In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial clo
A
sibilant is a type of fricative or affricate
consonantIn articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the upper vocal tract, the upper vocal tract being defined as that part of the vocal tract that lies above the larynx...
, made by directing a jet of air through a narrow channel in the
vocal tractThe vocal tract is the cavity in animals where sound that is produced at the sound source is filtered. In birds it consists of the trachea, the syrinx, the oral cavity, the upper part of the esophagus, and the beak...
towards the sharp edge of the teeth.
The term
The term
sibilant is often taken to be synonymous with the term
strident, though this is incorrect - there is variation in usage. The term
sibilant tends to have an
articulatoryArticulation may refer to:In linguistics:* Topic-focus articulation, a field of study concerned with marking old and new information in a clause* Manner of articulation, how speech organs involved in making a sound make contact...
or aerodynamic definition involving the production of aperiodic noise at an obstacle.
Strident refers to the perceptual quality of
intensityThe sound intensity, I, is defined as the sound power Pac per unit area A. The usual context is the noise measurement of sound intensity in the air at a listener's location...
as determined by
amplitudeAmplitude is the magnitude of change in the oscillating variable, with each oscillation, within an oscillating system. For instance, sound waves are oscillations in atmospheric pressure and their amplitudes are proportional to the change in pressure during one oscillation...
and
frequencyFrequency is the number of occurrences of a repeating event per unit time. It is also referred to as temporal frequency.The period is the duration of one cycle in a repeating event, so the period is the reciprocal of the frequency....
characteristics of the resulting sound (i.e. an
auditoryAuditory means of or relating to the process of hearing:* Auditory system, the neurological structures and pathways of sound perception.* Sound, the physical signal perceived by the auditory system....
, or possibly
acousticAcoustics is the interdisciplinary science that deals with the study of sound, ultrasound and infrasound . A scientist who works in the field of acoustics is an acoustician. The application of acoustics in technology is called acoustical engineering...
, definition).
Sibilants are louder than their non-sibilant counterparts, and most of their acoustic energy occurs at higher frequencies than non-sibilant fricatives. has the most acoustic strength at around 8,000 Hz, but can reach as high as 10,000 Hz. has the bulk of its acoustic energy at around 4,000 Hz, but can extend up to around 8,000 Hz.
The spin-off terms shibilant, and rarely thibilant, are used to describe particular kinds of sibilant.
Symbols
Of the sibilants, the following have
IPAThe International Phonetic Alphabet
["The acronym 'IPA' strictly refers [...] to the 'International Phonetic Association'. But it is now such a common practice to use the acronym also to refer to the alphabet itself that resistance seems pedantic...]
symbols of their own:
- Alveolar
Alveolar consonants are articulated with the tongue against or close to the superior alveolar ridge, which is called that because it contains the alveoli of the superior teeth...
:
- , (either apical
An apical consonant is a phone produced by obstructing the air passage with the apex of the tongue . This contrasts with laminal consonants, which are produced by creating an obstruction with the blade of the tongue .This is not a very common distinction, and typically applied only to fricatives...
or laminalA laminal consonant is a phone produced by obstructing the air passage with the blade of the tongue, which is the flat top front surface just behind the tip of the tongue on the top. This contrasts with apical consonants, which are produced by creating an obstruction with the tongue apex only...
).
- Postalveolar
Postalveolar consonants are consonants articulated with the tongue near or touching the back of the alveolar ridge, further back in the mouth than the alveolar consonants, which are at the ridge itself, but not as far back as the hard palate .Among the fricatives and affricates, a subtype called...
:
- , (Palato-alveolar: that is, "domed" (partially palatalized) postalveolar, either laminal or apical)
- , (Alveolo-palatal
In phonetics, alveolo-palatal consonants are palatalized postalveolar fricatives, articulated with the blade of the tongue behind the alveolar ridge, and the body of the tongue raised toward the palate...
: that is, laminal palatalizedPalatalization or palatalisation generally refers to two phenomena:*As a process or the result of a process, the effect that front vowels and the palatal approximant frequently have on consonants;...
postalveolar; these are equivalent to )
- , : (Retroflex
In phonetics, retroflex consonants are consonant sounds used in some languages. The tongue articulates with the roof of the oral cavity behind the alveolar ridge, and may even be curled back to touch the palate: that is, they are articulated in the postalveolar to palatal region of the...
, which can mean one of three things: (a) non-palatalized apical postalveolar, (b) sub-apical postalveolar or pre-palatal, or (c) non-palatalized laminal ("flat") postalveolar, sometimes transcribed or .
Diacritics can be used for finer detail. For example, apical and laminal alveolars can be specified as
vs ; a
dentalIn linguistics, a dental consonant or dental is a consonant that is articulated with the tongue against the upper teeth, such as , , , and in some languages...
(or more likely
denti-alveolar) sibilant as ; a palatalized alveolar as ; and a generic postalveolar as , a transcription frequently used when none of the above apply (that is, for a laminal but non-palatalized, or "flat", postalveolar). Some of the
Northwest Caucasian languagesThe Northwest Caucasian languages, also called Abkhazo-Adyghean, or sometimes Pontic as opposed to Caspian , are a group of languages spoken in the Caucasus region, chiefly in Russia , the disputed territory of Abkhazia, and Turkey, with smaller communities scattered throughout the...
also have a
closed laminal postalveolar, without IPA symbols but provisionally transcribed as .
Whistled sibilants
WhistledHuman whistling is the production of sound by means of carefully controlling a stream of air flowing through a small hole. Whistling can be achieved by creating a small opening with one's lips and then blowing air out of the hole or sucking air into the hole...
sibilants occur in speech pathology and may be caused by dental protheses or orthodontics. However, they also occur phonemically in several southern Bantu languages, the best known being
ShonaShona is a Bantu language, native to the Shona people of Zimbabwe and southern Zambia; the term is also used to identify peoples who speak one of the Shona language dialects, namely Zezuru, Karanga, Manyika, Ndau and Korekore. Shona is a principal language of Zimbabwe, along with Ndebele and the...
. These have been variously described—as labialized but not velarized, retroflex, etc., but none of these articulations are required for the sounds (Shosted 2006). Using the
Extended IPAThe Extensions to the IPA are extensions of the International Phonetic Alphabet and were designed for disordered speech. However, some of the symbols are occasionally used for transcribing normal speech as well.-Brackets:...
, Shona
sv and
zv may be transcribed and . Other transcriptions seen include purely labial and (Ladefoged and Maddieson 1996) and labially coarticulated and .
Inventories
Only the alveolar and palato-alveolar sibilants are distinguished in
EnglishEnglish is a West Germanic language that developed in England during the Anglo-Saxon era. As a result of the military, economic, scientific, political, and cultural influence of the British Empire during the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries, and of the United States since the mid 20th century,...
; the former may be either apical or laminal, while the latter are usually apical, slightly labialized and generally called simply "postalveolar": or and ), as in
sin [s̻ɪn] and
shin . Although laminal and apical sibilants are not distinguished in English,
BasqueBasque is the ancestral language of the Basque people, who inhabit the Basque Country, a region spanning an area in northeastern Spain and southwestern France. It is the mother tongue of approximately one fifth of Basques, 632,000 out of nearly 3,000,000...
does distinguish these two phonemically, as well as having true postalveolars .
PolishPolish is a West Slavic language and the official language of Poland. Its written standard is the Polish alphabet which corresponds basically to the Latin alphabet with a few additions...
and
RussianRussian is the most geographically widespread language of Eurasia, the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages, and the largest native language in Europe...
have laminal denti-alveolars, palatalized denti-alveolars, flat postalveolars, and alveolo-palatals , whereas Mandarin has apical alveolars, flat postalveolars, and alveolo-palatals .
Few languages distinguish more than three series of sibilants without
secondary articulationSecondary articulation refers to co-articulated consonants where the two articulations are not of the same manner. The approximant-like secondary articulation is weaker than the primary, and colors it rather than obscuring it...
, but
UbykhUbykh or Ubyx is a language of the Northwestern Caucasian group, spoken by the Ubykh people up until the early 1990s.The word is derived from , its name in the Abdzakh Adyghe language...
has four series of plain sibilants, , as does the Bzyp dialect of the related
AbkhazAbkhaz is a Northwest Caucasian language spoken mainly by the Abkhaz people. It is the official language of Abkhazia, where around 100,000 people speak it. Furthermore, it is spoken by thousands of members of the Abkhazian diaspora in Turkey, Georgia's autonomous republic of Adjara, Syria, Jordan...
, and the Chinese dialect of Qinan, in
ShandongFor the people of Shandong, see Shandong people' is a coastal province of eastern People's Republic of China. Its abbreviation is Lǔ, after the state of Lu that existed here during the Spring and Autumn Period....
province, is said to have five.
TodaToda is a Dravidian language well known for its many fricatives and trills. It is spoken by the Toda people, a population of about one thousand who live in the Nilgiri Hills of southern India.-Vowels:...
has a laminal alveolar, an apical postalveolar, laminal domed postalveolars, and sub-apical palatals. Since two of these could be called 'retroflex',
LadefogedPeter Nielsen Ladefoged was an English-American linguist and phonetician who traveled the world to document the distinct sounds of endangered languages and pioneered ways to collect and study data. He was active at the universities of Edinburgh, Scotland and Ibadan, Nigeria 1953–61...
&
MaddiesonIan Maddieson is a linguist at UC Berkeley, an Adjunct Professor Emeritus at the University of New Mexico, and vice-president of the International Phonetic Association. He wrote the books Patterns of Sounds and Sounds of the World's Languages.-External links:...
1996 have resurrected the old IPA diacritic for retroflex, the underdot, for apical retroflexes, and reserve the letters <> for sub-apical retroflexes. Thus the Toda sibilants can be transcribed , although the official IPA symbols are also sufficient. (In some publications the underdot and underbar are interchanged.)
Other definitions of sibilant
Some authors, as for instance
ChomskyAvram Noam Chomsky is an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, political activist, author, and lecturer. He is an Institute Professor and professor emeritus of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Chomsky is well known in the academic and scientific community as...
&
HalleMorris Halle, born Pinkowitz, is a Latvian-American Jewish linguist and an Institute Professor and professor emeritus of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology...
(1964), group and as sibilants. However, they do not have the grooved articulation and high frequencies of other sibilants, and most phoneticians (for instance by Ladefoged & Maddieson 1996), continue to group them together with the bilabial fricatives ,
{{Manner_of_articulation}}
A sibilant is a type of fricative or affricate consonantIn articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the upper vocal tract, the upper vocal tract being defined as that part of the vocal tract that lies above the larynx...
, made by directing a jet of air through a narrow channel in the
vocal tractThe vocal tract is the cavity in animals where sound that is produced at the sound source is filtered. In birds it consists of the trachea, the syrinx, the oral cavity, the upper part of the esophagus, and the beak...
towards the sharp edge of the teeth.
The term
The term
sibilant is often taken to be synonymous with the term
strident, though this is incorrect - there is variation in usage. The term
sibilant tends to have an
articulatoryArticulation may refer to:In linguistics:* Topic-focus articulation, a field of study concerned with marking old and new information in a clause* Manner of articulation, how speech organs involved in making a sound make contact...
or aerodynamic definition involving the production of aperiodic noise at an obstacle.
Strident refers to the perceptual quality of
intensityThe sound intensity, I, is defined as the sound power Pac per unit area A. The usual context is the noise measurement of sound intensity in the air at a listener's location...
as determined by
amplitudeAmplitude is the magnitude of change in the oscillating variable, with each oscillation, within an oscillating system. For instance, sound waves are oscillations in atmospheric pressure and their amplitudes are proportional to the change in pressure during one oscillation...
and
frequencyFrequency is the number of occurrences of a repeating event per unit time. It is also referred to as temporal frequency.The period is the duration of one cycle in a repeating event, so the period is the reciprocal of the frequency....
characteristics of the resulting sound (i.e. an
auditoryAuditory means of or relating to the process of hearing:* Auditory system, the neurological structures and pathways of sound perception.* Sound, the physical signal perceived by the auditory system....
, or possibly
acousticAcoustics is the interdisciplinary science that deals with the study of sound, ultrasound and infrasound . A scientist who works in the field of acoustics is an acoustician. The application of acoustics in technology is called acoustical engineering...
, definition).
Sibilants are louder than their non-sibilant counterparts, and most of their acoustic energy occurs at higher frequencies than non-sibilant fricatives. {{IPA|[s]}} has the most acoustic strength at around 8,000 Hz, but can reach as high as 10,000 Hz. {{IPA|[ʃ]}} has the bulk of its acoustic energy at around 4,000 Hz, but can extend up to around 8,000 Hz.
The spin-off terms shibilant, and rarely thibilant, are used to describe particular kinds of sibilant.
Symbols
Of the sibilants, the following have
IPAThe International Phonetic Alphabet
["The acronym 'IPA' strictly refers [...] to the 'International Phonetic Association'. But it is now such a common practice to use the acronym also to refer to the alphabet itself that resistance seems pedantic...]
symbols of their own:
- Alveolar
Alveolar consonants are articulated with the tongue against or close to the superior alveolar ridge, which is called that because it contains the alveoli of the superior teeth...
:
- {{IPA|[s]}}, {{IPA|[z]}} (either apical
An apical consonant is a phone produced by obstructing the air passage with the apex of the tongue . This contrasts with laminal consonants, which are produced by creating an obstruction with the blade of the tongue .This is not a very common distinction, and typically applied only to fricatives...
or laminalA laminal consonant is a phone produced by obstructing the air passage with the blade of the tongue, which is the flat top front surface just behind the tip of the tongue on the top. This contrasts with apical consonants, which are produced by creating an obstruction with the tongue apex only...
).
- Postalveolar
Postalveolar consonants are consonants articulated with the tongue near or touching the back of the alveolar ridge, further back in the mouth than the alveolar consonants, which are at the ridge itself, but not as far back as the hard palate .Among the fricatives and affricates, a subtype called...
:
- {{IPA|[ʃ]}}, {{IPA|[ʒ]}} (Palato-alveolar: that is, "domed" (partially palatalized) postalveolar, either laminal or apical)
- {{IPA|[ɕ]}}, {{IPA|[ʑ]}} (Alveolo-palatal
In phonetics, alveolo-palatal consonants are palatalized postalveolar fricatives, articulated with the blade of the tongue behind the alveolar ridge, and the body of the tongue raised toward the palate...
: that is, laminal palatalizedPalatalization or palatalisation generally refers to two phenomena:*As a process or the result of a process, the effect that front vowels and the palatal approximant frequently have on consonants;...
postalveolar; these are equivalent to {{IPA|ʃʲ, ʒʲ}})
- {{IPA|[ʂ]}}, {{IPA|[ʐ]}}: (Retroflex
In phonetics, retroflex consonants are consonant sounds used in some languages. The tongue articulates with the roof of the oral cavity behind the alveolar ridge, and may even be curled back to touch the palate: that is, they are articulated in the postalveolar to palatal region of the...
, which can mean one of three things: (a) non-palatalized apical postalveolar, (b) sub-apical postalveolar or pre-palatal, or (c) non-palatalized laminal ("flat") postalveolar, sometimes transcribed {{IPA|[s̠ z̠]}} or {{IPA|[ʂ̻ ʐ̻]}}.
Diacritics can be used for finer detail. For example, apical and laminal alveolars can be specified as {{IPA|[s̺]}}
vs {{IPA|[s̻]}}; a
dentalIn linguistics, a dental consonant or dental is a consonant that is articulated with the tongue against the upper teeth, such as , , , and in some languages...
(or more likely
denti-alveolar) sibilant as {{IPA|[s̪]}}; a palatalized alveolar as {{IPA|[sʲ]}}; and a generic postalveolar as {{IPA|[s̠]}}, a transcription frequently used when none of the above apply (that is, for a laminal but non-palatalized, or "flat", postalveolar). Some of the
Northwest Caucasian languagesThe Northwest Caucasian languages, also called Abkhazo-Adyghean, or sometimes Pontic as opposed to Caspian , are a group of languages spoken in the Caucasus region, chiefly in Russia , the disputed territory of Abkhazia, and Turkey, with smaller communities scattered throughout the...
also have a
closed laminal postalveolar, without IPA symbols but provisionally transcribed as {{IPA|[ŝ ẑ]}}.
Whistled sibilants
WhistledHuman whistling is the production of sound by means of carefully controlling a stream of air flowing through a small hole. Whistling can be achieved by creating a small opening with one's lips and then blowing air out of the hole or sucking air into the hole...
sibilants occur in speech pathology and may be caused by dental protheses or orthodontics. However, they also occur phonemically in several southern Bantu languages, the best known being
ShonaShona is a Bantu language, native to the Shona people of Zimbabwe and southern Zambia; the term is also used to identify peoples who speak one of the Shona language dialects, namely Zezuru, Karanga, Manyika, Ndau and Korekore. Shona is a principal language of Zimbabwe, along with Ndebele and the...
. These have been variously described—as labialized but not velarized, retroflex, etc., but none of these articulations are required for the sounds (Shosted 2006). Using the
Extended IPAThe Extensions to the IPA are extensions of the International Phonetic Alphabet and were designed for disordered speech. However, some of the symbols are occasionally used for transcribing normal speech as well.-Brackets:...
, Shona
sv and
zv may be transcribed {{IPA|[s͎]}} and {{IPA|[z͎]}}. Other transcriptions seen include purely labial {{IPA|[s̫]}} and {{IPA|[z̫]}} (Ladefoged and Maddieson 1996) and labially coarticulated {{IPA|[s͡ɸ]}} and {{IPA|[z͡β]}}.
Inventories
Only the alveolar and palato-alveolar sibilants are distinguished in
EnglishEnglish is a West Germanic language that developed in England during the Anglo-Saxon era. As a result of the military, economic, scientific, political, and cultural influence of the British Empire during the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries, and of the United States since the mid 20th century,...
; the former may be either apical or laminal, while the latter are usually apical, slightly labialized and generally called simply "postalveolar": {{IPA|[s̺ z̺]}} or {{IPA|[s̻ z̻]}} and {{IPA|[ʃʷ̜ ʒʷ̜]}}), as in
sin [s̻ɪn] and
shin {{IPA|[ʃʷ̜ɪn]}}. Although laminal and apical sibilants are not distinguished in English,
BasqueBasque is the ancestral language of the Basque people, who inhabit the Basque Country, a region spanning an area in northeastern Spain and southwestern France. It is the mother tongue of approximately one fifth of Basques, 632,000 out of nearly 3,000,000...
does distinguish these two phonemically, as well as having true postalveolars ({{IPA|[s̺] [s̻] [ʃ]}}).
PolishPolish is a West Slavic language and the official language of Poland. Its written standard is the Polish alphabet which corresponds basically to the Latin alphabet with a few additions...
and
RussianRussian is the most geographically widespread language of Eurasia, the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages, and the largest native language in Europe...
have laminal denti-alveolars, palatalized denti-alveolars, flat postalveolars, and alveolo-palatals ({{IPA|[s̪ z̪] [s̪ʲ z̪ʲ] [s̠ z̠] [ɕ ʑ]}}), whereas Mandarin has apical alveolars, flat postalveolars, and alveolo-palatals ({{IPA|[s̺ z̺] [s̠ z̠] [ɕ ʑ]}}).
Few languages distinguish more than three series of sibilants without
secondary articulationSecondary articulation refers to co-articulated consonants where the two articulations are not of the same manner. The approximant-like secondary articulation is weaker than the primary, and colors it rather than obscuring it...
, but
UbykhUbykh or Ubyx is a language of the Northwestern Caucasian group, spoken by the Ubykh people up until the early 1990s.The word is derived from , its name in the Abdzakh Adyghe language...
has four series of plain sibilants, {{IPA|[s z], [ŝ ẑ ŝʷ ẑʷ], [ɕ ʑ ɕʷ ʑʷ], [ʂ ʐ]}}, as does the Bzyp dialect of the related
AbkhazAbkhaz is a Northwest Caucasian language spoken mainly by the Abkhaz people. It is the official language of Abkhazia, where around 100,000 people speak it. Furthermore, it is spoken by thousands of members of the Abkhazian diaspora in Turkey, Georgia's autonomous republic of Adjara, Syria, Jordan...
, and the Chinese dialect of Qinan, in
ShandongFor the people of Shandong, see Shandong people' is a coastal province of eastern People's Republic of China. Its abbreviation is Lǔ, after the state of Lu that existed here during the Spring and Autumn Period....
province, is said to have five.
TodaToda is a Dravidian language well known for its many fricatives and trills. It is spoken by the Toda people, a population of about one thousand who live in the Nilgiri Hills of southern India.-Vowels:...
has a laminal alveolar, an apical postalveolar, laminal domed postalveolars, and sub-apical palatals. Since two of these could be called 'retroflex',
LadefogedPeter Nielsen Ladefoged was an English-American linguist and phonetician who traveled the world to document the distinct sounds of endangered languages and pioneered ways to collect and study data. He was active at the universities of Edinburgh, Scotland and Ibadan, Nigeria 1953–61...
&
MaddiesonIan Maddieson is a linguist at UC Berkeley, an Adjunct Professor Emeritus at the University of New Mexico, and vice-president of the International Phonetic Association. He wrote the books Patterns of Sounds and Sounds of the World's Languages.-External links:...
1996 have resurrected the old IPA diacritic for retroflex, the underdot, for apical retroflexes, and reserve the letters <{{unicode|ʂ, ʐ}}> for sub-apical retroflexes. Thus the Toda sibilants can be transcribed {{IPA|[s̪] [ṣ] [ʃ̻ ʒ̻] [ʂ ʐ]}}, although the official IPA symbols {{IPA|[s̪] [s̠] [ʃ̻ ʒ̻] [ʂ ʐ]}} are also sufficient. (In some publications the underdot and underbar are interchanged.)
Other definitions of sibilant
Some authors, as for instance
ChomskyAvram Noam Chomsky is an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, political activist, author, and lecturer. He is an Institute Professor and professor emeritus of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Chomsky is well known in the academic and scientific community as...
&
HalleMorris Halle, born Pinkowitz, is a Latvian-American Jewish linguist and an Institute Professor and professor emeritus of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology...
(1964), group {{IPA|f]}} and {{IPA|v]}} as sibilants. However, they do not have the grooved articulation and high frequencies of other sibilants, and most phoneticians (for instance by Ladefoged & Maddieson 1996), continue to group them together with the bilabial fricatives {{IPA|ɸ}},
{{Manner_of_articulation}}
A sibilant is a type of fricative or affricate consonantIn articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the upper vocal tract, the upper vocal tract being defined as that part of the vocal tract that lies above the larynx...
, made by directing a jet of air through a narrow channel in the
vocal tractThe vocal tract is the cavity in animals where sound that is produced at the sound source is filtered. In birds it consists of the trachea, the syrinx, the oral cavity, the upper part of the esophagus, and the beak...
towards the sharp edge of the teeth.
The term
The term
sibilant is often taken to be synonymous with the term
strident, though this is incorrect - there is variation in usage. The term
sibilant tends to have an
articulatoryArticulation may refer to:In linguistics:* Topic-focus articulation, a field of study concerned with marking old and new information in a clause* Manner of articulation, how speech organs involved in making a sound make contact...
or aerodynamic definition involving the production of aperiodic noise at an obstacle.
Strident refers to the perceptual quality of
intensityThe sound intensity, I, is defined as the sound power Pac per unit area A. The usual context is the noise measurement of sound intensity in the air at a listener's location...
as determined by
amplitudeAmplitude is the magnitude of change in the oscillating variable, with each oscillation, within an oscillating system. For instance, sound waves are oscillations in atmospheric pressure and their amplitudes are proportional to the change in pressure during one oscillation...
and
frequencyFrequency is the number of occurrences of a repeating event per unit time. It is also referred to as temporal frequency.The period is the duration of one cycle in a repeating event, so the period is the reciprocal of the frequency....
characteristics of the resulting sound (i.e. an
auditoryAuditory means of or relating to the process of hearing:* Auditory system, the neurological structures and pathways of sound perception.* Sound, the physical signal perceived by the auditory system....
, or possibly
acousticAcoustics is the interdisciplinary science that deals with the study of sound, ultrasound and infrasound . A scientist who works in the field of acoustics is an acoustician. The application of acoustics in technology is called acoustical engineering...
, definition).
Sibilants are louder than their non-sibilant counterparts, and most of their acoustic energy occurs at higher frequencies than non-sibilant fricatives. {{IPA|[s]}} has the most acoustic strength at around 8,000 Hz, but can reach as high as 10,000 Hz. {{IPA|[ʃ]}} has the bulk of its acoustic energy at around 4,000 Hz, but can extend up to around 8,000 Hz.
The spin-off terms shibilant, and rarely thibilant, are used to describe particular kinds of sibilant.
Symbols
Of the sibilants, the following have
IPAThe International Phonetic Alphabet
["The acronym 'IPA' strictly refers [...] to the 'International Phonetic Association'. But it is now such a common practice to use the acronym also to refer to the alphabet itself that resistance seems pedantic...]
symbols of their own:
- Alveolar
Alveolar consonants are articulated with the tongue against or close to the superior alveolar ridge, which is called that because it contains the alveoli of the superior teeth...
:
- {{IPA|[s]}}, {{IPA|[z]}} (either apical
An apical consonant is a phone produced by obstructing the air passage with the apex of the tongue . This contrasts with laminal consonants, which are produced by creating an obstruction with the blade of the tongue .This is not a very common distinction, and typically applied only to fricatives...
or laminalA laminal consonant is a phone produced by obstructing the air passage with the blade of the tongue, which is the flat top front surface just behind the tip of the tongue on the top. This contrasts with apical consonants, which are produced by creating an obstruction with the tongue apex only...
).
- Postalveolar
Postalveolar consonants are consonants articulated with the tongue near or touching the back of the alveolar ridge, further back in the mouth than the alveolar consonants, which are at the ridge itself, but not as far back as the hard palate .Among the fricatives and affricates, a subtype called...
:
- {{IPA|[ʃ]}}, {{IPA|[ʒ]}} (Palato-alveolar: that is, "domed" (partially palatalized) postalveolar, either laminal or apical)
- {{IPA|[ɕ]}}, {{IPA|[ʑ]}} (Alveolo-palatal
In phonetics, alveolo-palatal consonants are palatalized postalveolar fricatives, articulated with the blade of the tongue behind the alveolar ridge, and the body of the tongue raised toward the palate...
: that is, laminal palatalizedPalatalization or palatalisation generally refers to two phenomena:*As a process or the result of a process, the effect that front vowels and the palatal approximant frequently have on consonants;...
postalveolar; these are equivalent to {{IPA|ʃʲ, ʒʲ}})
- {{IPA|[ʂ]}}, {{IPA|[ʐ]}}: (Retroflex
In phonetics, retroflex consonants are consonant sounds used in some languages. The tongue articulates with the roof of the oral cavity behind the alveolar ridge, and may even be curled back to touch the palate: that is, they are articulated in the postalveolar to palatal region of the...
, which can mean one of three things: (a) non-palatalized apical postalveolar, (b) sub-apical postalveolar or pre-palatal, or (c) non-palatalized laminal ("flat") postalveolar, sometimes transcribed {{IPA|[s̠ z̠]}} or {{IPA|[ʂ̻ ʐ̻]}}.
Diacritics can be used for finer detail. For example, apical and laminal alveolars can be specified as {{IPA|[s̺]}}
vs {{IPA|[s̻]}}; a
dentalIn linguistics, a dental consonant or dental is a consonant that is articulated with the tongue against the upper teeth, such as , , , and in some languages...
(or more likely
denti-alveolar) sibilant as {{IPA|[s̪]}}; a palatalized alveolar as {{IPA|[sʲ]}}; and a generic postalveolar as {{IPA|[s̠]}}, a transcription frequently used when none of the above apply (that is, for a laminal but non-palatalized, or "flat", postalveolar). Some of the
Northwest Caucasian languagesThe Northwest Caucasian languages, also called Abkhazo-Adyghean, or sometimes Pontic as opposed to Caspian , are a group of languages spoken in the Caucasus region, chiefly in Russia , the disputed territory of Abkhazia, and Turkey, with smaller communities scattered throughout the...
also have a
closed laminal postalveolar, without IPA symbols but provisionally transcribed as {{IPA|[ŝ ẑ]}}.
Whistled sibilants
WhistledHuman whistling is the production of sound by means of carefully controlling a stream of air flowing through a small hole. Whistling can be achieved by creating a small opening with one's lips and then blowing air out of the hole or sucking air into the hole...
sibilants occur in speech pathology and may be caused by dental protheses or orthodontics. However, they also occur phonemically in several southern Bantu languages, the best known being
ShonaShona is a Bantu language, native to the Shona people of Zimbabwe and southern Zambia; the term is also used to identify peoples who speak one of the Shona language dialects, namely Zezuru, Karanga, Manyika, Ndau and Korekore. Shona is a principal language of Zimbabwe, along with Ndebele and the...
. These have been variously described—as labialized but not velarized, retroflex, etc., but none of these articulations are required for the sounds (Shosted 2006). Using the
Extended IPAThe Extensions to the IPA are extensions of the International Phonetic Alphabet and were designed for disordered speech. However, some of the symbols are occasionally used for transcribing normal speech as well.-Brackets:...
, Shona
sv and
zv may be transcribed {{IPA|[s͎]}} and {{IPA|[z͎]}}. Other transcriptions seen include purely labial {{IPA|[s̫]}} and {{IPA|[z̫]}} (Ladefoged and Maddieson 1996) and labially coarticulated {{IPA|[s͡ɸ]}} and {{IPA|[z͡β]}}.
Inventories
Only the alveolar and palato-alveolar sibilants are distinguished in
EnglishEnglish is a West Germanic language that developed in England during the Anglo-Saxon era. As a result of the military, economic, scientific, political, and cultural influence of the British Empire during the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries, and of the United States since the mid 20th century,...
; the former may be either apical or laminal, while the latter are usually apical, slightly labialized and generally called simply "postalveolar": {{IPA|[s̺ z̺]}} or {{IPA|[s̻ z̻]}} and {{IPA|[ʃʷ̜ ʒʷ̜]}}), as in
sin [s̻ɪn] and
shin {{IPA|[ʃʷ̜ɪn]}}. Although laminal and apical sibilants are not distinguished in English,
BasqueBasque is the ancestral language of the Basque people, who inhabit the Basque Country, a region spanning an area in northeastern Spain and southwestern France. It is the mother tongue of approximately one fifth of Basques, 632,000 out of nearly 3,000,000...
does distinguish these two phonemically, as well as having true postalveolars ({{IPA|[s̺] [s̻] [ʃ]}}).
PolishPolish is a West Slavic language and the official language of Poland. Its written standard is the Polish alphabet which corresponds basically to the Latin alphabet with a few additions...
and
RussianRussian is the most geographically widespread language of Eurasia, the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages, and the largest native language in Europe...
have laminal denti-alveolars, palatalized denti-alveolars, flat postalveolars, and alveolo-palatals ({{IPA|[s̪ z̪] [s̪ʲ z̪ʲ] [s̠ z̠] [ɕ ʑ]}}), whereas Mandarin has apical alveolars, flat postalveolars, and alveolo-palatals ({{IPA|[s̺ z̺] [s̠ z̠] [ɕ ʑ]}}).
Few languages distinguish more than three series of sibilants without
secondary articulationSecondary articulation refers to co-articulated consonants where the two articulations are not of the same manner. The approximant-like secondary articulation is weaker than the primary, and colors it rather than obscuring it...
, but
UbykhUbykh or Ubyx is a language of the Northwestern Caucasian group, spoken by the Ubykh people up until the early 1990s.The word is derived from , its name in the Abdzakh Adyghe language...
has four series of plain sibilants, {{IPA|[s z], [ŝ ẑ ŝʷ ẑʷ], [ɕ ʑ ɕʷ ʑʷ], [ʂ ʐ]}}, as does the Bzyp dialect of the related
AbkhazAbkhaz is a Northwest Caucasian language spoken mainly by the Abkhaz people. It is the official language of Abkhazia, where around 100,000 people speak it. Furthermore, it is spoken by thousands of members of the Abkhazian diaspora in Turkey, Georgia's autonomous republic of Adjara, Syria, Jordan...
, and the Chinese dialect of Qinan, in
ShandongFor the people of Shandong, see Shandong people' is a coastal province of eastern People's Republic of China. Its abbreviation is Lǔ, after the state of Lu that existed here during the Spring and Autumn Period....
province, is said to have five.
TodaToda is a Dravidian language well known for its many fricatives and trills. It is spoken by the Toda people, a population of about one thousand who live in the Nilgiri Hills of southern India.-Vowels:...
has a laminal alveolar, an apical postalveolar, laminal domed postalveolars, and sub-apical palatals. Since two of these could be called 'retroflex',
LadefogedPeter Nielsen Ladefoged was an English-American linguist and phonetician who traveled the world to document the distinct sounds of endangered languages and pioneered ways to collect and study data. He was active at the universities of Edinburgh, Scotland and Ibadan, Nigeria 1953–61...
&
MaddiesonIan Maddieson is a linguist at UC Berkeley, an Adjunct Professor Emeritus at the University of New Mexico, and vice-president of the International Phonetic Association. He wrote the books Patterns of Sounds and Sounds of the World's Languages.-External links:...
1996 have resurrected the old IPA diacritic for retroflex, the underdot, for apical retroflexes, and reserve the letters <{{unicode|ʂ, ʐ}}> for sub-apical retroflexes. Thus the Toda sibilants can be transcribed {{IPA|[s̪] [ṣ] [ʃ̻ ʒ̻] [ʂ ʐ]}}, although the official IPA symbols {{IPA|[s̪] [s̠] [ʃ̻ ʒ̻] [ʂ ʐ]}} are also sufficient. (In some publications the underdot and underbar are interchanged.)
Other definitions of sibilant
Some authors, as for instance
ChomskyAvram Noam Chomsky is an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, political activist, author, and lecturer. He is an Institute Professor and professor emeritus of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Chomsky is well known in the academic and scientific community as...
&
HalleMorris Halle, born Pinkowitz, is a Latvian-American Jewish linguist and an Institute Professor and professor emeritus of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology...
(1964), group {{IPA|f]}} and {{IPA|v]}} as sibilants. However, they do not have the grooved articulation and high frequencies of other sibilants, and most phoneticians (for instance by Ladefoged & Maddieson 1996), continue to group them together with the bilabial fricatives {{IPA|ɸ}},
{{IPAThe voiced bilabial fricative is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is B. The symbol is the Greek letter beta...
] as non-sibilant anterior fricatives. For a grouping of sibilants and {{IPA|[f, v]}}, the term
strident is more common. Some researchers judge {{IPA|[f]}} to be strident in one language, e.g. the African language Ewe, as determined by experimental measurements of amplitude, but as non-strident in English.
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 supposedly
non-sibilant {{IPA|[θ]}} voiceless alveolar non-sibilant fricative (Stone and Lundberg, 1996, Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, vol. 99: 3728-3737). More research on the phonetic bases of the terms sibilance and stridency, and their interrelationship, is required.
See also
- Plosives
- strident vowel
Strident vowels are strongly pharyngealized vowels accompanied by epiglottal trill, where the larynx is raised and the pharynx constricted, so that either the epiglottis or the arytenoid cartilages vibrate instead of the vocal cords.Strident vowels are fairly common in Khoisan languages, where...
s
- Complete IPA chart with pronunciation guide