Sibilation
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Sibilants 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 The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is an alphabetic system of phonetic transcription, phonetic notation based primarily on the Latin script. It was devised by the International Phonetic Association in the late 19th century as a standa ...
used to denote the sibilant sounds in these words are, respectively, . 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 hissing sibilants and , 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 , , , and , the tongue is flatter, and the resulting pitch lower. A broader category is stridents, which include more fricatives than sibilants such as
uvulars Uvulars are consonants place of articulation, articulated with the back of the tongue against or near the Palatine uvula, uvula, that is, further back in the mouth than velar consonants. Uvulars may be stop consonant, stops, fricative consonant, ...
. Because all sibilants are also stridents, the terms are sometimes used interchangeably. However, the terms do not mean the same thing. The English stridents are . Sibilants are a higher pitched subset of the stridents. The English sibilants are . On the other hand, and are stridents, but not sibilants, because they are lower in pitch. "Stridency" refers to the
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intensity Intensity may refer to: In colloquial use *Strength (disambiguation) *Amplitude * Level (disambiguation) * Magnitude (disambiguation) In physical sciences Physics *Intensity (physics), power per unit area (W/m2) *Field strength of electric, ma ...
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. 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.


Sibilant types

All sibilants are
coronal consonant Coronals are consonants articulated with the flexible front part of the tongue. Among places of articulation, only the coronal consonants can be divided into as many articulation types: apical (using the tip of the tongue), laminal (using the bla ...
s (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: , alveolo-palatal, palato-alveolar, retroflex * Place of articulation (point of contact on the upper side of the mouth): or denti-alveolar, ,
postalveolar Postalveolar or post-alveolar consonants are consonants articulated with the tongue near or touching the ''back'' of the alveolar ridge. Articulation is farther back in the mouth than the alveolar consonants, which are at the ridge itself, but no ...
, * Point of contact on the tongue: "closed" ( see below), non-"closed", , 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 Polish may refer to: * Anything from or related to Poland, a country in Europe * Polish language * Poles, people from Poland or of Polish descent * Polish chicken *Polish brothers (Mark Polish and Michael Polish, born 1970), American twin screenwr ...
, 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. ): 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''. * 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 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 Palatalization may refer to: *Palatalization (phonetics), the phonetic feature of palatal secondary articulation *Palatalization (sound change) Palatalization is a historical-linguistic sound change that results in a palatalized articulation ...
). Palatalized alveolars are transcribed e.g. and occur in Russian; they sound similar to the cluster occurring in the middle of the English phrase ''miss you''. * Lisping: Alveolar sibilants made with the tip of the tongue () near the upper teeth have a softer sound reminiscent of (but still sharper-sounding than) the "lisping" 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
Andalucía Andalusia (, ; es, Andalucía ) is the southernmost Autonomous communities of Spain, autonomous community in Peninsular Spain. It is the most populous and the second-largest autonomous community in the country. It is officially recognised as a ...
(southwest Spain), mostly in the provinces of Cádiz,
Málaga Málaga (, ) is a municipality of Spain, capital of the Province of Málaga, in the autonomous community of Andalusia. With a population of 578,460 in 2020, it is the second-most populous city in Andalusia after Seville and the sixth most pop ...
, Sevilla and Huelva. In these dialects, the lisping sibilant (sometimes indicated in Spanish dialectology as ) is the most common pronunciation of the letters ''s'' and ''z'', as well as ''c'' before ''i'' or ''e'', replacing the or that occur elsewhere in the country. 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 in the middle of "miss you".


Place of articulation

Sibilants can be made at any articulation, i.e. the tongue can contact the upper side of the mouth anywhere from the upper teeth () to the
hard palate The hard palate is a thin horizontal bony plate made up of two bones of the facial skeleton, located in the roof of the mouth. The bones are the palatine process of the maxilla and the horizontal plate of palatine bone. The hard palate spans ...
(), with the in-between articulations being denti-alveolar, and
postalveolar Postalveolar or post-alveolar consonants are consonants articulated with the tongue near or touching the ''back'' of the alveolar ridge. Articulation is farther back in the mouth than the alveolar consonants, which are at the ridge itself, but no ...
.


Point of contact on the tongue

The tongue can contact the upper side of the mouth with the very tip of the tongue (an ' articulation, e.g. ); with the surface just behind the tip, called the '' blade'' of the tongue (a ' articulation, e.g. ); or with the underside of the tip (a ' 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 The Northwest Caucasian languages, also called West Caucasian, Abkhazo-Adyghean, Abkhazo-Circassian, Circassic, or sometimes ''Pontic languages'' (from the historical region of Pontus, in contrast to ''Caspian languages'' for the Northeast Cauc ...
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

The following table shows the types of sibilant fricatives defined in the
International Phonetic Alphabet The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is an alphabetic system of phonetic transcription, phonetic notation based primarily on the Latin script. It was devised by the International Phonetic Association in the late 19th century as a standa ...
: Diacritics can be used for finer detail. For example, apical and laminal alveolars can be specified as ''vs'' ; a dental (or more likely ''denti-alveolar'') sibilant as ; a palatalized alveolar as ; and a generic "retracted sibilant" as , 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 The Northwest Caucasian languages, also called West Caucasian, Abkhazo-Adyghean, Abkhazo-Circassian, Circassic, or sometimes ''Pontic languages'' (from the historical region of Pontus, in contrast to ''Caspian languages'' for the Northeast Cauc ...
, but they are sometimes provisionally transcribed as .


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 is sometimes reversed; either may also be called 'retroflex' and written .) is an ad-hoc transcription. The old IPA letters are also available. 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 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

Whistled sibilants occur in speech pathology and may be caused by dental prostheses or orthodontics. However, they also occur phonemically in several southern Bantu languages, the best known being Shona. 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. Using the
Extended IPA The Extensions to the International Phonetic Alphabet for Disordered Speech, commonly abbreviated extIPA , are a set of letters and diacritics devised by the International Clinical Phonetics and Linguistics Association to augment the Internatio ...
, Shona ''sv'' and ''zv'' may be transcribed and . Other transcriptions seen include purely labialized and (Ladefoged and Maddieson 1996) and labially co-articulated and (or and ). In the otherwise IPA transcription of Shona in Doke (1967), the whistled sibilants are transcribed with the non-IPA letters and . Besides Shona, whistled sibilants have been reported as phonemes in
Kalanga Kalanga may refer to: * BaKalanga people * Kalanga language Kalanga, or ''TjiKalanga'' (in Zimbabwe), is a Bantu language spoken by the Kalanga people in Botswana and Zimbabwe. It has an extensive phoneme inventory, which includes palatalise ...
,
Tsonga Tsonga may refer to: * Tsonga language, a Bantu language spoken in southern Africa * Tsonga people, a large group of people living mainly in southern Mozambique and South Africa. * Jo-Wilfried Tsonga Jo-Wilfried Tsonga (; born 17 April 1985) i ...
, Changana, Tshwa—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, ȿ, ȿw''.) 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.


Linguistic contrasts among sibilants

Not including differences in
manner of articulation In articulatory phonetics, the manner of articulation is the configuration and interaction of the articulators (speech organs such as the tongue, lips, and palate) when making a speech sound. One parameter of manner is ''stricture,'' that is, h ...
or
secondary articulation In phonetics, secondary articulation occurs when the articulation of a consonant is equivalent to the combined articulations of two or three simpler consonants, at least one of which is an approximant. The secondary articulation of such co-articul ...
, some languages have as many as four different types of sibilants. For example,
Northern Qiang Northern Qiang is a Sino-Tibetan language of the Qiangic branch, more specifically falling under the Tibeto-Burman family. It is spoken by approximately 60,000 people in East Tibet, and in north-central Sichuan Province, China. Unlike its cl ...
and
Southern Qiang Southern Qiang is a Sino-Tibetan language of the Qiangic branch spoken by approximately 81,300 people along the Minjiang () river in Sichuan Province, China. Southern Qiang dialects preserve archaic pronoun flexions, while they have disappe ...
have a four-way distinction among sibilant affricates , with one for each of the four tongue shapes. Toda also has a four-way sibilant distinction, with one alveolar, one palato-alveolar, and two retroflex (apical postalveolar and subapical palatal). The now-extinct
Ubykh language Ubykh or Päkhy was a Northwest Caucasian language once spoken by the Ubykh tribe of Circassians who originally lived along the eastern coast of the Black Sea before being deported ''en masse'' to Turkey in the Circassian genocide. The Ubykh l ...
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 affricates. (The three labialized palato-alveolar affricates were missing, which is why the total was 27, not 30.) The Bzyp dialect of the related Abkhaz language also has a similar inventory. Some languages have four types when
palatalization Palatalization may refer to: *Palatalization (phonetics), the phonetic feature of palatal secondary articulation *Palatalization (sound change) Palatalization is a historical-linguistic sound change that results in a palatalized articulation ...
is considered.
Polish Polish may refer to: * Anything from or related to Poland, a country in Europe * Polish language * Poles, people from Poland or of Polish descent * Polish chicken *Polish brothers (Mark Polish and Michael Polish, born 1970), American twin screenwr ...
is one example, with both palatalized and non-palatalized laminal denti-alveolars, laminal postalveolar (or "flat retroflex"), and alveolo-palatal (). 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. 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. 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 , as well as a single palato-alveolar sibilant affricate . 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 i.e. in
Catalan Catalan may refer to: Catalonia From, or related to Catalonia: * Catalan language, a Romance language * Catalans, an ethnic group formed by the people from, or with origins in, Northern or southern Catalonia Places * 13178 Catalan, asteroid #1 ...
and Brazilian Portuguese, the latter probably through Amerindian influence, and alveolar and dorsal i.e. proper in Japanese). 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 , leaving only . Languages with no sibilants are fairly rare. Most have no fricatives at all or only the fricative . Examples include most Australian languages, and
Rotokas Rotokas is a North Bougainville language spoken by about 4,320 people on the island of Bougainville, an island located to the east of New Guinea which is part of Papua New Guinea. According to Allen and Hurd (1963), there are three identifie ...
, and what is generally reconstructed for
Proto-Bantu Proto-Bantu is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Bantu languages, a subgroup of the Southern Bantoid languages. It is thought to have originally been spoken in West/Central Africa in the area of what is now Cameroon.Dimmendaal, Gerrit J. (2 ...
. Languages with fricatives but no sibilants, however, do occur, such as Ukue in Nigeria, which has only the fricatives . Also, almost all Eastern Polynesian languages have no sibilants but do have the fricatives and/or :
Māori Māori or Maori can refer to: Relating to the Māori people * Māori people of New Zealand, or members of that group * Māori language, the language of the Māori people of New Zealand * Māori culture * Cook Islanders, the Māori people of the C ...
, Hawaiian, Tahitian, Rapa Nui, most Cook Islands Māori dialects,
Marquesan The Marquesas Islands (; french: Îles Marquises or ' or '; Marquesan: ' ( North Marquesan) and ' ( South Marquesan), both meaning "the land of men") are a group of volcanic islands in French Polynesia, an overseas collectivity of France in th ...
, and Tuamotuan.
Tamil Tamil may refer to: * Tamils, an ethnic group native to India and some other parts of Asia ** Sri Lankan Tamils, Tamil people native to Sri Lanka also called ilankai tamils **Tamil Malaysians, Tamil people native to Malaysia * Tamil language, nati ...
only has the sibilant and fricative in loanwords, and they are frequently replaced by native sounds. The sibilants exist as allophones of and the fricative as an allophone of .


Contested definitions

Authors including
Chomsky Avram Noam Chomsky (born December 7, 1928) is an American public intellectual: a linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, historian, social critic, and political activist. Sometimes called "the father of modern linguistics", Chomsky is ...
and
Halle Halle may refer to: Places Germany * Halle (Saale), also called Halle an der Saale, a city in Saxony-Anhalt ** Halle (region), a former administrative region in Saxony-Anhalt ** Bezirk Halle, a former administrative division of East Germany ** Hall ...
group and 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 , and (inter)dental , as non-sibilant
anterior Standard anatomical terms of location are used to unambiguously describe the anatomy of animals, including humans. The terms, typically derived from Latin or Greek roots, describe something in its standard anatomical position. This position prov ...
fricatives. For a grouping of sibilants and , the term ''strident'' is more common. Some researchers judge 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 of English.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


See also

* De-essing *
Plosive consonant In phonetics, a plosive, also known as an occlusive or simply a stop, is a pulmonic consonant in which the vocal tract is blocked so that all airflow ceases. The occlusion may be made with the tongue tip or blade (, ), tongue body (, ), lips ...
* Shibboleth * Sj-sound * Strident vowel * Voiceless alveolar retracted sibilant * Voiced apicoalveolar fricative


Notes


References

* * * * * * Shosted, Ryan K. (2006)
Just put your lips together and blow? The whistled fricatives of Southern Bantu
''


External links


Example of whistled sibilants in Shona
{{Articulation navbox Manner of articulation