Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman Area 40:1 (2017), 1–39. doi 10.1075/ltba.40.1.01ike issn 0731–3500 / e-issn 2214–5907 © John Benjamins Publishing Company Te case for alveolar fricative rhotics with evidence from Nusu Elissa Ikeda and Sigrid Lew Payap University Cross-linguistically, fricatives are the rarest types of rhotics, found in a few African and European languages (Ladefoged & Maddieson 1996) and as al- lophones in some Romance languages (Jesus & Shadle 2005; Recasens 2002; Bradley 2006; Colantoni 2006). Acoustic data from Nusu, phonotactic reasoning, and a cognate comparison demonstrate the presence of alveolar fricative rhotics in Tibeto-Burman. Te Nusu rhotic appears in syllable-initial position as the frst or second consonant and can be realized as alveolar approximants [ɹ] or [ɹʲ], non-sibilant voiced and voiceless fricatives [ɹ̝ , ɹ̥ ], as well as voiced sibilant [ʐ]. In other studies on Nusu, these fricative rhotics have sometimes been reported as retrofex voiced sibilants (Sun & Lu 1986; Fu 1991), but intra-speaker and cross-variety comparison point to classifcation as rhotics. Evidence from other Tibeto-Burman languages suggests that alveolar fricative rhotics are not limited to Nusu. Together these data challenge the tradition of generally interpreting alveolar fricatives as sibilants. Keywords: Nusu, rhotics, fricatives, sibilants 1. Introduction Nusu is a Tibeto-Burman language spoken in Southwestern Yunnan Province, China and Northeastern Kachin State, Myanmar. Most likely, Nusu is part of the Loloish subgroup, also referred to as Yi or Ngwi (Bradley 2012). Similar to Yi lan- guages, Nusu has a phonation distinction between stif and slack voice. Previous analyses of Nusu confict in their portrayals of phoneme /ɹ/. Sun and Lu (1986) document the rhotic as both an initial and medial /Cɹ/ consonant. Fu (1991) only lists /ɹ/ as a part of consonant clusters /Cɹ/. Both sources postulate initial sibilants /ʐ/ and /ʑ/. We utilize wordlists from fve varieties to establish that depending on environment and dialect, the Nusu rhotic can be realized in many ways. Tese may