Voiceless alveolar sibilant

The 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 ⟨s⟩. 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 sssst! or psssst!.

The voiceless alveolar sibilant [s] is one of the most common sounds cross-linguistically. If a language has fricatives, it will most likely have [s].^[1] However, some languages have a related sibilant sound, such as [ʃ], but no [s]. In addition, sibilants are absent from Australian Aboriginal languages, where fricatives are rare; even the few indigenous Australian languages that have developed fricatives do not have sibilants. Sibilants (or at least, sibilant fricatives) are also absent from the so-called ceceo Spanish dialects of southern Spain (Andalusia), where [θ] replaces all historical [s] consonants.

Features

Features of the voiceless alveolar sibilant:

• Its manner of articulation is sibilant fricative, which means it is generally produced by channeling air flow along a groove in the back of the tongue up to the place of articulation, at which point it is focused against the sharp edge of the nearly clenched teeth, causing high-frequency turbulence.
• Its place of passive articulation is alveolar, which means it is articulated with the tongue at the alveolar ridge just behind the gums.
• Its place of active articulation is usually laminal, meaning that the tongue blade (the part just behind the top) contacts the alveolar ridge, with the tongue tip resting behind the lower front teeth. However, according to Ladefoged and Maddieson,^[2] an apical articulation (with the tongue tip touching the alveolar ridge) is also possible, with in fact about an equal number of English speakers using each of the two types.
• Its phonation is voiceless, which means it is produced without vibrations of the vocal cords. In some languages the vocal cords are actively separated, so it is always voiceless; in others the cords are lax, so that it may take on the voicing of adjacent sounds.
• It is an oral consonant, which means air is allowed to escape through the mouth only.
• It is a central consonant, which means it is produced by directing the airstream along the center of the tongue, rather than to the sides.
• The airstream mechanism is pulmonic, which means it is articulated by pushing air solely with the lungs and diaphragm, as in most sounds.

Comparison with the Spanish apico-alveolar sibilant

The term "voiceless alveolar sibilant" is potentially ambiguous in that it can refer to at least two different sounds. Various languages of northern Iberia (e.g. Astur-Leonese, Catalan, Basque, Galician, Portuguese and Spanish) have a so-called "voiceless apico-alveolar sibilant" which lacks the strong hissing of the [s] described in this article, but rather has a duller, more "grave" sound quality somewhat reminiscent of a voiceless retroflex sibilant. Basque, Mirandese and some Portuguese dialects in northeast Portugal (as well as medieval Spanish and Portuguese in general) 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 apical (for the northern Iberian sound) vs. laminal (for the more common sound), but Ladefoged and Maddieson^[3] claim that English /s/ can be pronounced apical, which is evidently not the same as the apical sibilant of Iberian Spanish and Basque, In addition, Adams^[4] 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^[5] describes the northern Iberian sibilant as "retracted". Ladefoged and Maddieson^[6] appear to characterize the more common hissing variant as grooved, and some phoneticians (e.g. J. Catford) have characterized it as sulcal (which is more or less a synonym of "grooved"), but in both cases there is some doubt about whether all and only the "hissing" sounds in fact have a "grooved" or "sulcal" tongue shape.

Occurrence

See also

• Voiceless alveolar retroflex fricative
• Voiceless alveolar non-sibilant fricative
• Tongue shape
• Apical consonant
• Laminal consonant
• List of phonetics topics

Notes

References

• Adams, Douglas Q. (1975), "The Distribution of Retracted Sibilants in Medieval Europe", Language (Linguistic Society of America) 51 (2): 282–292, doi:10.2307/412855, JSTOR 412855 
• Cruz-Ferreira, Madalena (1995), "European Portuguese", Journal of the International Phonetic Association 25 (2): 90–94, doi:10.1017/S0025100300005223 
• Fougeron, Cecile; Smith, Caroline L (1993), "Illustrations of the IPA:French", Journal of the International Phonetic Association 23 (2): 73–76, doi:10.1017/S0025100300004874 
• Gussenhoven, Carlos (1992), "Dutch", Journal of the International Phonetic Association 22 (2): 45–47, doi:10.1017/S002510030000459X 
• Hickey, Raymond (1984), "Coronal Segments in Irish English", Journal of Linguistics 20 (2): 233–250, doi:10.1017/S0022226700013876 
• Honeybone, P (2001), "Lenition inhibition in Liverpool English", English Language and Linguistics 5 (2): 213–249 
• Jassem, Wiktor (2003), "Polish", Journal of the International Phonetic Association 33 (1): 103–107, doi:10.1017/S0025100303001191 
• Jones, Daniel; Dennis, Ward (1969), The Phonetics of Russian, Cambridge University Press 
• Ladefoged, Peter (2005), Vowels and Consonants (Second ed.), Blackwell 
• Ladefoged, Peter; Maddieson, Ian (1996). The Sounds of the World's Languages. Oxford: Blackwell. ISBN 0-631-19814-8. 
• Maddieson, Ian (1984), Patterns of sound, Camebridge University Press 
• Marotta, Giovanna; Barth, Marlen (2005), "Acoustic and sociolingustic aspects of lenition in Liverpool English", Studi Linguistici e Filologici Online 3 (2): 377–413, http://www.humnet.unipi.it/slifo/2005vol2/Marotta-Barth3.2.pdf 
• Martínez-Celdrán, Eugenio; Fernández-Planas, Ana Ma.; Carrera-Sabaté, Josefina (2003), "Castilian Spanish", Journal of the International Phonetic Association 33 (2): 255–259, doi:10.1017/S0025100303001373, http://www.ub.es/labfon/spanish.pdf 
• Okada, Hideo (1991), "Phonetic Representation:Japanese", Journal of the International Phonetic Association 21 (2): 94–97 
• Pandeli, H; Eska, J; Ball, Martin; Rahilly, J (1997), "Problems of phonetic transcription: the case of the Hiberno-English slit-t", Journal of the International Phonetic Association 27: 65–75, doi:10.1017/S0025100300005430 
• Rogers, Derek; d'Arcangeli, Luciana (2004), "Italian", Journal of the International Phonetic Association 34 (1): 117–121, doi:10.1017/S0025100304001628 
• Shosted, Ryan K.; Vakhtang, Chikovani (2006), "Standard Georgian", Journal of the International Phonetic Association 36 (2): 255–264, doi:10.1017/S0025100306002659 
• Thelwall, Robin (1990), "Illustrations of the IPA: Arabic", Journal of the International Phonetic Association 20 (2): 37–41 
• Thompson, Laurence (1959), "Saigon phonemics", Language 35 (3): 454–476, doi:10.2307/411232, JSTOR 411232