Voiceless alveolar fricative
A voiceless alveolar fricative is 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:
- The voiceless alveolar sibilant has a strong hissing sound, as the s in English sin. It is one of the most common sounds in the world.
- The voiceless denti-alveolar sibilant , also called apico-dental, has a weaker lisping sound like English th in thin. It occurs in Spanish dialects in southern Spain.
- The voiceless alveolar retracted sibilant , and the subform apico-alveolar, or called grave, has a weak hushing sound reminiscent of fricatives. It is used in the languages of northern Iberia, like Asturleonese, Basque, Castilian 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. Its sound is between and .
- The voiceless alveolar non-sibilant fricative or, using the alveolar diacritic from the Extended IPA, is similar to the th in English thin. It occurs in Icelandic.
- The voiceless alveolar lateral fricative sounds like a voiceless, strongly articulated version of English l and is written as ll in Welsh.
Voiceless alveolar sibilants
The voiceless alveolar sibilant is a common consonant sound in vocal 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 sssst! or psssst!.The voiceless alveolar sibilant is 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 Australian Aboriginal languages, in which fricatives are rare; even the few indigenous Australian languages that have fricatives do not have sibilants.
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.
Voiceless apico-alveolar sibilant
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.
It also occurs in Modern Greek, as well as the Baltic languages.
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 evidence is 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 weiz "white" vs. weis "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.
- 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 conserved the most archaic Portuguese forms and/or 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 central and northern Spanish, the non-retracted was fronted to after merging with non-retracted, while the retracted remains.
- In German, most instances of were fronted to, but some were backed to become , postalveolar as in European and fluminense Portuguese.
Loss-causing events
In Romance languages, was reached from -ti-, -ci-, -ce- clusters that eventually became,, and later,, , while was reached:
- From a or cluster in southern Romance, as in Latin miscere > Portuguese mexer "to move", Latin fluxus > Spanish flojo "lax", Latin crescere > Italian crescere "grow", with a different pronunciation.
- from a deaffricated in Northern France and southern-central Portugal, as in French chat "cat", Portuguese achar "find".
Exceptions
Standard Modern Greek, which has apical, lacked both processes.The Germanic-speaking regions that did not have either phenomena have normally preserved the apical, that is, Icelandic, Dutch and many Scandinavian lects. It also reached modern times in Low German, but this language has largely been replaced by Standard German.
The main Romance language to preserve the sound, Castilian Spanish, is exceptional in that it had both events that produced and, and preserved the apical S at the expense of both, that were shifted farther away. Galician changed only, and Catalan, as well as Ladino, still preserves all three sounds.
Reach in ancient times
Because of the widespread medieval distribution, it has been speculated that retracted was the normal pronunciation in spoken Latin. Certain borrowings suggest that it was not far off from the sh-sound, e.g. Aramaic Jeshua > Latin Jesus, Hebrew Shabbat > Vulgar Latin Sabato; but this could also be explained by the lack of a better sound in Latin to represent Semitic sh. It equally well could have been an areal feature inherited from the prehistoric languages of Western Europe, as evidenced by its occurrence in modern Basque.For the same reasons, it can be speculated that retracted was the pronunciation of Proto-Germanic s. Its presence in many branches of Indo-European and its presence particularly in the more conservative languages inside each branch, as well as being found in disparate areas, such as the Baltic languages and Greece, suggests it could have ultimately been the main allophone of Proto-Indo-European s, known for ranging from to as far as.
, but not, was developed in Italian. However, where Spanish and Catalan have apical, Italian uses the same laminal that occurs in standard forms of English: evidence, it could be argued, that S was not pronounced apically in Latin. But Neapolitan has a medieval S becoming either or depending on context, much as in European Portuguese, which could attest to the previous existence of in the Italian Peninsula. The Italian pronunciation as laminal S could also be explained by the presence of but not, thus moving the pronunciation of to the front of the mouth in an attempt to better differentiate between the two sounds.
Voiceless lamino-dental sibilant
A voiceless laminal dental or dentialveolar sibilant contrasts with a voiceless apical alveolar or post-alveolar sibilant in Basque and several languages of California, including Luiseño of the Uto-Aztecan family and Kemeyaay of the Yuman family.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 apical, 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 , and some phoneticians have characterized it as sulcal, but in both cases, there is some doubt about whether all and only the "hissing" sounds actually have a "grooved" or "sulcal" tongue shape.
Features
Features of the 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 .
Examples
Dentalized laminal alveolar
Non-retracted alveolar
Retracted alveolar
Variable
Voiceless alveolar non-sibilant fricative
The voiceless alveolar non-sibilant fricative is a consonantal sound. As the International Phonetic Alphabet does not have separate symbols for the alveolar consonants, this sound is usually transcribed, occasionally , , or .Few languages also have the voiceless alveolar tapped fricative, which is simply a very brief apical alveolar non-sibilant fricative, with the tongue making the gesture for a tapped stop but not making full contact. This can be indicated in the IPA with the lowering diacritic to show full occlusion did not occur.
Tapped fricatives are occasionally reported in the literature, though these claims are not generally independently confirmed and so remain dubious.
Flapped fricatives are theoretically possible but are not attested.