Talk:Voiceless alveolar retracted sibilant

Apico-alveolar

Two things: First, I'm pretty sure that [s̺], which represents an apico-alveolar fricative, is different from [s̱] which has the retracted symbol that indicates that the consonant is pronounced in the postalveolar area. With this difference, I would rather the apico-alveolar fricative move back to being merged with voiceless alveolar grooved fricative since the two are more similar acoustically.

Second, if this is a retracted [s], then how is it alveolar? What is the basis for this name? — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 15:06, 22 May 2011 (UTC)

Yes, this seems dubious/OR. [s̠] is post-alveolar. And I find it doubtful that all of these languages have "retroflex" sibilants in any normal sense of the term. — kwami (talk) 10:14, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

Spanish might, but not according to the source cited. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 13:48, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

Basque's ‹s› does fit "... is a sibilant fricative which is articulated with the tongue in a retroflex (concave, curled-up) shape and with tip of the tongue (apex) against the alveolar ridge.". And I could cite it. --JorisvS (talk) 18:15, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

But how is that different from any other apical alveolar sibilant? Per SOTWL, the hollowing of the body of the tongue is normal. Or at least, it's found in GA, RP, and Oz (though English is not necessarily apical), as well as Icelandic and Mandarin; L says, "We do not know the proportion of s sounds that involve a hollowing of the tongue just behind the constriction, but iti s probably more common than has been previously reported" (p 148). — kwami (talk) 18:34, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

The curling up of the tip of the tongue that, technically, would be absent from a "normal" apical alveolar sibilant. Though I think you're right with your quotation, that it probably often goes unnoticed. --JorisvS (talk) 18:46, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

L shows Xray tracings of Engish and Mandarin [s], and both have a "retroflex" shape.

I suspect that this article is not distinct from voiceless apical alveolar sibilant. You can find all sorts of verbal descriptions of sibilants, but it would not be appropriate to turn each into an article title, as appears to have happened here. — kwami (talk) 19:23, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

Okay, given the lack of supporting evidence, including the author's admission on the sibilant page that he didn't know if there was any difference, I'm moving this to 'voiceless apico-alveolar sibilant'. That's the, or at least a, name for it in the lit, and the article agrees that it's accurate. — kwami (talk) 10:53, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

This sound is not the same as "voiceless alveolar (grooved) sibilant"

I chose the name "voiceless alveolar retroflex sibilant" to distinguish it from "voiceless alveolar grooved sibilant". The fact that both sounds exist in the same language (Basque) should make it obvious that they are not the same or similar sounds. It is true that the sound is normally called an "apico-alveolar sibilant" but I chose the name "alveolar retroflex sibilant" precisely to avoid confusing people like Aeusoes and kwami who have read SOWL but are not familiar with Basque or peninsular Spanish, who would likely get confused with the so-called "apical alveolar" sibilant in SOWL. It is unfortunate that kwami then (a) renamed the article back to its confusing name, and consequently (b) got confused.

In fact I added the description by Obaid, which specifically says that this sound is similar to /ʃ/ (but "weaker", i.e. it is even more similar to, and in the same class as, SOWL's so-called "flat postalveolar" sound, i.e. "retroflex"), in the specific hope that people like Aeusoes and kwami would see it and not jump to conclusions. I also added a paragraph describing why the term "retroflex" is in the title (which kwami then deleted).

I believe the difference between the two can be effectively described by tongue shape, i.e. "grooved" vs. "flat"/"retroflex". Hence the name. The use of [s̱] is to suggest that this is acoustically similar to the postalveolar sound indicated the same way, and not to the apical alveolar sound of SOWL, as [s̺] would suggest. (If this sounds strange to you, read SOWL's chapter on vowels, where you'll see that many factors affect acoustic vowel "height" and "frontness" other than just articulatory tongue height/frontness. Same goes for consonants.) There is unfortunately no standard symbol in the IPA for this sound, and in fact no way to indicate it unambiguously with a single diacritic; same goes for the "lisping-hissing" (aka "apico-dental") sound of Andalucian Spanish, often indicated using [s̄] (which isn't even proper IPA). Some researchers use [ṣ], another symbol that SOWL appropriates for a retroflex-type sound.

If you can read Spanish, please read "Neutralización de sibilantes vascas y seseo en castellano" (José Ignacio Hualde [1]), which describes in detail the acoustic characteristics of the three Basque sibilants (approximately, [s] [ṣ] [ʃ]). In this paper these three sounds are called "dental / alveolar / prepalatal", but elsewhere (e.g. in the literature on peninsular Spanish) the first two are often called "lamino-alveolar / dorso-alveolar" and "apico-alveolar", respectively. See also Dalbor 1980 ("Observations on Present-Day Seseo and Ceceo in Southern Spain", Hispania 63:1, find on JSTOR), which describes in detail the three different sibilants occurring in different varieties of peninsular Spanish:

1. lamino-alveolar (like English /s/)
2. apico-alveolar
3. apico-dental (lisping-hissing, sounding somewhere between English /s/ and English /θ/)

SOWL unfortunately doesn't properly address the situation in Spanish or Basque, but that doesn't mean that the situation doesn't exist. The closest they get to the unfamiliar apico-alveolar and apico-dental sounds is found on p. 146 in their description of Karok, which (based on what they quoted from Bright 1978) appears to have both of these sounds. They assert without evidence that the apico-alveolar sound is actually apical post-alveolar, but this disagrees with what a whole lot of phoneticians who study Spanish and Basque have said. Some have even noted that in some varieties of Basque you find instead of the more common apico-alveolar sound a more retracted apico-post-alveolar sound, probably identical to SOWL's "flat postalveolar".

See also Spanish phonology, which describes the three sounds and quotes Dalbor and Obaid. Benwing (talk) 07:56, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

"retroflex" again

I have moved this back to "voiceless alveolar retroflex sibilant". Please see Lawrence B. Kiddle "Sibilant Turmoil in Middle Spanish (1450-1650)" (JSTOR 473050), p. 329, which says the following:

The actualization of the new merged /s/ varied from region to region. In the north the characteristic hissing sibilant was what Alonso calls the Iberian s, retroflex apicoalveolar fricative.

BTW the rest of the paragraph says:

In the south a coronal flat s was heard and in the coastal areas of western Andalusia the s was pronounced as a dorsoalveolar with the tip of the arched tongue placed behind the lower teeth. These three pronunciations of the /s/ represent developmental stages [ś > ş > s], which are important in the later confusions of ceceo-seseo.

This agrees with what I've written in Spanish phonology. It's not obvious to me that these three sounds actually represent a developmental progression as Kiddle claims, but his description of the sound as retroflex should put to rest whether this term is applicable to this sound.

I also think that this sound represents the sibilant equivalent of the voiceless alveolar rhotic fricative [ɹ̝̊], i.e. same sound but with the teeth clenched. Benwing (talk) 04:09, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

Oh bother. While I don't care what the details of the Spanish sound are, this is certainly not true for Basque and I suspect the other languages too. If consensus says it IS retroflex in Spanish, the we shouldn't just move the page, we need to split it. Akerbeltz (talk) 08:27, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

OK, what is exactly going on with the Basque sound? I'm really trying to figure this out. What distinguishes the Basque s from Basque z and are the descriptions e.g. of Hualde correct in describing the Basque s as sounding more similar to /ʃ/ (Basque x) than Basque z? What does your Basque s sound like compared with your Basque z and x?

"Retroflex" may be the wrong word and is not so commonly used, but the word "retracted" comes up a lot. The reason I am trying to avoid the term "apico-alveolar" is that there's also apparently an "apical alveolar" variety of English /s/ that evidently sounds very much like all other varieties of English /s/, which means that it is evidently not the same as the "apico-alveolar" sound of Basque and Spanish, although I haven't yet verified that for sure. On top of that, I can't actually make an apical sibilant that sounds like my laminal /s/, but I can make two different apical alveolar sibilants, one of which has a lower tongue body and a more fronted position and is reminiscent of [θ] (and evidently is the same as the "s coronal" or "s plana" of northern/southeastern Andalucia), and another one with a higher tongue body and a more retracted position that is somewhat reminiscent of [ʂ]. Yet another interesting point is Adams 1975 "The Distribution of Retracted Sibilants in Medieval Europe" footnote pp. 282-283 which notes that not only is [s] (the "prelaminal variety of sibilant common to the languages of western and central Europe") "quite distinct" from the "retracted sibilant" that is normally termed "apico-alveolar", but in addition there is a "lamino-alveolar" sibilant, also retracted, that is "widespread in parts of Greece" and sounds much like the retracted Spanish "apico-alveolar" sibilant.

All of this implies that "apical" is definitely the wrong word for characterizing this sound, and makes me think that perhaps "retracted" is more appropriate than "retroflex" (although, annoyingly, some phoneticians define "retracted" specifically to mean "retracted tongue body" and would claim that "retracted" doesn't apply to any of these sounds, and not even to some specifically "retroflex" sounds).

Comments? Benwing (talk) 21:36, 5 June 2011 (UTC)

I'm abroad just now - I'll respond in full when I'm back on Thursday. Akerbeltz (talk) 21:53, 5 June 2011 (UTC)

What a pity that Akerbeltz has apparently forgotten about it. Funny enough, I've always wondered about those sibilants in various European languages which are often described as sounding "in between [s] and [ʃ]", and I had also discussed them with my prof who was acutely aware of them and had some ideas of his own on them (and I have some now too), and some time ago I heard a talk which was about exactly this and came to some conclusions I had already come up with independently, but the linguist who gave the talk disagreed with me about calling those sibilants "apical" or "apico-alveolar", while his own description, "postalveolar", didn't make sense to me either (and we couldn't come to an agreement on how to best describe them; anyway, he used the symbol <ŝ> to describe them, which is OK as a cover symbol when you want to gloss over phonetic details), and when I was compiling a list of languages (in which I have encountered such sibilants) lately (to perhaps ask around among phoneticians how to best describe them), the best neutral term I could come up with (in order to give a name to the whole problem for practical purposes) was ... "retracted". In that case, the symbol [s̱] could also be used. Or perhaps not, since that's already in use for the Polish, Russian and Mandarin retroflex sibilants ... while [ŝ] is already in use as an ad hoc transcription for the Ubykh and Abkhaz laminal closed postalveolars. Damn. We need some non-committal symbol. Or is [s̺] OK after all? --Florian Blaschke (talk) 21:44, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

Possible contents extensions

The same sound seems to be the allophone of "s" after "r" in Scots and Scottish Gaelic, and Norwegian/Central Swedish pronunciation of "rs" must have been the same. 46.186.37.98 (talk) 01:08, 19 June 2011 (UTC)

I'm not sure what the Gaelic /s/ after /r/ sounds like. The Norwegian /rs/ is usually described as an actual retroflex sibilant, i.e. it's postalveolar instead of alveolar. The difference is (at least partially) one of pitch, i.e. a retroflex sibilant has a lower pitch than /ʃ/ but the retracted alveolar sibilant has a higher pitch, between /ʃ/ and /s/. This is why diachronically it tends to merge with one of the two sounds -- and why, when the medieval Spanish load on /ʃ/, /ṣ/ and /s/ became too high, /ʃ/ was backed to /x/ and /s/ was fronted to /θ/.Benwing (talk) 01:04, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

Explanation of "retracted"

The article really needs to explain in more detail what "retracted" is supposed to mean. It is cited as being pretty much the key feature of the sound, and yet the section on "sound quality and features" doesn't even mention its "retractedness". The description from Oblaid, described as "one of the clearest" doesn't mention retraction either and just says it's apicoalveolar (the final remark about acoustic similarity to a faint [ʃ] doesn't help us much with the issue of articulation). Surely the Adams article that explained so many interesting and enlightening things about the phonological relations into which this sound entered must also have said what it means by retraction. On the other hand, if Adams is the only one who thinks it's retracted, then this article shouldn't rely on a minority view, even if some of its authors are, personally, sure that it is "the truth"!.--91.148.159.4 (talk) 20:55, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

Retracted is simply a catch-all term for this kind of sibilant fricatives which are "in between" hissing and hushing sibilants, meaning no more than that they are pronounced further back than the regular hissing sibilant [s]. I find that pretty self-explaining, but if you don't, can you suggest a lay-friendly phrasing? --Florian Blaschke (talk) 01:44, 17 March 2012 (UTC)

The term "retracted" itself is clear, but it's too general, hence vague in this context. Either it means that the sibilant is unusually retracted for an apico-alveolar - and in that case that should be stated explicitly in the section on "sound quality and features" in addition to the sound being apical and alveolar - or it means that its very apicalness or alveolarness constitutes its unusual "retraction" compared to the "regular" [s] (whatever a "regular" [s] really is; see voiceless alveolar sibilant) - but the article explicitly rejects that interpretation by saying that "not all alveolar-retracted sibilants are apical (see below), and not all apical alveolar sibilants are retracted."--Anonymous44 (talk) 01:21, 7 June 2012 (UTC)

That's the whole point. There are sibilants that are retracted, but not apical. (The Greek sibilants do seem apical to me, at least from personal observations, but it may depend on dialect, regiolect or even idiolect. However, I can produce retracted laminal sibilants; the tongue form is the same as with a typical [s], namely flat and parallel to the roof of the mouth, not curved upward, but the point of contact is further back, probably post-alveolar.) There are apical alveolar sibilants that are not retracted, for example (possibly) /s/ in (some varieties of?) English. See Voiceless alveolar sibilant#Comparison with the Spanish apico-alveolar sibilant. That means there are regular apico-alveolar sibilants, and apico-alveolar sibilants that are retracted. Hence, neither of your interpretations is correct. Apical refers to the active point of articulation, retracted to the passive point of articulation. See Postalveolar consonant#Point of tongue contact (laminal, apical, subapical), where it is also noted that the apical retracted sibilants can actually be considered alveolar retroflex. You see: both active and passive point of articulation as well as possibly tongue shape must be kept in mind, as many as three parameters. The Spanish sibilant may be described as apico-postalveolar, the Greek sibilant as lamino-postalveolar, the English sibilant as apico-alveolar and the "typical" (German?) sibilant as lamino-alveolar. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 17:28, 25 October 2012 (UTC)

Then those are the terms which should be used, at least once, including in the name of the article. — kwami (talk) 18:04, 25 October 2012 (UTC)

Right, two years later I notice Florian Blaschke's answer and I second Kwamikagami. The term "retracted" does not clearly point towards the passive as opposed to active place of articulation. If "retracted" is really supposed to mean "postalvolar", then that's what the article should say - but I'm not sure if that really is the intended meaning, since it says just "alveolar" now. --Anonymous44 (talk) 23:26, 3 June 2014 (UTC)

Substratum influence

Because of the widespread medieval distribution, it has been speculated that retracted [s̺] was the normal pronunciation in spoken Latin. However, 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.

Whose argument is this? I don't really understand it: The prehistoric, pre-Romance languages of Western Europe were predominantly Indo-European, mainly Celtic, not Basque. Early Basque (and perhaps Iberian, which might have had an analogous opposition between two sibilants) was spoken only in a tiny portion of Western Europe, and (counter to a common belief among non-Vasconists) not even necessarily a considerably larger portion than in the modern era (for example, the population of the western portion of the modern Basque Country appears to have spoken Indo-European, probably Celtic, in antiquity).

Most languages spoken in ancient Western Europe which we have any traces of in fact resemble either Celtic or Latin, or both: "Italo-Celtic" (as a typological if perhaps not strictly genetic unit) must have been by far the dominant type of language in the western half of Europe in the later Iron Age, while the area where non-Indo-European languages were spoken was already quite reduced – a point that is often overlooked by speculations about this period. (Let me emphasise that Vennemann's fantasies about a Basque(oid)-speaking prehistorical Europe are utterly implausible, because they are exceedingly unrealistic from the insight of linguistic geography and demography; prehistoric Europe, and Western Europe in particular because of its favourable climate and complex, highly compartmentalised geography, must always have been diverse linguistically, and the Celtic expansion – which happened very late in European prehistory – led to a relatively close-knit giant dialect continuum that was a considerable anomaly in a region at this latitude and climatic conditions before the rise of more centralised cultures like the Roman Empire, so it is not a model for Neolithic Europe by any means.)

What this argument would imply is that Western Romance (and Old High German) would have had the feature from its Celtic rather than non-Indo-European substratum, given the distribution of the feature, which is not what it is trying to suggest. It may also be noted that the distinction between two different sibilants is much too recent a development to trace it back to the influence of pre-Romance substrates (in medieval Romance, there was initially a distinction between an affricate like /tɕ/ or /ts/ and the retracted sibilant, and the deaffrication of /ts/ is a late medieval phenomenon – OHG /z/ may also have been an affricate in the earliest period – note that modern as well as medieval and Early Basque distinguished retracted and "normal" sibilants as well as corresponding affricates, forming pairs of lenis and fortis consonants which however had phonotactic restrictions, for example the affricates were banned word-initially, quite unlike Romance and OHG); if anything, medieval Basque influence could have been the origin, but that's not very plausible sociolinguistically. The suggestion that Early Basque (or even Iberian) influence caused the retraction of /s/ is actually much less credible than the suggestion that the (much more recent) change from f to h in Romance varieties in the immediate vicinity of Basque was somehow caused by Basque influence (which is a very reasonable proposal in my opinion, even if there are objections), which is generally rejected (due to those objections, which I don't find all that compelling).

Ultimately, the logic used here forces one to draw a quite different conclusion: if the retracted sibilant was not an original feature of Latin, but is due to the influence of a substratum, Celtic is the most likely source, hence either Latin or Celtic – if not both – must have had this pronunciation of the sibilant (personally, I suspect that both had it: but I cannot expound on my reasons for this here – reasons partly inspired by Schrijver, and incidentally developped independently by Aurelijus Vijūnas – as it would lead too far). --Florian Blaschke (talk) 16:07, 29 March 2012 (UTC)

I've written a bit more about these reasons at Talk:Dutch phonology#The special 's' sound in Dutch. My understanding is that [r] is also typically retracted, and if it is really as easy to go from the voiced apicoalveolar fricative to the (post-)alveolar approximant (which can even exhibit friction!) as I suspect it is (as opposed to the normal [z], which isn't that similar to a [r]), the approximant being an obvious candidate for a merger with a /r/ phoneme if one already exists in the language, then rhotacism is a strong additional indication for retracted sibilants anyway. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 17:56, 25 October 2012 (UTC)

Confusion of "s" and "x" in Spanish

The similarity between retracted [s̺] and [ʃ] has resulted in many exchanges in Spanish between the sounds, during the medieval period when Spanish had both sounds. Examples are jibia "cuttlefish" (formerly xibia) from Latin sēpia, and tijeras "scissors" (earlier tixeras < medieval tiseras) from Latin cīsōrias (with initial t- due to influence from tōnsor "shaver").

Isn't wikt:jabón an even better-known example exhibiting this phenomenon? Also, are there any examples for the reverse exchange (from ⟨x⟩ to ⟨s⟩)? I would also like to suggest replacing sounds with phonemes at least in one instance in the quoted sentence. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 16:52, 7 April 2012 (UTC)

Sounds good to me. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ]} 22:42, 7 April 2012 (UTC)

I'll add it, then. Also, I wonder: Can the example Old French cercher > Modern French chercher, mentioned here, be connected with this? Benwing? --Florian Blaschke (talk) 22:32, 8 April 2012 (UTC)

I also wonder if the deaffrication of /ts/ in Old French may have preceded the merger of ⟨s⟩ with ⟨c⟩, just like in Spanish, so that for a while in Late Old French, there were two contrasting sibilants indeed, parallelling the situation in Basque (which, however, has both fricatives and affricates).

The "dull" sibilant seems to have merged with the "sharp" hissing sibilant in German in the Late Middle Ages, in the 13th or 14th centuries – did the merger take place at about the same time in French and other Romance languages? --Florian Blaschke (talk) 20:18, 11 April 2012 (UTC)