Voiceless alveolar fricative
Voiceless alveolar fricatives are a type of fricative consonant pronounced with the tip or blade of the tongue against the alveolar ridge just behind the teeth. This refers to a class of sounds, not a single sound. There are at least six types with significant perceptual differences:
- A voiceless alveolar sibilant has a strong hissing sound, as the s in English sink. It is one of the most common sounds in the world.
- A voiceless denti-alveolar sibilant or , also called apico-dental, has a weaker lisping sound like English th in thin. It occurs in Spanish dialects in southern Spain.
- A voiceless alveolar retracted sibilant , and the subform apico-alveolar, has a weak hushing sound reminiscent of fricatives. It is used in the languages of northern Iberia, like Asturleonese, Basque, Peninsular Spanish, Catalan, Galician, and Northern European Portuguese. A similar retracted sibilant form is also used in Dutch, Icelandic, some southern dialects of Swedish, Finnish, and Greek. The retracted "S" is also used in Amerindian languages such as Muscogee, Garifuna, and many varieties of Quechua. It was supposedly the standard sound of s in Classical Latin. Its sound is between and .
- A voiceless alveolar non-sibilant fricative or is similar to the th in English thin. It occurs in Icelandic as well as an intervocalic and word-final allophone of English in dialects such as Hiberno-English and Scouse.
- A voiceless alveolar lateral fricative sounds like a voiceless, strongly articulated version of English l and is written as ll in Welsh.
Voiceless alveolar sibilant
A voiceless alveolar sibilant is a common consonant sound in spoken languages. It is the sound in English words such as sea and pass, and is represented in the International Phonetic Alphabet with. It has a characteristic high-pitched, highly perceptible hissing sound. For this reason, it is often used to get someone's attention, using a call often written as or.Voiceless alveolar sibilants are one of the most common sounds cross-linguistically. If a language has fricatives, it will most likely have. However, some languages have a related sibilant sound, such as, but no. In addition, sibilants are absent from most Australian Aboriginal languages, in which fricatives are rare; however, does occur in Kalaw Lagaw Ya.
Comparison between English and Spanish
The term "voiceless alveolar sibilant" is potentially ambiguous in that it can refer to at least two different sounds. Various languages of northern Iberia have a so-called "voiceless apico-alveolar sibilant" that lacks the strong hissing of the described in this article but has a duller, more "grave" sound quality somewhat reminiscent of a voiceless retroflex sibilant. Basque, Mirandese and some Portuguese dialects in northeast Portugal have both types of sounds in the same language.There is no general agreement about what actual feature distinguishes these sounds. Spanish phoneticians normally describe the difference as vs. , but Ladefoged and Maddieson claim that English can be pronounced apically, which is evidently not the same as the apical sibilant of Iberian Spanish and Basque. Also, Adams asserts that many dialects of Modern Greek have a laminal sibilant with a sound quality similar to the "apico-alveolar" sibilant of northern Iberia.
Some authors have instead suggested that the difference lies in tongue shape. Adams describes the northern Iberian sibilant as "retracted". Ladefoged and Maddieson appear to characterize the more common hissing variant as grooved, but there is some doubt about whether all and only the "hissing" sounds actually have a "grooved" tongue shape.
Features
Features of a voiceless alveolar sibilant:- There are at least three specific variants of :
- * Dentalized laminal alveolar, which means it is articulated with the tongue blade very close to the upper front teeth, with the tongue tip resting behind lower front teeth. The hissing effect in this variety of is very strong.
- * Non-retracted alveolar, which means it is articulated with either the tip or the blade of the tongue at the alveolar ridge, termed respectively apical and laminal. According to about half of English speakers use a non-retracted apical articulation.
- * Retracted alveolar, which means it is articulated with either the tip or the blade of the tongue slightly behind the alveolar ridge, termed respectively apical and laminal. Acoustically, it is close to laminal or .
Occurrence
Dentalized laminal alveolar
Alveolar
Retracted alveolar
Voiceless apico-alveolar sibilant
The voiceless alveolar retracted sibilant is a fricative that is articulated with the tongue in a hollow shape, usually with the tip of the tongue against the alveolar ridge. It is a sibilant sound and is found most notably in a number of languages in a linguistic area covering northern and central Iberia. It is most well known from its occurrence in the Spanish of this area. In the Middle Ages, it occurred in a wider area, covering Romance languages spoken throughout France, Portugal, and Spain, as well as Old High German and Middle High German.Occurrence in Europe
Modern
In Romance languages, it occurs as the normal voiceless alveolar sibilant in Astur-Leonese, Castilian Spanish, Catalan, Galician, northern European Portuguese, and some Occitan dialects. It also occurs in Basque and Mirandese, where it is opposed to a different voiceless alveolar sibilant, the more common ; the same distinction occurs in a few dialects of northeastern Portuguese. Outside this area, it also occurs in a few dialects of Latin American Spanish.Amongst Germanic languages, it occurs in Dutch, Icelandic, many dialects in Scandinavia, and working-class Glaswegian English.
There is no single IPA symbol used for this sound. The symbol is often used, with a diacritic indicating an pronunciation. However, that is potentially problematic in that not all alveolar retracted sibilants are apical, and not all apical alveolar sibilants are retracted. The ad hoc non-IPA symbols and are often used in the linguistic literature even when IPA symbols are used for other sounds, but is a common transcription of the retroflex sibilant.
Medieval
In medieval times, it occurred in a wider area, including the Romance languages spoken in most or all of France and Iberia, as well as in the Old and Middle High German of central and southern Germany, and most likely Northern Germany as well. In all of these languages, the retracted "apico-alveolar" sibilant was opposed to a non-retracted sibilant much like modern English, and in many of them, both voiceless and voiced versions of both sounds occurred. A solid type of evidence consists of different spellings used for two different sibilants: in general, the retracted "apico-alveolar" variants were written or, while the non-retracted variants were written, or. In the Romance languages, the retracted sibilants derived from Latin, or, while the non-retracted sibilants derived from earlier affricates and, which in turn derived from palatalized or. The situation was similar in High German, where the retracted sibilants derived largely from Proto-Germanic, while the non-retracted sibilants derived from instances of Proto-Germanic that were shifted by the High German sound shift. Minimal pairs were common in all languages. Examples in Middle High German, for example, were wizzen "to know" vs. wissen "known", and wīz "white" vs. wīs "way".Description of the retracted sibilant
Often, to speakers of languages or dialects that do not have the sound, it is said to have a "whistling" quality, and to sound similar to palato-alveolar. For this reason, when borrowed into such languages or represented with non-Latin characters, it is often replaced with. This occurred, for example, in English borrowings from Old French ; in Polish borrowings from medieval German ; and in representations of Mozarabic in Arabic characters. The similarity between retracted and has resulted in many exchanges in Spanish between the sounds, during the medieval period when Spanish had both phonemes. Examples are jabón "soap" from Latin sapō/sapōnem, jibia "cuttlefish" from Latin sēpia, and tijeras "scissors" from Latin cīsōrias.One of the clearest descriptions of this sound is from Obaid: "There is a Castilian s, which is a voiceless, concave, apicoalveolar fricative: The tip of the tongue turned upward forms a narrow opening against the alveoli of the upper incisors. It resembles a faint and is found throughout much of the northern half of Spain".
Many dialects of Modern Greek have a very similar-sounding sibilant that is pronounced with a articulation.
Loss of the voiceless alveolar sibilant
This distinction has since vanished from most of the languages that once had it in medieval times.- In most dialects of Spanish, the four alveolar sibilants have merged into the non-retracted . However, in the Spanish of central and northern Spain, the non-retracted was fronted to after merging with non-retracted, while the retracted remains. Distinción is also preserved in Spanish orthography on both sides of the Atlantic.
- In French and most dialects of Portuguese, the four alveolar sibilants have merged into non-retracted and, while in European Portuguese, most other Old World Portuguese variants and some recently European-influenced dialects of Brazil all instances of coda, voiced before voiced consonants, were backed to, while in most of Brazilian Portuguese this phenomenon is much rarer, being essentially absent in the dialects that had a greater indigenous and/or non-Portuguese European influence.
- In the remaining dialects of Portuguese, found in northern Portugal, they merged into the retracted , or, as in Mirandese, conserved the medieval distinction.
- In German, was early on voiced to in prevocalic position. This sound was then fronted to, but did not merge with any other sound. In pre-consonantal and final position, merged with either or. The rules for these mergers differ between dialects. In Standard German, is used stem-initially and sporadically after ‹r›. Especially in Alemannic, every pre-consonantal became.