Sibilant consonant: Encyclopedia II - Sibilant consonant - Inventories

Sibilant consonant - Inventories

Only the alveolar and palato-alveolar sibilants are distinguished in English; the former are apical, while the latter are slightly labialized and generally called simply "postalveolar": [s̺ z̺] [ʃʷ̜ ʒʷ̜]. Polish and Russian have laminal denti-alveolars, palatalized denti-alveolars, flat postalveolars, and alveolo-palatals, [s̪ z̪] [s̪ʲ z̪ʲ] [s̠ z̠] [ɕ ʑ]; whereas Mandarin has apical alveolars, flat postalveolars, and alveolo-palatals, [s̺ z̺] [s̠ z̠] [ɕ ʑ].

Few languages distinguish more than three series of sibilants without secondary articulation, but Ubykh has four series of plain sibilants, [s z], [ŝ ẑ ŝʷ ẑʷ], [ɕ ʑ ɕʷ ʑʷ], [ʂ ʐ], and the Chinese dialect of Qinan, in Shandong province, is said to have five. Toda has a laminal alveolar, an apical postalveolar, laminal domed postalveolars, and sub-apical palatals. Since two of these could be called 'retroflex', Ladefoged & Maddieson 1996 have resurrected the old IPA diacritic for retroflex, the underdot, for apical retroflexes, and reserve the letters <ʂ, ʐ> for sub-apical retroflexes. Thus the Toda sibilants can be transcribed [s̪] [ṣ] [ʃ̻ ʒ̻] [ʂ ʐ], although the official IPA symbols [s̪] [s̠] [ʃ̻ ʒ̻] [ʂ ʐ] are also sufficient. (In some publications the underdot and underbar are interchanged.)

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Inventories", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki