Sibilant - Linguistic Contrasts Among Sibilants

Linguistic Contrasts Among Sibilants

Not including differences in manner of articulation or secondary articulation, some languages have as many as four different types of sibilants. For example, Northern Qiang and Southern Qiang have a four-way distinction among sibilant affricates /ts/ /tʂ/ /tʃ/ /tɕ/, with one for each of the four tongue shapes. Toda also has a four-way sibilant distinction, with one alveolar, one palato-alveolar, and two retroflex (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 five-way manner distinction among voiceless and voiced fricatives, voiceless and voiced affricates, and ejective affricates. (The three labialized palato-alveolar affricates 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 "flat retroflex"), and alveolo-palatal ( ). Russian has the same surface contrasts, but the alveolo-palatals are arguably not phonemic. They only occur geminate, while the retroflex 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 affricates, while Basque has palato-alveolar and laminal and apical alveolar (apico-alveolar) fricatives and affricates. (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, as well as a single palato-alveolar sibilant affricate . However, there are also languages with alveolar and apical retroflex sibilants (e.g. standard Vietnamese), and with alveolar and alveolo-palatal postalveolars (e.g. Japanese).

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 retroflex, 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 .

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 Proto-Bantu. Languages with fricatives but no sibilants do however occur; one is Ukue of Nigeria, which has only the fricatives /f, v, h/.