| Abstract | [Introduction]
While fricative consonant are usually lumped together with stop’s as >>true<< consonants, they resemble both the stopes and other segment types in their perceptual properties. As in the case of the stops, some place information is provided by transitional shifts in formant patterns adjacent to the interval of constriction, but unlike the stops, much place information is also provided by acoustic properties of the sound emitted during the constriction. Moreover, at least some of the fricatives seem to be continuously variable in “color,” more like vowels than stops. |