Sibilant
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Sibilants (from
In the alveolar hissing sibilants [s] and [z], the back of the tongue forms a narrow channel (is grooved) to focus the stream of air more intensely, resulting in a high pitch. With the hushing sibilants (occasionally termed shibilants), such as English [ʃ], [tʃ], [ʒ], and [dʒ], the tongue is flatter, and the resulting pitch lower.[2][3]
A broader category is stridents, which include more fricatives than sibilants such as uvulars. Sibilants are a higher pitched subset of the stridents. The English sibilants are:
- /s, z, ʃ, ʒ, tʃ, dʒ/
while the English stridents are:
- /s, z, ʃ, ʒ, tʃ, dʒ, f, v/
as /f/ and /v/ are stridents but not sibilants because they are lower in pitch.[4][5][6]
"Stridency" refers to the perceptual intensity of the sound of a sibilant consonant, or obstacle fricatives or affricates, which refers to the critical role of the teeth in producing the sound as an obstacle to the airstream. Non-sibilant fricatives and affricates produce their characteristic sound directly with the tongue or lips etc. and the place of contact in the mouth, without secondary involvement of the teeth.[citation needed]
The characteristic intensity of sibilants means that small variations in tongue shape and position are perceivable, with the result that there are many sibilant types that contrast in various languages.
Acoustics
Sibilants are louder than their non-sibilant counterparts, and most of their acoustic energy occurs at higher frequencies than non-sibilant fricatives—usually around 8,000 Hz.[7]
Sibilant types
All sibilants are coronal consonants (made with the tip or front part of the tongue). However, there is a great deal of variety among sibilants as to tongue shape, point of contact on the tongue, and point of contact on the upper side of the mouth.
The following variables affect sibilant sound quality, and, along with their possible values, are ordered from sharpest (highest-pitched) to dullest (lowest-pitched):
- Tongue shape: retroflex
- postalveolar, palatal
- Point of contact on the tongue: laminal "closed" (see below), laminal non-"closed", apical, subapical
Generally, the values of the different variables co-occur so as to produce an overall sharper or duller sound. For example, a laminal denti-alveolar grooved sibilant occurs in Polish, and a subapical palatal retroflex sibilant occurs in Toda.
Tongue shape
The main distinction is the shape of the tongue. Most sibilants have a groove running down the centerline of the tongue that helps focus the airstream, but it is not known how widespread this is. In addition, the following tongue shapes are described, from sharpest and highest-pitched to dullest and lowest-pitched:
- Hollow (e.g. [s]): This hollow accepts a large volume of air that is forced through a typically narrow aperture that directs a high-velocity jet of air against the teeth, which results in a high-pitched, piercing "hissing" sound. Because of the prominence of these sounds, they are the most common and most stable of sibilants cross-linguistically. They occur in English, where they are denoted with a letter s or z, as in soon or zone.[dubious ]
- Alveolo-palatal (e.g. [ɕ]): with a convex, V-shaped tongue, and highly palatalized(middle of the tongue strongly raised or bowed).
- "domed" tongue (convex and moderately palatalized). These sounds occur in English, where they are denoted with letter combinations such as sh, ch, g, j or si, as in shin, chin, gin and vision.
- or "true" retroflex sounds are the very dullest and lowest-pitched of all the sibilants.
The latter three post-alveolar types of sounds are often known as "hushing" sounds because of their quality, as opposed to the "hissing" alveolar sounds. The alveolar sounds in fact occur in several varieties, in addition to the normal sound of English s:
- Palatalized: Sibilants can occur with or without raising the tongue body to the palate (palatalization). Palatalized alveolars are transcribed e.g. [sʲ] and occur in Russian; they sound similar to the cluster [sj] occurring in the middle of the English phrase miss you.
- Lisping: Alveolar sibilants made with the tip of the tongue (most common pronunciation of the letters s and z, as well as c before i or e, replacing the [s] or [θ] that occur elsewhere in the country.[9]
Speaking non-technically, the retroflex consonant [ʂ] sounds somewhat like a mixture between the regular English [ʃ] of "ship" and a strong American "r"; while the alveolo-palatal consonant [ɕ] sounds somewhat like a mixture of English [ʃ] of "ship" and the [sj] in the middle of "miss you".
Place of articulation
Sibilants can be made at any
Point of contact on the tongue
The tongue can contact the upper side of the mouth with the very tip of the tongue (an
For tongue-down laminal articulations, an additional distinction can be made depending on where exactly behind the lower teeth the tongue tip is placed. A little ways back from the lower teeth is a hollow area (or pit) in the lower surface of the mouth. When the tongue tip rests in this hollow area, there is an empty space below the tongue (a sublingual cavity), which results in a relatively duller sound. When the tip of the tongue rests against the lower teeth, there is no sublingual cavity, resulting in a sharper sound. Usually, the position of the tip of the tongue correlates with the grooved vs. hushing tongue shape so as to maximize the differences. However, the palato-alveolar sibilants in the Northwest Caucasian languages such as Ubykh are an exception. These sounds have the tongue tip resting directly against the lower teeth, which gives the sounds a quality that Catford describes as "hissing-hushing". Ladefoged and Maddieson[1] term this a "closed laminal postalveolar" articulation, and transcribe them (following Catford) as [ŝ, ẑ], although this is not an IPA notation. See the article on postalveolar consonants for more information.
Symbols in the IPA
The following table shows the types of sibilant fricatives defined in the International Phonetic Alphabet:
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Diacritics can be used for finer detail. For example, apical and laminal alveolars can be specified as [s̺] vs [s̻]; a
Possible combinations
The attested possibilities, with exemplar languages, are as follows. Note that the IPA diacritics are simplified; some articulations would require two diacritics to be fully specified, but only one is used in order to keep the results legible without the need for OpenType IPA fonts. Also, Ladefoged has resurrected an obsolete IPA symbol, the under dot, to indicate apical postalveolar (normally included in the category of retroflex consonants), and that notation is used here. (Note that the notation s̠, ṣ is sometimes reversed; either may also be called 'retroflex' and written ʂ.)
| IPA | Tongue shape | Place of articulation (mouth) |
Place of articulation (tongue) |
Exemplifying languages |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| [s̺̪ z̺̪] | hollow | dental | apical | southeast European Spanish s/z, Kumeyaay |
| [s̪ z̪] | denti-alveolar | laminal | Polish s, z; Basque z, tz | |
| [s̺ z̺] | alveolar | apical | northern peninsular Spanish s; Basque s, ts; Mandarin s, z, c (apical, dental or alveolar) | |
| [s z] | apical or laminal | English s, z (alveolar, laminal or apical); American or southwest European Spanish s/z | ||
| [s̻ z̻] | laminal | Toda, Ubykh, Abkhaz | ||
| [ʃ ʒ] | domed | postalveolar | apical or laminal | English sh, ch, j, zh and French ch, j ([ʃʷ ʒʷ]) |
| [ʃ̻ ʒ̻] | laminal | Toda; Basque x, tx | ||
| [ɕ ʑ] | palatalized | Mandarin x, j, q; Polish ś, ć, ź, dź; Ubykh; Abkhaz | ||
| [ŝ ẑ]1 | hollow (no cavity) |
Ubykh; Abkhaz | ||
| [s̠ ẕ], [ʂ̻ ʐ̻] |
hollow or flat (cavity under tongue) |
Polish sz, cz, ż, dż ([ʂ̻ʷ, tʂ̻ʷ, ʐ̻ʷ, dʐ̻ʷ]); Mandarin sh, zh, ch | ||
| [ʂ ʐ], [ṣ ẓ], etc.2 |
hollow | apical | Ubykh; Abkhaz; Kumeyaay; Toda; Russian | |
| [ʂ ʐ] | curled | palatal (or postalveolar?) | subapical | Toda |
^1 ⟨ŝ ẑ⟩ is an ad-hoc transcription. The old IPA letters ⟨ʆ ʓ⟩ are also available.
^2 These sounds are usually just transcribed ⟨ʂ ʐ⟩. Apical postalveolar and subapical palatal sibilants do not contrast in any language, but if necessary, apical postalveolars can be transcribed with an apical diacritic, as ⟨s̠̺ z̠̺⟩ or ⟨ʂ̺ ʐ̺⟩. Ladefoged resurrects the old retroflex sub-dot for apical retroflexes, ⟨ṣ ẓ⟩ Also seen in the literature on e.g. Hindi and Norwegian is ⟨ᶘ ᶚ⟩ – the domed articulation of [ʃ ʒ] precludes a subapical realization.
Whistled sibilants
Whistled sibilants occur phonemically in several southern Bantu languages, the best known being Shona. However, they also occur in speech pathology and may be caused by dental prostheses or orthodontics.
The whistled sibilants of Shona have been variously described—as
Besides Shona, whistled sibilants have been reported as phonemes in
Linguistic contrasts among sibilants
Not including differences in
The now-extinct Ubykh language was particularly complex, with a total of 27 sibilant consonants. Not only all four tongue shapes were represented (with the palato-alveolar appearing in the laminal "closed" variation) but also both the palato-alveolars and alveolo-palatals could additionally appear labialized. Besides, there was a five-way manner distinction among voiceless and voiced fricatives, voiceless and voiced affricates, and ejective affricates. (The three labialized palato-alveolar affricates were missing, which is why the total was 27, not 30.) [citation needed] The Bzyp dialect of the related Abkhaz language also has a similar inventory. [citation needed]
Some languages have four types when palatalization is considered. Polish is one example, with both palatalized and non-palatalized laminal denti-alveolars, laminal postalveolar (or "flat retroflex"), and alveolo-palatal ([s̪ z̪] [s̪ʲ z̪ʲ] [s̠ z̠] [ɕ ʑ]). [citation needed] Russian has the same surface contrasts, but the alveolo-palatals are arguably not phonemic. They occur only geminate, and the retroflex consonants never occur geminate, which suggests that both are allophones of the same phoneme. [citation needed]
Somewhat more common are languages with three sibilant types, including one hissing and two hushing. As with Polish and Russian, the two hushing types are usually postalveolar and alveolo-palatal since these are the two most distinct from each other.
Many languages, such as
Only a few languages with sibilants lack the hissing type.
Languages with no sibilants are fairly rare. Most have no fricatives at all or only the fricative /h/. Examples include most
Tamil only has the sibilant /ʂ/ and fricative /f/ in loanwords, and they are frequently replaced by native sounds. The sibilants [s, ɕ] exist as allophones of /t͡ɕ/ and the fricative [h] as an allophone of /k/.
Contested definitions
Authors including
The nature of sibilants as so-called 'obstacle fricatives' is complicated – there is a continuum of possibilities relating to the angle at which the jet of air may strike an obstacle. The grooving often considered necessary for classification as a sibilant has been observed in ultrasound studies of the tongue for the supposedly non-sibilant voiceless alveolar fricative [θ̠] of English.[14]
See also
- De-essing
- Plosive consonant
- Shibboleth
- Sj-sound
- Strident vowel
- Voiceless alveolar retracted sibilant
- Voiced apicoalveolar fricative
- Assibilation
Notes
- ^ a b c Ladefoged & Maddieson 1996.
- ISBN 979-11-88917-34-1.
- ^ "Sibilance - Definition and Examples of Sibilance". Literary Devices. 2014-02-14. Retrieved 2021-06-29.
- ^ "Sibilance - Definition and Examples of Sibilance". Literary Devices. 2014-02-14. Retrieved 2021-06-29.
- ISBN 978-84-9134-600-5.
- ISBN 978-1-000-34009-9.
- ^ "Tips For Controlling Vocal Sibilance". Pro Audio Files. 2012-03-07. Retrieved 2020-05-28.
- ^ Bright 1978.
- ^ Dalbor (1980); Obaid (1973).
- ^ Shosted 2006
- ^ Maddieson & Sands (2019). 'The Sounds of the Bantu Languages', in van de Velde et al. (eds) The Bantu Languages, 2nd edition.
- ^ (in Portuguese) Dialects of Brazil: the palatalization of the phonemes /t/ and /d/ Archived 2013-12-03 at the Wayback Machine.
- ^ (in Portuguese) Análise acústica de sequências de fricativas e africadas por japoneses aprendizes de português brasileiro[permanent dead link], Universidade Federal do Paraná, page 1504
- ^ Stone, M. & Lundberg, A. (1996). Three-dimensional tongue surface shapes of English consonants and vowels. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, vol. 99 (6), pp. 3728–3737
References
- Bright, William (1978), "Sibilants and naturalness in aboriginal California", Journal of California Anthropology, Papers in Linguistics, 1: 39–63
- Dalbor, John B. (1980), "Observations on Present-Day Seseo and Ceceo in Southern Spain", Hispania, 63 (1), American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese: 5–19, JSTOR 340806
- Hualde, José Ignacio (1991), Basque phonology, London: Routledge, JSTOR 340806
- ISBN 0-631-19815-6.
- Obaid, Antonio H. (1973), "The Vagaries of the Spanish 'S'", Hispania, 56 (1), American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese: 60–67, JSTOR 339038
- Shosted, Ryan K. (2006) Just put your lips together and blow? The whistled fricatives of Southern Bantu.
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