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Starting with a general overview of the IPA with special focus on the distribution of fricative sounds and then observing their frequency of occurrence, this paper is an attempt to explore any significant relationship between the degree of voicing pair and the development of fricatives. In doing so, 29 languages introduced in the ‘Handbook of the International Phonetic Association’ are scrutinized with much attention paid to the presence or absence of the voicing pair in each place of articulation for fricatives. Given this data, it is generally the case that the development of fricatives is critically related to the degree of symmetry in voicing pair, resulting in the difference in frequencies of occurrence. This paper goes further to associate this observation with Sachs’ (1988) principles of epigenetic selection, which is convincingly accounted for in Kent (1992) with regard to the phonological development in general. As a result, it is proven that epigenetics when applied to the phonological development in terms of Sachs’ rules of epigenetic selection plays a significant role in accounting for a variety of aspects related to fricatives.