Maleesa Redish

Affrication

Outline

I. Describing affrication

II. Spelling and affrication

III. Sorting affricates

IV. Internal supplementary pages

V. External supplementary pages

VI. References

Describing affrication: The term affrication derives from the word friction and describes the conversion of a simple stop consonant (t,d,or j for example) and its immediately following release through the articulatory position for a continuant nonsyllabic usually homorganic consonant or affricate. The term affrication derives from the word friction. In phonetics an affricate is often called a fricative. This refers to the way the tongue drags across the alveolar ridge on the roof of the mouth (right behind the front teeth) when pronouncing words such as chair, joy, drive, and trick (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affricate).

"Complex simultaneous articulations are usually described in terms of primary and secondary articulations. The primary articulation is the articulation with the greater degree or rank order of stricture. Stricture order, from highest to lowest, is stop (complete constriction of sound) , trill, fricative, approximant, resonant (soft constriction) . Secondary articulations very often have approximate stricture, especially when the primary and secondary articulators are different parts of the tongue (Mannel, R)."

Spelling and affrication

Due to its complex nature, affrication is considered a principal category in lettername spelling. Taking spelling inventories can be very effective in assessing a students progress through the spelling stages. As students develop a greater awareness of phonetics and move beyond the lettername stage of spelling, a consciousness of affrication will be represented in their writing (Bear & Invernizzi). Studies have shown the the majority of pre-schoolers consistently match "affricate /t/ and /d/ with the affricates that correspond in voicing c and j, respectively" (Read, C.) When a child attempts to spell or write an unknown word most often thier their first instinct is to try and sound it out. If the word contains an affricate this makes the letter name spelling process much more difficult. For example; if a beginning speller was attempting to spell the word truck they would first say the word and then try to identify the sounds they hear in order to spell it correctly. Due to the friction caused by the cluster (tr) when word is pronounced the student may not be able to identify the separate sounds of t and r as they have blended at the beginning of the word. As a result, students commonly identify the tr cluster as a combination of letters chr or jr. In this case you may see the word truck spelled chruck or jruck (Wolf, M., Mcquillan, M., & Radwin, E., 1980).

Sorting affricates

Sorting words which contain affricates is a very effective way to build a students awareness of affrication (Read, C.). One way this can be done is by using picture cards. Start by giving the student several picture cards representing words which contain affricates, for example; chair, check, truck, trip, drive, and drink. Once they have identified the pictures you can then begin to help (if needed) students sort the pictures by beginning sounds (Wolf, M., Mcquillan, M., & Radwin, E., 1980). After sorting the pictures by beginning sounds you can reinforce the lesson by providing the written words for clarification and comparison. An example of this technique would be to have students sort picture cards of the following words; blue, float, drink, and chair. After they have sorted the words using only the pictures to assist them as they speak the words (listening to the sound each makes when it is spoken) you can then provide the corresponding written words for further study. Having printed words supplemented by visuals will help students differentiate between blends (blue) and affricates (chair) while drawing thier attention to the differences and similarities between the beginnings of the words.

Internal supplementary pages related to the topic of affrication

Phonemic Awareness (phoneme detection)

Word Sorts

Word Study

Phonology

Sound Sorts

blends

cluster

External pages related to the topic of affrictaion

Complex consonants articulations [ http://www.shlrc.mq.edu.au/speech/phonetics/phonetics/complex/index.html ]

Accounting for affrication [ http://www.stanford.edu/~dball/sclc-ho-2up.pdf ]

Topics in phonology [ http://www.nytud.hu/buszi/wp2/node4.html ]

English Words: History and Structure [ http://assets.cambridge.org/97805217/90123/sample/9780521790123ws.pdf ]

Wikipedia [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affricate]

References:

Read, C. (1975). Children categorization of speech sounds in English. Experimental studies of the tr clusters (pp. 78-107). Urbana, IL. ERIC clearing house of language and linguistics.

Mannel, R. Complex Consonant Articulations. Retrieved February 4th, 2007. Web site: http://www.shlrc.mq.edu.au/speech/phonetics/phonetics/complex/index.html

Affricate consonant; retrieved February 8th, 2007. Web site: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affricate

Ball, D (2006). Accounting for affrication and fortition in Wichita: syllables or strings? 26th Siouan and Caddoan Language Conference.

Wolf, M., Mcquillan, M., & Radwin, E. (1980). Thought & language/language and reading (pp. 161-162). Harvard Educatonal Review'', series no. 14. ''

The phonological section of the web site located at http://www.nytud.hu/buszi/wp2/node1.html. Retrieved February 2, 2007.

Commentary by Raiza

Well done Maleesa. This is a topic I have honestly never heard of before. I have two suggestions. The following quote in the first section is a bit confusing. "Complex simultaneous articulations are usually described in terms of primary and secondary articulations. The primary articulation is the articulation with the greater degree or rank order of stricture. Stricture order, from highest to lowest, is stop, trill, fricative, approximant, resonant. Secondary articulations very often have approximant stricture, especially when the primary and secondary articulators are different parts of the tongue (Mannel, R)."

Also, in the sorting section you mention "Having words supplemented by visuals will help students differentiate between clusters and affricates while drawing thier attention to the differences and similarities between beginnings of the words." Maybe you could give an example of the sort and how the students differentiate between clusters and affricates.

Nice work on a hard topic!!

commentary by Kelly Murphy

Maleesa, you have done a great job with a topic that I am unfamiliar with. Like Raiza I had a hard time understanding the quote in the first section. There could be something wrong with my computer, but I could not link to your first external link - the others worked fine and were very informative. Another thing is that I think we were required to add a picture or a table. You may want to double check to see if you should add one. The last thing I found is that your link from McQuillan is not completed. GREAT JOB!

Commentary by Julie Mcgill

Wonderful job is explaining a topic I had no idea about. I believe your other comments have caught most of the errors, but I noticed in para 3 you have the c and j as wikki pages. Did you mean to put the {c} and {j}?

Before you prepared this topic I couldn't even pronounce the word. Now I not only know how to say it, I think I might even understand what it means.

Commentary by June Kent

Before reading your paper I had never heard of affrication.

I must admit that I had to reread the discription of affrication.

Would this be a good place to consider a few examples?

As I read further I began to recognize the traits described in the section Spelling and Affrication. (Quickly correct the spelling of "their" in this section.) I have some struggling readers and speech students that have a difficult time with "tr" and "chr". I pulled up a few of your external cites, attempting to further understand affrication. After readng a few of your cites I applaud you for covering a difficult topic and a job well done explaining affrication.

End of commentary.