Sibilant

Sibilance is a manner of articulation of fricative and

aricate consonants, made by directing a stream of air
with the tongue towards the sharp edge of the teeth, which
are held close together; a consonant that uses sibilance
may be called a sibilant, or a strident. Examples of sibilants are the consonants at the beginning of the English
words sip, zip, ship, chip, and Jeep, and the second consonant in vision. The symbols in the International Phonetic Alphabet used to denote the sibilant sounds in these
words are, respectively, [s] [z] [] [t] [d] []. (The
sounds [t] [d], as in chip and Jeep, are aricates; the
rest are fricatives.) Sibilants have a characteristically intense sound, which accounts for their non-linguistic use in
getting ones attention (e.g. calling someone using psst!"
or quieting someone using shhhh!").

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.

2 Sibilant types
All sibilants are coronal consonants (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 aect sibilant sound quality,
and, along with their possible values, are ordered from
sharpest (highest-pitched) to dullest (lowest-pitched):

In the alveolar hissing sibilants [s] and [z], 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 [], [t], [], and [d], the tongue
is atter, and the resulting pitch lower.

Tongue shape: grooved, alveolo-palatal, palatoalveolar, retroex

Place of articulation (point of contact on the upper side of the mouth): dental or denti-alveolar,
alveolar, postalveolar, palatal

Because all sibilants are also stridents, the terms are

sometimes used interchangeably. However, the terms do
Point of contact on the tongue: laminal closed (see
not mean the same thing. The English stridents are /f, v,
below), laminal non-"closed, apical, subapical
s, z, , , t, d/. The English sibilants are a more high
pitched subset of the stridents. The English sibilants are Generally, the values of the dierent variables co-occur
/s, z, , , t, d/. /f/ and /v/ are stridents, but not sibilants, so as to produce an overall sharper or duller sound. For
because they are lower in pitch.
example, a laminal denti-alveolar grooved sibilant occurs
Stridency refers to the perceptual intensity of the sound in Polish, and a subapical palatal retroex sibilant occurs
of a sibilant consonant, or obstacle fricatives/aricates, in Toda.
which refers to the critical role of the teeth in producing the sound as an obstacle to the airstream. Nonsibilant fricatives and aricates 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.

2.1 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 its not known
The characteristic intensity of sibilants means that small how widespread this is. In addition, the following tongue
variations in tongue shape and position are perceivable, shapes are described, from sharpest and highest-pitched
with the result that there are a large number of sibilant to dullest and lowest-pitched:
types that contrast in various languages.
Hollow (e.g. [s z]): 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
1 Acoustics
the teeth, which results in a high-pitched, piercing hissing sound. Because of the prominence of
Sibilants are louder than their non-sibilant counterparts,
these sounds, they are the most common and most
and most of their acoustic energy occurs at higher frestable of sibilants cross-linguistically. They occur in
English, where they are denoted with a letter s or z,
quencies than non-sibilant fricatives. [s] has the most
as in soon or zone.
acoustic strength at around 8,000 Hz, but can reach as
1

SYMBOLS IN THE IPA

Alveolo-palatal (e.g. [ ]): with a convex, V- (palatal), with the in-between articulations being dentishaped tongue, and highly palatalized (middle of the alveolar, alveolar and postalveolar.
tongue strongly raised/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.
Retroex (e.g. [ ]): with a at or concave tongue,
and no palatalization. These sounds occur in a large
number of varieties, some of which also go by other
names (e.g. at postalveolar or "apico-alveolar").
The subapical palatal or true retroex sounds are
the very dullest and lowest-pitched of all the sibilants.

2.3 Point of contact on the tongue

The tongue can contact the upper side of the mouth with
the very tip of the tongue (an apical articulation, e.g. []);
with the surface just behind the tip, called the blade of the
tongue (a laminal articulation, e.g. []); or with the underside of the tip (a subapical 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 retroex sibilants, because all three
varieties can occur, with noticeably dierent sound qualities. For more information on these variants and their
relation to sibilants, see the article on postalveolar consonants.

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 For tongue-down laminal articulations, an additional distinction can be made depending on where exactly behind
normal sound of English s:
the lower teeth the tongue tip is placed. A little ways
back from the lower teeth is a hollow area (or pit) in the
Palatalized: Sibilants can occur with or without raislower surface of the mouth. When the tongue tip rests
ing the tongue body to the palate (palatalization).
in this hollow area, there is an empty space below the
Palatalized alveolars are transcribed e.g. [s] and octongue (a sublingual cavity), which results in a relatively
cur in Russian; they sound similar to the cluster [sj]
duller sound. When the tip of the tongue rests against
occurring in the middle of the English phrase miss
the lower teeth, there is no sublingual cavity, resulting in
you.
a sharper sound. Usually, the position of the tip of the
Lisping: Alveolar sibilants made with the tip of the tongue correlates with the grooved vs. hushing tongue
tongue (apical) near the upper teeth have a softer shape so as to maximize the dierences. However, the
sound reminiscent of (but still sharper-sounding palato-alveolar sibilants in the Northwest Caucasian lanthan) the lisping [] sound of English think and guages such as Ubykh are an exception. These sounds
this. These sounds are relatively uncommon, but have the tongue tip resting directly against the lower teeth,
occur in some of the indigenous languages of which gives the sounds a quality that Catford describes
California[1] as well as in the Spanish dialects of as hissing-hushing. Ladefoged and Maddieson[3] term
eastern Andalucia (southeast Spain), in cities such this a "closed laminal postalveolar articulation, and tranas Granada, Huelva, Cordoba, Jan and Almeria. In scribe them (following Catford) as [, ], although this is
these dialects, the lisping sibilant [s] (sometimes in- not an IPA notation. See the article on postalveolar condicated in Spanish dialectology as s) is the normal sonants for more information.
pronunciation of the letters s and z, as well as c before i or e, replacing the [s] or [] that occurs elsewhere in Andalucia.[2]
3 Symbols in the IPA
Speaking non-technically, the retroex 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 [sj] in the middle
of miss you.

The following table shows the types of sibilant fricatives

dened in the International Phonetic Alphabet:

Diacritics can be used for ner detail. For example, apical

and laminal alveolars can be specied as [s] vs [s]; a dental
(or more likely denti-alveolar) sibilant as [s]; a palatalized
alveolar as [s]; and a generic retracted sibilant as [s], a
transcription frequently used for the sharper-quality types
of retroex consonants (e.g. the laminal at type and
2.2 Place of articulation
the "apico-alveolar" type). There is no diacritic to denote
Sibilants can be made at any coronal articulation, i.e. the laminal closed articulation of palato-alveolars in the
the tongue can contact the upper side of the mouth any- Northwest Caucasian languages, but they are sometimes
where from the upper teeth (dental) to the hard palate provisionally transcribed as [ ].

Possible combinations

The attested possibilities, with exemplar languages, are

as follows. Note that the IPA diacritics are simplied;
some articulations would require two diacritics to be fully
specied, 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 retroex consonants), and that
notation is used here. (Note that the notation s, is sometimes reversed; either may also be called 'retroex' and
written .)
^1 These sounds are usually just transcribed [ ]. Apical
postalveolar and subapical palatal sibilants do not contrast
in any language, but if necessary, apical postalveolar can
be transcribed with an apical diacritic, as [s z] or [ ].

4.1

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. These have been
variously describedas labialized but not velarized, as
retroex, etc., but none of these articulations are required
for the sounds.[4] Using the Extended IPA, Shona sv and
zv may be transcribed [s] and [z]. Other transcriptions
seen include purely labialized [s] and [z] (Ladefoged and
Maddieson 1996) and labially co-articulated [s] and [z]
or [s] and [z].

Linguistic contrasts among sibilants

Not including dierences in manner of articulation or

secondary articulation, some languages have as many as
four dierent types of sibilants. For example, Northern
Qiang and Southern Qiang have a four-way distinction
among sibilant aricates /ts/ /t/ /t/ /t/, with one for
each of the four tongue shapes. Toda also has a fourway sibilant distinction, with one alveolar, one palatoalveolar, and two retroex (apical postalveolar and subapical palatal).
The now-extinct Ubykh language is particularly complex,
with a total of 27 sibilant consonants. Not only are all
four tongue shapes represented (with the palato-alveolar
appearing in the laminal closed variation), but both
the palato-alveolars and alveolo-palatals can additionally
appear labialized. On top of that, there is a ve-way
manner distinction among voiceless and voiced fricatives,
voiceless and voiced aricates, and ejective aricates.
(The three labialized palato-alveolar aricates are missing, which is why the total is 27 not 30.) The Bzyp dialect

of the related Abkhaz language also has a similar inventory.

Some languages have four types when palatalization is
considered. Polish is one example, with both palatalized and non-palatalized laminal denti-alveolars, laminal
postalveolar (or at retroex), and alveolo-palatal ([s
z] [s z] [s z] [ ]). Russian has the same surface contrasts, but the alveolo-palatals are arguably not phonemic.
They only occur geminate, whereas the retroex consonants never occur geminate, suggesting 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, palato-alveolar
and alveolo-palatal aricates, whereas Basque has palatoalveolar and laminal and apical alveolar (apico-alveolar)
fricatives and aricates (late Medieval peninsular Spanish
and Portuguese had the same distinctions among fricatives).
Extremely common are languages, such as English, with
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 [s], as well as a single palato-alveolar sibilant aricate [t]. However, there are also languages
with alveolar and apical retroex sibilants (e.g. standard Vietnamese), and with alveolar and alveolo-palatal
postalveolars (e.g. alveolar and laminal palatalized [ t
d] i.e. [ t d] in Catalan and Brazilian Portuguese,
the latter probably through Amerindian inuence,[5] and
alveolar and dorsal i.e. [ c ] proper in Japanese[6] ).
Few languages with sibilants are missing the hissing type,
but they do exist. Middle Vietnamese is normally reconstructed with two sibilant fricatives, both hushing (one
retroex, one alveolo-palatal). Some languages have only
a single hushing sibilant and no hissing sibilant, such as
southern peninsular Spanish dialects of the "ceceo" type
which have replaced the former hissing fricative with [],
leaving only [t].
Languages with no sibilants are fairly rare. Most have
no fricatives at all, or no fricatives apart from /h/. Examples include most Australian languages, Hawaiian and
Rotokas, and what is generally reconstructed for ProtoBantu. Languages with fricatives but no sibilants do however occur; one is Ukue of Nigeria, which has only the
fricatives /f, v, h/.

Contested denitions

REFERENCES

9 References

Authors including Chomsky and Halle group [f] and [v]

as sibilants. However, they do not have the grooved articulation and high frequencies of other sibilants, and
most phoneticians[7] continue to group them together with
bilabial [], [] and (inter)dental [], [] as non-sibilant
anterior fricatives. For a grouping of sibilants and [f,
v], the term strident is more common. Some researchers
judge [f] 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 []).

Bright, William (1978), Sibilants and naturalness

in aboriginal California, Journal of California Anthropology, Papers in Linguistics 1: 3963

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 classication as a sibilant has been observed in ultrasound studies of the tongue for the supposedly non-sibilant voiceless
alveolar fricative [] of English.[8]

Ladefoged, Peter; Maddieson, Ian (1996). The

Sounds of the Worlds Languages. Oxford: Blackwell. ISBN 0-631-19814-8.

Shosted, Ryan K. (2006) Just put your lips together

and blow? The whistled fricatives of Southern Bantu.

See also
De-essing
Plosive consonant
Sj-sound
Strident vowel
Voiceless alveolar retracted sibilant
Voiced apicoalveolar fricative

Notes

[1] Bright 1978.

[2] Dalbor (1980); Obaid (1973).
[3] Ladefoged & Maddieson 1996.
[4] Shosted 2006
[5] (Portuguese) Dialects of Brazil: the palatalization of
the phonemes /t/ and /d/. Aside of using the term
alveopalatal thoroughly, page 27 sets it clear that Brazilian alveolo-palatal aricates are similar to but dierent
from Italian palato-alveolar ones.
[6] (Portuguese) Anlise acstica de sequncias de fricativas e africadas por japoneses aprendizes de portugus
brasileiro, Universidade Federal do Paran, page 1504
[7] Ladefoged & Maddieson 1996
[8] 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. 37283737

Dalbor, John B. (1980), Observations on PresentDay Seseo and Ceceo in Southern Spain, Hispania
(American Association of Teachers of Spanish and
Portuguese) 63 (1): 519, doi:10.2307/340806,
JSTOR 340806
Hualde, Jos Ignacio (1991), Basque phonology,
London: Routledge, JSTOR 340806

Obaid, Antonio H. (1973), The Vagaries of the

Spanish 'S'", Hispania (American Association of
Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese) 56 (1): 6067,
doi:10.2307/339038, JSTOR 339038

10
10.1

Text and image sources, contributors, and licenses

Text

Sibilant Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sibilant?oldid=675844659 Contributors: Tarquin, Montrealais, DopeshJustin, Gabbe,

Ruhrjung, Charles Matthews, Pm67nz, Silvonen, Indefatigable, PuzzletChung, Bearcat, Benwing, Gilgamesh~enwiki, Eequor, Karl-Henner,
Kdammers, Florian Blaschke, CanisRufus, Kwamikagami, Man vyi, Nsaa, Inge-Lyubov, Vuo, Woohookitty, Damezi, LinguisticsStud,
BD2412, Lebha, Imnotminkus, CaseKid, Mcsven, YurikBot, Aeusoes1, Anetode, Northstop, Csobankai Aladar, Tropylium, SmackBot,
IstvanWolf, Ciacchi, Glengordon01, Rrburke, Ligulembot, Atkinson 291, Robosh, JorisvS, Bjankuloski06en~enwiki, IvanLanin, Wolfdog, CRGreathouse, CmdrObot, Pajast, Nick Number, WinBot, JAnDbot, JPG-GR, R'n'B, Numbo3, AlleborgoBot, George-E, Denisarona, Alexbot, Edit-or-perish, Aucassin, Addbot, Poco a poco, Erutuon, OlEnglish, Zorrobot, Leovizza, Luckas-bot, Luizdl, AnomieBOT,
Omnipaedista, Uanfala, EmausBot, ZroBot, SporkBot, Lguipontes, Yceren Loq, ClueBot NG, Spannerjam, , DiscussDubious, SLPtobe, A.safardoost, Cpt Wise, Ghost Lourde and Anonymous: 32

10.2

Images

File:Text_document_with_red_question_mark.svg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a4/Text_document_

with_red_question_mark.svg License: Public domain Contributors: Created by bdesham with Inkscape; based upon Text-x-generic.svg
from the Tango project. Original artist: Benjamin D. Esham (bdesham)
File:Xsampa-S2.png Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/af/Xsampa-S2.png License: CC-BY-SA-3.0 Contributors: ? Original artist: ?
File:Xsampa-Z2.png Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/09/Xsampa-Z2.png License: CC-BY-SA-3.0 Contributors: ? Original artist: ?
File:Xsampa-s{}.png Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/15/Xsampa-s%27.png License: CC-BY-SA-3.0 Contributors: ? Original artist: ?
File:Xsampa-s.png Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/72/Xsampa-s.png License: CC-BY-SA-3.0 Contributors: ? Original artist: ?
File:Xsampa-sslash.png Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/59/Xsampa-sslash.png License: CC-BY-SA-3.0
Contributors: ? Original artist: ?
File:Xsampa-z'.png Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/56/Xsampa-z%27.png License: CC-BY-SA-3.0 Contributors: ? Original artist: ?
File:Xsampa-z.png Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f9/Xsampa-z.png License: CC-BY-SA-3.0 Contributors:
? Original artist: ?
File:Xsampa-zslash.png Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/26/Xsampa-zslash.png License: CC-BY-SA-3.0
Contributors: ? Original artist: ?

10.3

Content license

Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0