consonants Among Pakistani Native Punjabi Speakers

This study examines the phonological variance in English pronunciation among elementary students who regularly speak Punjabi. It focuses on the distinctions between the pronunciation of consonant fricatives and Received Pronunciation (RP). Using a quantitative approach, 50 elementary students proficient in Punjabi were selected from public sector schools using judgmental and purposive sampling techniques. Data were collected through audio recordings of fricatives /f/, /v/, /θ/, /ð/, /s/, /z/, /ʃ/, /ʒ/, and /h/ in various word positions. Analysis using PRAAT software assessed intensity and pitch. Results revealed significant variations in fricative intensity and pitch compared to RP. /f/ had greater intensity, /v/ was subdued, and dental fricatives /θ/ and /ð/ showed reduced intensity. /s/ and /z/ varied extensively, /ʃ/ and /ʒ/ were pronounced with lower intensity and pitch, and /h/ had diminished intensity. Recommendations for educators include focusing on intensity and pitch exercises, using PRAAT for feedback, and emphasizing accurate speech organ placement. This study underscores the need for tailored pronunciation guidance for Punjabi-speaking students. Future research should explore additional phonetic features and employ spectrographic analysis.

Language Dependency of /s/ Production: Native Dutch Versus Non-Native English.

With forensic recordings being collected in multiple languages increasingly often, this study investigates the language dependency of the voiceless alveolar fricative /s/ in speakers of native (L1) Dutch and non-native (L2) English. Due to phonetic similarity between the languages, Dutch learners of English may exhibit language-independent /s/ acoustics, making it an interesting feature for multilingual forensic speaker comparisons (FSCs). However, the findings show that out of the four spectral moments, center of gravity, standard deviation (SD), skewness, and kurtosis, only SD remained stable across the languages; the other measurements were language-dependent. The results were largely independent of the /s/ tokens' contexts, although an interaction between language and context was found for skewness and kurtosis: With a labial right phonetic neighbor, language dependency was largely reduced. The findings have implications for FSCs: as /s/ is language-dependent in speakers of L1 Dutch and L2 English, it shows limited potential for cross-linguistic speaker comparisons in forensic casework.

Temporal, spectral and amplitude characteristics of the Greek fricative /s/ in hearing-impaired and normal-hearing speech

ABSTRACT Fricatives, and especially sibilants, are very frequently misarticulated by speakers with hearing loss. Misarticulations can result in phonemic contrast weakening or loss, compromising intelligibility. The present study focuses on the examination of acoustic characteristics of the Greek alveolar fricative /s/, an articulatorily demanding sound, produced by young adult speakers with profound hearing impairment and with normal hearing. An array of variables was examined using mixed-effects and random forest models aiming to assess the effectiveness of various measures in differentiating hearing-impaired and normal-hearing /s/ production. Significant differences were found in spectral and amplitude measures, but not in temporal measures. In hearing-impaired speech, spectral slope and RMS amplitude had significantly lower values, indicating a more distributed spectrum, suggestive of decreased flow velocity through the fricative constriction. Also, a trend for concentration of energy at lower frequencies was observed suggesting more posterior fricative articulation than normal. Moreover, measures capturing the variation of frequency and amplitude over time revealed different patterns of sibilance development across time than normal, denoting the production of a less well-formed or less sibilant /s/ by speakers with hearing impairment. The investigation of contextual effects on /s/ in hearing-impaired speech showed increased spectral variance, negative skewness and lower kurtosis in the labial (rounded) context /u/ in relation to the nonlabial contexts /i/ and /a/, indicating a more diffuse, less compact spectrum with concentration at high frequencies. Findings are discussed in relation to previous literature on fricative production by speakers with hearing impairment and normal hearing in Greek and other languages.

Spectral moment analysis of distortion errors in alveolar fricatives in Korean children*

Spectral moment analysis of distortion errors in alveolar fricatives in Korean children*

Anticipatory coarticulation of the Spanish alveolar fricative /s/ in adults with apraxia versus dysarthria

This acoustic study compares anticipatory coarticulation characteristics of the Spanish alveolar sibilant fricative /s/ when in utterance-initial position followed by a vowel in adults with dysarthria and apraxia of speech. Three groups of participants (28 individuals with no speech disorder, 20 with dysarthria, and 8 with apraxia of speech) produced 12 monosyllabic words that included the five vowel sounds of central-peninsular Spanish. The acoustic measurements compared within and between groups were frequency of the spectral intensity peak (FreqMid) in different zones of fricative execution, magnitude of the change in frequency of the spectral intensity peak (ΔFreq) in the end zone compared to the average of the initial and middle zones, first three spectral moments, and the difference in spectral center of gravity between the middle and end zones (DiffM-E CoG). Several of these measures were able to differentiate between dysarthric and healthy speech, especially when /s/ was followed by an unrounded vowel, and the same occurred for apraxia, but this time when the adjacent vowel was rounded. While both disorders showed similar spectral patterns, the two motor speech disorders differed in terms of the measures FreqMid and DiffM-E CoG. Possible explanations for these differences are here discussed within the framework of motor control models.

EXPLORING PRONUNCIATION CHALLENGES: INDONESIAN UNIVERSITY STUDENTS' PRODUCTION OF ENGLISH FRICATIVE SOUNDS

Abstract: This study investigated the production of English alveolar and post-alveolar fricatives by 40 Indonesian university students who are not majoring in English study. The research instruments were a questionnaire, which was used to obtain information about the participants, and a word list, which was comprised of 16 English words with alveolar and post-alveolar fricatives and 9 tricky words. The results revealed two main findings. The first was that most Indonesian non-English major university students who participated in this research were not proficient in producing voiced post-alveolar fricative /ʒ/ which resulted in the substitution of the sound with /z/, /s/, and /ʃ/. The participants, however, were quite great at producing the voiceless post-alveolar fricative /ʃ/ and had no difficulty in producing alveolar fricatives /s/ and /z/. The second was that the results indicated that the participants’ problems in pronouncing English fricatives were mainly attributed to native language interference, the absence of the target sound in the sound system of their native language, and limited knowledge of English phonetics. This research recommends that EFL teachers give a special portion of time to train their students to pronounce fricative sounds in English that do not exist in the students' native language and provide them with English sound phonetic knowledge. Both of these things are strongly believed to improve the students’ proficiency in English pronunciation.

An Articulatory Analysis Of English Consonants Produced By Pashto Native Speakers Of Different Dialects

This perceptual study explores the challenges faced by Pashto ESL learners in articulating nine English consonants. The study focuses on identifying the most problematic sounds and providing a learnable solution. Previous studies examined around six troublesome consonantal sounds, however, this perceptual and productive study focuses on the targeted consonantal sounds. The primary goal of the study is to determine why Khilji, Khatak, and Afridi dialects of Pashto speakers struggle with these sounds. The study examines the phonetic and phonological differences between the two languages and how these disparities affect the articulation of Pashto native speakers. The study is designed based on the Contrastive Analysis Theory formulated by Lado (1967). For this, nine consonants were selected for recording, which include the voiceless labio-dental fricative /f/, the voiced labio-dental fricative /v/, the voiceless dental fricative /θ/, the voiced dental fricative /ð/, the voiced post-alveolar fricative /ʒ/, the voiceless velar stop /k/, the voiceless alveolar ridge stop /t/, the voiced labio-velar approximant /w/ and the voiced alveolar stop /d/. By utilizing the purposive sampling technique, six participants were selected from colleges and universities in Karachi speaking three different dialects of Pashto. Pashto speakers recorded the speech stimuli as per protocols of the study. The results reveal that Pashto ESL learners find the voiceless labio-dental fricative /f/, voiceless velar stop /k/, voiceless alveolar ridge stop /t/, and voiced alveolar stop /d/ less challenging to articulate. On the other hand, the most problematic sounds were voiced and voiceless inter-dental fricatives /θ/ and /ð/, voiced labio-dental fricative /v/, voiced Alveo-palatal fricative /ʒ/ and voiced labio-velar approximant /w/. The finding reveals that the difference in sound systems between the two languages and the absence of sounds in their native language cause Pashto native speakers to have difficulty in pronouncing these sounds. The finding is not in line with the previous studies in terms of articulation variations on account of dialectal features.

Students’ Awareness in Coping with Pronunciation Problems: A Study Among the Second Semester Students of English Department FKIP at University of Mataram

Students’ awareness is one of the challenges in language learning, one of which is aware of strategies used and the problems in pronunciation to be able to correctly produce and pronounce the sounds in the target language. This study aims at analysing how concerned students are with pronunciation problems of English, the problems in English pronunciation, and the strategies used by students in coping with pronunciation problems. Mixed method, both quantitative and qualitative method is applied in this study. There are 20 students of English department in University of Mataram taken as sample in this study. The data reveals that, with the detail 11 items, most of the students are concerned, and 4 more items are the things that they are not concerned about. Meanwhile for the pronunciation problems, dental fricatives were the most common errors made by the students and followed by vowel sound and alveolar fricative as the second most error sounds, also pronunciation type of alveolar plosive, postalveolar fricative, retroflex plosive, affricative, and labiodental fricative were the least mispronounced. Thus students were also interviewed for pronunciation strategies, the result shows that most students used more than one strategies. This resulst is expected to give the students further information about new alternatives of strategies in coping with pronunciation problems to improve English speaking skill and enhance the theories and methods in the teaching of pronunciation.

Effect of prematurely primary front teeth loss with anterior esthetic fixed appliance on fricative production in Arabic-speaking children

BackgroundPrimary teeth affect the life quality regarding chewing, speech production, esthetics, and psychological well-being. Young children usually lose their primary maxillary incisors due to trauma or care and that leads to fault production of alveolar and dental fricatives. Fixed esthetic appliance replacing the lost primary front teeth were inserted and fricative sounds /s/,/s/,/∫ /,/z/and /z/ were tested before and after insertion of the fixed appliance through different time intervals.ResultsImprovement of fricative sound production occurred after fixed appliance insertion the /s/ sound, followed by /s/ sound showed immediate improvement while the /∫ / sound was the least to be improved even after 1 month duration. Both sounds /z/ and /z/ sound showed distortion immediately.ConclusionPremature loss of primary incisors in young children has a significant impact on speech production.

Deviation among Ghanaian Basic School Pupils Use of English in the Classroom: A case study of Bono and Ahafo Regions

The focus of this study is to discuss some deviations and innovations basic school pupils in the Bono and Ahafo regions of Ghana use in their classrooms and how these deviations are applied to their communication in the classroom. A descriptive survey design was adopted to help achieve these objectives. A qualitative approach was adopted to help explain the study better. A total population of 9,219 pupils and a sample size of 400 pupils were observed for the study. The findings of the study revealed that in the area of phonology, pupils replace the inter-dental fricative /ð/ with a voiced alveolar stop /d/. They also used the voiceless dental fricative /θ/ in place of /t/ a voiceless alveolar in their speech. Again, most pupils also use the trill /r/ in place of the /l/ sound both in writing and articulation. Under semantics, pupils usually transliterate statements from their L1 into the target language (English) and tend to use hyperbole for emphasis. Furthermore, over-generalization of syntactic rules was found as one of the innovations pupils make in classroom communication. Spelling pronunciation was also found as part of the innovations basic school pupils use in classroom communication.

Sound Production of English Dental Fricatives by Papuan EFL Students

This study aims to reveal to what extent Papuan EFL students correctly produce English dental fricatives and to find out what consonants substitute voiceless dental fricative /θ/ and voiced dental fricative /ð/ when misarticulation occurs. A descriptive analysis of 30 native Papuan EFL students was taken as the participants of the study. Data were collected by giving pronunciation tests and targets of either voiceless dental fricative /θ/ or voiced dental fricative /ð/ in an onset or coda syllable position. Correct sound production of English dental fricatives, both voiceless and voiced dental fricatives, by Papuan EFL students hardly found and almost unrecognized that only 12.0% of Papuan EFL students correctly pronounce voiceless dental fricative /θ/ and only 3.3% of Papuan EFL students correctly pronounce voiced dental fricative /ð/. It can be stated that the sound production of English dental fricatives lies in low-level production. Furthermore, Papuan EFL students mostly substitute voiceless dental fricative /θ/ with voiceless alveolar plosive /t/ indicated by 84.0% sound substitution. In other words, Papuan L1 speakers dominantly substitute the consonant /θ/ with the consonant /t/. Papuan EFL students frequently substitute voiced dental fricative /ð/ with both voiced alveolar plosive /d/ indicated by 51.6%, and voiceless alveolar plosive /t/ indicated by 43.3% substitution. Thus, Papuan L1 speakers primarily replace the consonant /ð/ with both consonant /d/ and /t/. The implications for the EFL teaching and learning process may assist Papuan EFL students in learning the correct pronunciation of English dental fricatives in order to improve their speaking proficiency

A Study of Selected Igbo Television Presenters’ Pronunciation of English Speech Sounds

The English language is used to solve the problem of language variation or problems emanating from language variation in Nigeria. Mass media plays a major role in conveying information to the general public. The conveyance of information is possible and easy when appropriate linguistic tools as well as the correct pronunciation of words are employed. However, there is always the implication of wrong pronunciation on the listeners whenever television presenters do not articulate words correctly. Some television presenters are faced with the problem of mother tongue interference which may lead to the incorrect articulation of English speech sounds. This is responsible for the phonological errors that are evident in the speeches of many television presenters, especially from the Igbo speech communities with significant implications on the educational performance of Nigerian youths who see them as stars and also imitate their phonological errors. The study, therefore, investigates the pronunciation of English speech sounds of selected Igbo television presenters. Data for the study were gathered from four (4) randomly selected television stations and one (1) purposively selected television station. These stations were selected because they are widely watched and some of them are award-winning television stations. The data collected were analyzed using simple percentage frequency. The result of the study reveals that the presenters in this study substitute /t/ for // and /d/ for /ð/; /Ɔ/ and /Ɔ:/ for //; /Ɔ:/, /a/, or /e/ for /ɜ:/ and /i/, /a/ or /e/ for /ǝ/. The reason for this is the fact that the central Igbo consonantal inventory has no dental fricatives // and /ð/ and at the vowel level, it has no central vowels //, /ɜ:/ and /ǝ/. So, interference occurs in the pronunciation of these sounds. Based on the findings, it is recommended that the phonological aspect of the English language should be handled by specialists; Nigerians should be sensitized on the need for proficiency in oral English hence, it should be one of the criteria for selection of television presenters.

A Corpus-based Study on Speech Errors in Pronouncing the Fricative // by Chinese Learners of English

There were quite a few studies investigating English pronunciation errors of Chinese learners of English. However, studies focusing on one typical sound and its detailed features are still inadequate. Besides, limited studies used speech corpora to investigate this topic due to a lack of available speech corpora. To fill such a research gap, this study uses the corpus L2-ARCTIC to investigate the speech errors of voiceless dental fricative // among four Chinese learners of English, and analyzes the possible reasons for the speech errors. Data are collected by analyzing the speech recordings from the corpus L2-ARCTIC, and the pronunciation errors of speakers are classified into different types. Results show that, in this corpus, the types of speech errors of the fricative // are the substitution and deletion. The sounds that have very close manners and places of articulation are easier to become the error sounds to replace the // sound.

The Development of Alveolar and Alveopalatal Fricatives in French-Speaking Monolingual and Bilingual Children.

This study conducted a transcription-based and spectral moments' analysis of alveolar and alveopalatal fricatives in monolingual and bilingual French-speaking children, aged 2;6-6;10 (years;months). We measured the percent accuracy of fricatives and investigated whether young children could distinguish alveolar and alveopalatal fricatives on the basis of spectral moments. In addition, we examined which child- (i.e., age, gender, bilingualism, and alveopalatal fricative inventory size) and word/sound-related (i.e., place-of-articulation [PoA], voicing, vowel quality, and word position) factors influenced spectral moments and fricative duration. Children (N = 89) participated in a picture-naming task in which they produced words containing alveolar /s, z/ and alveopalatal /ʃ, ʒ/ fricatives in word-initial, -medial, and -final positions. The words were transcribed and analyzed acoustically, and the first and third spectral moments (i.e., centroid and skewness) and the duration of fricatives were calculated. The data were subject to mixed-effects linear regression. Percent accuracy results indicated effects of age on alveopalatal fricatives and effects of word position on voiced fricatives. Statistical models indicated that age, gender, and alveopalatal fricative inventory size influenced spectral moments. Age and inventory size interacted significantly with PoA. Children as young as age 2;6 distinguished alveopalatal and alveolar fricatives on the basis of centroid but not skewness values. The distinction between the two sets of fricatives increased with age. Bilingual children who spoke languages with greater numbers of alveopalatal fricatives distinguished alveopalatal and alveolar fricatives less well than monolinguals and bilinguals who spoke languages with fewer numbers of alveopalatal fricatives. Girls had higher centroid and lower skewness values than boys. Models also revealed a significant influence of word/sound-related factors (voicing, vowel quality, and word position) on spectral moments and fricative duration. Findings indicated that multiple factors influence the spectral moments and duration measures of children's alveolar and alveopalatal fricatives. In particular, we found that spectral moments were sensitive to gender and bilingualism effects.

The effect of anterior esthetic fixed appliance of prematurely lost primary incisors on sound production and speech intelligibility

AimsThis work aimed to compare the sound production and speech pattern in children with prematurely extracted anterior teeth after prosthetic rehabilitation with fixed functional space maintainer.Settings and designThe study was conducted as a clinical trial. The clinical part was carried out at Pediatric Dentistry Department, Faculty of Dentistry, Tanta University and speech evaluation and assessment was done in Phoniatric Unit, ENT Department, Faculty of Medicine, Tanta University.Patients and methodsTwenty-five children of both sexes aged from 3 to 6 years old were included in the study. The selected children were in need for extraction of maxillary primary incisors or had already got extracted and treated by anterior esthetic fixed appliance. Children attended for speech and language evaluation at before appliance delivery, immediately after appliance insertion, 7 days after appliance insertion, 14 days after appliance insertion and 1 month after appliance insertion. And they were evaluated by articulation test, speech intelligibility test, and spectrographic parameters.Statistical analysis usedAll test statistics were performed using the SPSS software statistical package and the significance was set at P value less than or equal to 0.05.ResultsThere were statistically significant differences between follow up periods for/S/,/S/, and/Z/sounds but no statistically significant difference for/z/and/∫/sounds. The mean shimmer in dB, the mean absolute Jitter and the mean noise to harmonic ratio for the sounds were diminished after adaptation of the appliance. Also, high significant differences were found between 1 month after appliance insertion and all different follow up periods. No difference with immediately after appliance insertion.ConclusionsReplacement of prematurely lost primary incisors with fixed prosthetic appliances will assist in the proper development and intelligibility of speech. Also, in accurate consonants sounds production as/s/,/s/,/z/,/∫/(alveolar fricatives), and/z/(dental fricatives).

Individual variation in performing reading-aloud speech among deaf speakers

AbstractThe study examines the stylistic variation (interview vs. passage-reading) of socially meaningful variables among orally educated deaf speakers of Mandarin in Taipei, Taiwan. I examine the use of the retroflex and alveolar fricatives across two groups: deaf persons who received speech therapy or training, and those who did not receive speech medicalization. The two groups acquire the metalinguistic awareness of sibilant variation in different ways. Results show that the former group utilize the variables in the same way as hearing persons do – increasing the degree of retroflexion in reading-aloud speech. The latter group engage with the variable in an opposite way – decreasing the degree of retroflexion, which nevertheless also indexes able-bodiedness, possibly via the embodied link between a stronger hiss and a fronted sibilant. I argue that we need to carefully look at what different linguistic variants index through locating the variants in each speaker’s personal history.

ЛАБІОДЕНТАЛЬНА ТА АЛЬВЕОЛЯРНА ДЗВІНКІ ЩІЛИННІ: ТЕНДЕНЦІЇ ВИМОВИ В НАЦІОНАЛЬНИХ ВАРІАНТАХ НІМЕЦЬКОЇ МОВИ

The present paper deals with the synchronic variation of the labiodental and alveolar fricative phonemes in the national varieties of German in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Our research task was to describe the full range of modifications of these fricatives in the national varieties under investigation and to determine two conditional factors: 1) which modifications are due to positional and combinatorial conditions of sound realization; 2) which modifications can be taken to be typical of these national varieties of German. The data collected are based on the acoustic analysis of reproductive speech (a reading of short stories by Leonhard Thoma) of 12 German teachers from Northern Germany, from the Vienna area and from the cantons of Aargau and Lucerne. Our results showed that the frequent loss of tone by the lax labiodental fricative [v̥] mostly depends on the positional and combinatorial conditions of its realization and can be observed mainly in the positions of the absolute beginning of the phonetic word and after voiceless consonants in all the national varieties under investigation. The realization of the lax alveolar fricative /z/ in the speech of the German is also dependent on its position and the sound context. Instead, in the speech of the Austrians and the German Swiss the voiceless allophone of the lax alveolar fricative [z̥] prevails regardless of its position in the phonetic word and sound context. Therefore, the occurrence of this allophone can be taken to be typical of these national varieties of German.

The ability of Students in Pronunciation English Palatal Alveoral Fricative and Palatal Alveoral Affricative Consonant at Ninth Grade of Junior High School 17 Jambi City

Pronunciation is one of the components in speaking ability. This component plays very important role in communication, because by pronouncing the English words correctly students are able to avoid misunderstanding when they are speaking, therefore to be able to say English words fluently and correctly, the students should have good mastery in pronunciation especially in pronouncing English palatal alveolar fricative and affricative consonant sounds. This research is aimed at describing students” ability to pronounce English palatal alveolar fricative and affricative consonants (∫ and t∫) and find out in which position (initial, medial, and final) are the most difficult to pronounce. The design of this research was descriptive quantitative method approach. This research was conducted Junior High School Number 17 Kota Jambi in January 2022. in conducting this research, this research administered the pronunciation test one time, the. The population of this research was the ninth-grade students at SMPN 17 Jambi City in academic year 2021-2022, the total number of them were 340 students. As the sample was the ninth-grade students, they consist of 10 students. This research used purposive sampling technique in taking the sample if this research. The result of this research showed that on the test there were 4 students belong to very good categories, 2 student belongs to good categories, 3 students belong to fair categories, 1 student belongs to weak category and none of the student belong to poor category. the ability of the students in pronouncing the English palatal alveolar fricative (∫) and (t∫) affricative consonant was 78%, this is categorized as good. The students” ability in pronouncing sound (∫) belongs to very good category (85%) and sound (t∫) belongs to good category (73%)

The dental-alveolar contrast in Mapudungun: loss, preservation, and extension

Abstract Dialects of the South American language Mapudungun are claimed to display a dental-alveolar contrast across four manners of consonant articulation: stops, nasals, laterals, and fricatives. Such a full, symmetrical system of distinctions among coronals is typologically unique and, as such, is predicted to be unstable. This paper’s survey of contemporary data, however, shows that, despite lexical contrast being marginal and dentals being morphologically restricted, the distinction is highly salient to native speakers of the more vital dialects. A careful examination of the pattern’s historical roots and diachronic stability, furthermore, allows us to reconstruct it throughout the 400-year textual record. Indeed, the early descriptions and transcriptions shown that, instead of contracting, the contrast expanded, by borrowing the alveolar fricative /s/ from Quechuan and Spanish. The historical and articulatory data shows that while /t̪ n̪ l̪ θ/ are laminal, /t n l/ are apical. Incoming /s/, however, does not follow the pattern, being laminal and prompting a reorganization of featural contrasts among fricatives. As a result of erosion of native fluency under Spanish contact, loss of the dental-alveolar contrast has become commonplace, although there is much variation across speaker, dialect, and manner of articulation. Crucially, dialects which had only voiced fricatives until the borrowing of /s/ seem to have added voicing as a new contrastive feature, helping to preserve the coronal contrast among fricatives, even where vitality is reduced.