Type of fricative consonant sound
Sibilants
(from
Latin
:
s?bil?ns
: 'hissing') are
fricative
consonants of higher
amplitude
and
pitch
, made by
directing
a stream of air with the tongue towards the
teeth
.
Examples of sibilants are the consonants at the beginning of the
English
words
sip
,
zip
,
ship
, and
genre
. The symbols in the
International Phonetic Alphabet
used to denote the sibilant sounds in these words are, respectively,
[s]
[z]
[?]
[?]
. Sibilants have a characteristically intense sound, which accounts for their
paralinguistic
use in getting one's attention (e.g. calling someone using "psst!" or quieting someone using "shhhh!").
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
[?]
,
[t?]
,
[?]
, and
[d?]
, 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:
while the English stridents are:
- /s,
z,
?,
?,
t?,
d?,
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
[
edit
]
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
[
edit
]
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):
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
[
edit
]
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
–
discuss
]
- Alveolo-palatal
(e.g.
[?]
): with a convex, V-shaped tongue, and highly
palatalized
(middle of the tongue strongly raised or bowed).
- Palato-alveolar
(e.g.
[?]
): with a
"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
.
- Retroflex
(e.g.
[?]
): with a flat or concave tongue, and no palatalization. There is a variety of these sounds, some of which also go by other names (e.g. "flat postalveolar" or "
apico-alveolar
"). The
subapical
palatal
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.
[s?]
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 (
apical
) near the upper teeth have a softer sound reminiscent of (but still sharper-sounding than) the "lisping"
[θ]
sound of English
think
. These sounds are relatively uncommon, but occur in some of the indigenous languages of
California
as well as in the
Spanish
dialects of western and southern
Andalucia
(southwest
Spain
), mostly in the provinces of
Cadiz
,
Malaga
,
Sevilla
and
Huelva
. In these dialects, the lisping sibilant
[s?]
(sometimes indicated in Spanish
dialectology
as ⟨
s?
⟩) is the
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
[?]
sounds somewhat like a mixture between the regular English
[?]
of "ship" and a strong American "r"; while the alveolo-palatal consonant
[?]
sounds somewhat like a mixture of English
[?]
of "ship" and the
[sj]
in the middle of "miss you".
Place of articulation
[
edit
]
Sibilants can be made at any
coronal
articulation, i.e. the tongue can contact the upper side of the mouth anywhere from the upper teeth (
dental
) to the
hard palate
(
palatal
), with the in-between articulations being
denti-alveolar
,
alveolar
and
postalveolar
.
Point of contact on the tongue
[
edit
]
The tongue can contact the upper side of the mouth with the very tip of the tongue (an
apical
articulation, e.g.
[??]
); with the surface just behind the tip, called the
blade
of the tongue (a
laminal
articulation, e.g.
[??]
); or with the underside of the tip (a
subapical
articulation). Apical and subapical articulations are always
tongue-up
, with the tip of the tongue above the teeth, while laminal articulations can be either tongue-up or
tongue-down
, with the tip of the tongue behind the lower teeth. This distinction is particularly important for
retroflex
sibilants, because all three varieties can occur, with noticeably different sound qualities. For more information on these variants and their relation to sibilants, see the article on
postalveolar consonants
.
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
term this a "
closed
laminal postalveolar" articulation, and transcribe them (following Catford) as
[?,
?]
, although this is not an IPA notation. See the article on
postalveolar consonants
for more information.
Symbols in the IPA
[
edit
]
The following table shows the types of sibilant fricatives defined in the
International Phonetic Alphabet
:
Diacritics can be used for finer detail. For example, apical and laminal alveolars can be specified as
[s?]
vs
[s?]
; a
dental
(or more likely
denti-alveolar
) sibilant as
[s?]
; a palatalized alveolar as
[s?]
; and a generic "retracted sibilant" as
[s?]
, a transcription frequently used for the sharper-quality types of retroflex consonants (e.g. the laminal "flat" type and the "
apico-alveolar
" type). There is no diacritic to denote the laminal "closed" articulation of palato-alveolars in the
Northwest Caucasian languages
, but they are sometimes provisionally transcribed as
[?
?]
.
Possible combinations
[
edit
]
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
s?,
?
is sometimes reversed; either may also be called 'retroflex' and written
?
.)
IPA
|
Tongue shape
|
Place
of articulation
(mouth)
|
Place
of articulation
(tongue)
|
Exemplifying languages
|
[s??
z??]
|
hollow
|
dental
|
apical
|
southeast European
Spanish
s/z
,
Kumeyaay
|
[s?
z?]
|
denti-alveolar
|
laminal
|
Polish
s, z
;
Basque
z, tz
|
[s?
z?]
|
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
|
[s?
z?]
|
laminal
|
Toda,
Ubykh
,
Abkhaz
|
[?
?]
|
domed
|
postalveolar
|
apical or laminal
|
English
sh, ch, j, zh
and French
ch, j
(
[??
??]
)
|
[??
??]
|
laminal
|
Toda
;
Basque
x, tx
|
[?
?]
|
palatalized
|
Mandarin
x, j, q
;
Polish
?, ?, ?, d?
;
Ubykh
;
Abkhaz
|
[?
?]
1
|
hollow
(no cavity)
|
Ubykh
;
Abkhaz
|
[s?
?]
,
[??
??]
|
hollow or flat
(cavity under tongue)
|
Polish
sz, cz, ?, d?
(
[???,
t???,
???,
d???]
);
Mandarin
sh, zh, ch
|
[?
?],
[?
?]
,
etc.
2
|
hollow
|
apical
|
Ubykh
;
Abkhaz
;
Kumeyaay; Toda;
Russian
|
[?
?]
|
curled
|
palatal
(or
postalveolar
?)
|
subapical
|
Toda
|
^1
⟨
? ?
⟩
is an ad-hoc transcription. The old IPA letters
⟨
? ?
⟩
are also available.
^2
These sounds are usually just transcribed
⟨
? ?
⟩
. 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
⟨
s?? z??
⟩
or
⟨
?? ??
⟩
. Ladefoged resurrects the old retroflex sub-dot for apical retroflexes,
⟨
? ?
⟩
Also seen in the literature on e.g. Hindi and Norwegian is
⟨
? ?
⟩
? the domed articulation of
[?
?]
precludes a subapical realization.
Whistled sibilants
[
edit
]
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
labialized
but not velarized, as retroflex, etc., but none of these features are required for the sounds.
[10]
Using the
Extended IPA
, Shona
sv
and
zv
may be transcribed
⟨
s?
⟩
and
⟨
z?
⟩
. Other transcriptions seen include purely labialized
⟨
s?
⟩
and
⟨
z?
⟩
(Ladefoged and Maddieson 1996) and labially co-articulated
⟨
s?
⟩
and
⟨
z?
⟩
(or
⟨
s??
⟩
and
⟨
z?β
⟩
). In the otherwise IPA transcription of Shona in Doke (1967), the whistled sibilants are transcribed with the non-IPA letters
⟨
?
?
⟩
and
⟨
t? d?
⟩
.
Besides Shona, whistled sibilants have been reported as phonemes in
Kalanga
,
Tsonga
,
Changana
,
Tswa
?all of which are Southern African languages?and
Tabasaran
. The articulation of whistled sibilants may differ between languages. In Shona, the lips are
compressed
throughout, and the sibilant may be followed by normal labialization upon release. (That is, there is a contrast among
s, sw, ?, ?w
.) In Tsonga, the whistling effect is weak; the lips are narrowed but also the tongue is
retroflex
. Tswa may be similar. In Changana, the lips are rounded (protruded), but so in /s/ in the sequence /usu/, so there is evidently some distinct phonetic phenomenon occurring here that has yet to be formally identified and described.
[11]
Linguistic contrasts among sibilants
[
edit
]
Not including differences in
manner of articulation
or
secondary articulation
, some languages have as many as four different types of sibilants. For example,
Northern Qiang
and
Southern Qiang
have a four-way distinction among sibilant affricates
/ts/
/t?/
/t?/
/t?/
, with one for each of the four tongue shapes.
[
citation needed
]
Toda
also has a four-way sibilant distinction, with one alveolar, one palato-alveolar, and two retroflex (apical postalveolar and subapical palatal).
[
citation needed
]
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 (
[s?
z?]
[s??
z??]
[s?
z?]
[?
?]
).
[
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.
Mandarin Chinese
is an example of such a language.
[
citation needed
]
However, other possibilities exist.
Serbo-Croatian
has alveolar, flat postalveolar and alveolo-palatal affricates whereas
Basque
has palato-alveolar and laminal and apical alveolar (
apico-alveolar
) fricatives and affricates (late Medieval peninsular
Spanish
and
Portuguese
had the same distinctions among fricatives).
Many languages, such as
English
, have two sibilant types, one hissing and one hushing. A wide variety of languages across the world have this pattern. Perhaps most common is the pattern, as in English, with alveolar and palato-alveolar sibilants. Modern northern peninsular
Spanish
has a single
apico-alveolar
sibilant fricative
[s?]
, as well as a single palato-alveolar sibilant affricate
[t?]
. However, there are also languages with alveolar and apical retroflex sibilants (such as Standard
Vietnamese
) and with alveolar and alveolo-palatal postalveolars (e.g. alveolar and laminal palatalized
[?
?
t?
d?]
i.e.
[??
??
t??
d??]
in
Catalan
and
Brazilian Portuguese
, the latter probably through Amerindian influence,
[12]
and alveolar and dorsal i.e.
[?
?
c?
??]
proper in
Japanese
).
[13]
Only a few languages with sibilants lack the hissing type.
Middle Vietnamese
is normally reconstructed with two sibilant fricatives, both hushing (one retroflex, one alveolo-palatal). Some languages have only a single hushing sibilant and no hissing sibilant. That occurs in southern Peninsular Spanish dialects of the "
ceceo
" type, which have replaced the former hissing fricative with
[θ]
, leaving only
[t?]
.
Languages with no sibilants are fairly rare. Most have no fricatives at all or only the fricative
/h/
. Examples include most
Australian languages
, and
Rotokas
, and what is generally reconstructed for
Proto-Bantu
. Languages with fricatives but no sibilants, however, do occur, such as
Ukue
in
Nigeria
, which has only the fricatives
/f,
v,
h/
. Also, almost all Eastern
Polynesian languages
have no sibilants but do have the fricatives
/v/
and/or
/f/
:
M?ori
,
Hawaiian
,
Tahitian
,
Rapa Nui
, most
Cook Islands M?ori
dialects,
Marquesan
, and
Tuamotuan
.
Tamil
only has the sibilant
/?/
and fricative
/f/
in loanwords, and they are frequently replaced by native sounds. The sibilants
[s,
?]
exist as allophones of
/t??/
and the fricative
[h]
as an allophone of
/k/
.
Contested definitions
[
edit
]
Authors including
Chomsky
and
Halle
group
[
f
]
and
[
v
]
as sibilants. However, they do not have the grooved articulation and high frequencies of other sibilants, and most phoneticians
continue to group them together with
bilabial
[
?
]
,
[
β
]
and (inter)dental
[
θ
]
,
[
ð
]
as non-sibilant
anterior
fricatives. For a grouping of sibilants and
[f,
v]
, the term
strident
is more common. Some researchers judge
[f]
to be non-strident in English, based on measurements of its comparative amplitude, but to be strident in other languages (for example, in the African language
Ewe
, where it contrasts with non-strident
[?]
).
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
[θ?]
of English.
[14]
See also
[
edit
]
Notes
[
edit
]
- ^
이재욱; 이서호 (2019-01-25).
韓國人을 위한 全世界 100가지 英語 사투리 (英國 잉글랜드 北部 英語 Mancunian 사투리, Scouse 사투리 Yorkshire 사투리 便): 100 English Dialects in the World for Koreans British English Northern England English Mancunian Dialect, Scouse Dialect Yorkshire Dialect
. TAX & LAW PRESS.
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
.
- ^
Pennock-Speck, Barry; Valor, Maria Lluisa Gea (2020-04-29).
A Practical Introduction to English Phonology, 2nd. Edition
. Universitat de Valencia.
ISBN
978-84-9134-600-5
.
- ^
Koffi, Ettien (2021-04-20).
Relevant Acoustic Phonetics of L2 English: Focus on Intelligibility
. CRC Press.
ISBN
978-1-000-34009-9
.
- ^
"Tips For Controlling Vocal Sibilance"
.
Pro Audio Files
. 2012-03-07
. Retrieved
2020-05-28
.
- ^
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)
Analise acustica de sequencias de fricativas e africadas por japoneses aprendizes de portugues brasileiro
[
permanent dead link
]
, Universidade Federal do Parana, 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
[
edit
]
- 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,
doi
:
10.2307/340806
,
JSTOR
340806
- Hualde, Jose Ignacio (1991),
Basque phonology
, London: Routledge,
JSTOR
340806
- Ladefoged, Peter
;
Maddieson, Ian
(1996).
The Sounds of the World's Languages
. Oxford: Blackwell.
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,
doi
:
10.2307/339038
,
JSTOR
339038
- Shosted, Ryan K. (2006)
Just put your lips together and blow? The whistled fricatives of Southern Bantu
.