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Sibilants (from 'hissing') are fricative and affricate consonants of higher amplitude and pitch, made by directing a stream of air with the tongue towards the teeth. Examples of sibilants are the consonants at the beginning of the English language words sip, zip, ship, and genre. The symbols in the International Phonetic Alphabet used to denote the sibilant sounds in these words are, respectively, . Sibilants have a characteristically intense sound, which accounts for their Paralanguage use in getting one's attention (e.g. calling someone using "psst!" or quieting someone using "shhhh!").
A broader category is stridents, which include more fricatives than sibilants such as Uvular consonant. Sibilants are a higher pitched subset of the stridents. The English sibilants are:
Some linguistics use the terms "stridents" and "sibilants" interchangeably to refer to the greater amplitude and pitch compared to other fricatives.
"Stridency" refers to the psychoacoustics sound intensity of the sound of a sibilant consonant, or obstacle fricatives or affricates, which refers to the critical role of the teeth in producing the sound as an obstacle to the airstream. Non-sibilant fricatives and affricates 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.
The characteristic intensity of sibilants means that small variations in tongue shape and position are perceivable, with the result that there are many sibilant types that contrast in various languages.
The following variables affect sibilant sound quality, and, along with their possible values, are ordered from sharpest (highest-pitched) to dullest (lowest-pitched):
Generally, the values of the different variables co-occur so as to produce an overall sharper or duller sound. For example, a laminal denti-alveolar grooved sibilant occurs in Polish language, and a subapical palatal retroflex sibilant occurs in Toda language.
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 normal sound of English s:
Speaking non-technically, the retroflex 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 in the middle of "miss you".
For tongue-down laminal articulations, an additional distinction can be made depending on where exactly behind the lower teeth the tongue tip is placed. A little ways back from the lower teeth is a hollow area (or pit) in the lower surface of the mouth. When the tongue tip rests in this hollow area, there is an empty space below the tongue (a sublingual cavity), which results in a relatively duller sound. When the tip of the tongue rests against the lower teeth, there is no sublingual cavity, resulting in a sharper sound. Usually, the position of the tip of the tongue correlates with the grooved vs. hushing tongue shape so as to maximize the differences. However, the palato-alveolar sibilants in the Northwest Caucasian languages such as Ubykh language are an exception. These sounds have the tongue tip resting directly against the lower teeth, which gives the sounds a quality that Catford describes as "hissing-hushing". Ladefoged and Maddieson term this a " closed laminal postalveolar" articulation, and transcribe them (following Catford) as , although this is not an IPA notation.
| + IPA letters for sibilants | { class="wikitable" ! colspan="6" | Voiceless |
Diacritics can be used for finer detail. For example, apical and laminal alveolars can be specified as vs ; a dental consonant (or more likely denti-alveolar) sibilant as ; a palatalized alveolar as ; and a generic "retracted sibilant" as , a transcription frequently used for the sharper-quality types of retroflex consonants (e.g. the laminal "flat" type and the "apico-alveolar" type). There is no diacritic to denote the laminal "closed" articulation of palato-alveolars in the Northwest Caucasian languages, but they are sometimes provisionally transcribed as .
| southeast European Spanish language s/z, Kumeyaay |
| Polish language s, z; Basque language z, tz |
| northern peninsular Spanish language s; Basque language s, ts; Mandarin Chinese s, z, c (apical, dental or alveolar) |
| English language s, z (alveolar, laminal or apical); American or southwest European Spanish language s/z |
| Toda, Ubykh language, Abkhaz language |
| English language sh, ch, j, zh and French ch, j () |
| Toda language; Basque language x, tx |
| Mandarin Chinese x, j, q; Polish language ś, ć, ź, dź; Ubykh language; Abkhaz language |
| Ubykh language; Abkhaz language |
| Polish language sz, cz, ż, dż (); Mandarin Chinese sh, zh, ch |
| Ubykh language; Abkhaz language; Kumeyaay; Toda; Russian language |
| Toda language |
is an ad-hoc transcription. The old IPA letters are also available.
These sounds are usually just transcribed . Apical postalveolar and subapical palatal sibilants do not contrast in any language, but if necessary, apical postalveolars can be transcribed with an apical diacritic, as or . Ladefoged resurrects the old retroflex sub-dot for apical retroflexes, Also seen in the literature on e.g. Hindi and Norwegian is – the domed articulation of precludes a subapical realization.
The whistled sibilants of Shona have been variously described—as labialized but not velarized, as retroflex, etc., but none of these features are required for the sounds.Shosted 2006 Using the Extended IPA, Shona sv and zv may be transcribed and . Other transcriptions seen include purely labialized and (Ladefoged and Maddieson 1996) and labially co-articulated and (or and ). In the otherwise IPA transcription of Shona in Doke (1967), the whistled sibilants are transcribed with the non-IPA letters and .
Besides Shona, whistled sibilants have been reported as phonemes in Kalanga language, Tsonga language, Tsonga language, Tswa language—all of which are Southern African languages—and Tabasaran. The articulation of whistled sibilants may differ between languages. In Shona, the lips are Roundedness throughout, and the sibilant may be followed by normal labialization upon release. (That is, there is a contrast among s, sw, ȿ, ȿw.) In Tsonga, the whistling effect is weak; the lips are narrowed but also the tongue is retroflex. Tswa may be similar. In Changana, the lips are rounded (protruded), but so is /s/ in the sequence /usu/, so there is evidently some distinct phonetic phenomenon occurring here that has yet to be formally identified and described.Maddieson & Sands (2019). 'The Sounds of the Bantu Languages', in van de Velde et al. (eds) The Bantu Languages, 2nd edition.
The now-extinct Ubykh language was particularly complex, with a total of 27 sibilant consonants. Not only all four tongue shapes were represented (with the palato-alveolar appearing in the laminal "closed" variation) but also both the palato-alveolars and alveolo-palatals could additionally appear labialization. Besides, there was a five-way manner distinction among voiceless and voiced fricatives, voiceless and voiced affricates, and affricates. (The three labialized palato-alveolar affricates were missing, which is why the total was 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 language is one example, with both palatalized and non-palatalized laminal denti-alveolars, laminal postalveolar (or "flat retroflex"), and alveolo-palatal (). Russian language has the same surface contrasts, but the alveolo-palatals are arguably not phonemic. They occur only geminate, and the retroflex consonants never occur geminate, which suggests 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, flat postalveolar and alveolo-palatal affricates whereas Basque language has palato-alveolar and laminal and apical alveolar (apico-alveolar) fricatives and affricates (late Medieval peninsular Spanish language and Portuguese had the same distinctions among fricatives).
Many languages, such as English language or Arabic language, have 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 and Arabic, with alveolar and palato-alveolar sibilants. Modern northern peninsular Spanish language has a single apico-alveolar sibilant fricative , as well as a single palato-alveolar sibilant affricate . However, there are also languages with alveolar and apical retroflex sibilants (such as Standard Vietnamese) and with alveolar and alveolo-palatal postalveolars (e.g. alveolar and laminal palatalized i.e. in Catalan language and Brazilian Portuguese, the latter probably through Amerindian influence, Dialects of Brazil: the palatalization of the phonemes and . and alveolar and dorsal i.e. proper in Japanese). Análise acústica de sequências de fricativas e africadas por japoneses aprendizes de português brasileiro'', Universidade Federal do Paraná, page 1504
Only a few languages with sibilants lack the hissing type. Middle Vietnamese is normally reconstructed with two sibilant fricatives, both hushing (one retroflex, one alveolo-palatal). Some languages have only a single hushing sibilant and no hissing sibilant. That occurs in southern Peninsular Spanish dialects of the "ceceo" type, which have replaced the former hissing fricative with , leaving only .
Languages with no sibilants are fairly rare. Most have no fricatives at all or only the fricative . Examples include most Australian languages, and Rotokas language, and what is generally reconstructed for Proto-Bantu. Languages with fricatives but no sibilants, however, do occur, such as Ukue language in Nigeria, which has only the fricatives . Also, almost all Eastern Polynesian languages have no sibilants but do have the fricatives and/or : Māori, Hawaiian, Tahitian, Rapa Nui, most Cook Islands Māori dialects, Marquesan, and Tuamotuan.
Tamil language only has the sibilant and fricative in loanwords, and they are frequently replaced by native sounds. The sibilants exist as allophones of and the fricative as an allophone of .
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 the supposedly non-sibilant voiceless alveolar fricative of English.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. 3728–3737
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