Voiceless alveolo-palatal sibilant

Voiceless alveolo-palatal sibilant
ɕ
IPA number	182
Encoding
Entity (decimal)	ɕ
Unicode (hex)	U+0255
X-SAMPA	s\
Kirshenbaum	S;
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Sound
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The voiceless alveolo-palatal sibilant fricative is a type of consonantal sound, used in some oral languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ⟨ɕ⟩ ("c", plus the curl also found in its voiced counterpart ⟨ʑ⟩). It is the sibilant equivalent of the voiceless palatal fricative.

The voiceless alveolo-palatal sibilant fricative does not occur in any major dialect of English. However, it is the usual realization of /ʃ/ (as in ship) in the Ghanaian variety.^[1]

Features

alveolo-palatal sibilant fricatives [ɕ, ʑ]

Features of the voiceless alveolo-palatal fricative:

• Its manner of articulation is sibilant fricative, which means it is generally produced by channeling air flow along a groove in the back of the tongue up to the place of articulation, at which point it is focused against the sharp edge of the nearly clenched teeth, causing high-frequency turbulence.

• Its place of articulation is alveolo-palatal. This means that:
  • Its place of articulation is postalveolar, meaning that the tongue contacts the roof of the mouth in the area behind the alveolar ridge (the gum line).
  • Its tongue shape is laminal, meaning that it is the tongue blade that contacts the roof of the mouth.
  • It is heavily palatalized, meaning that the middle of the tongue is bowed and raised towards the hard palate.

• Its phonation is voiceless, which means it is produced without vibrations of the vocal cords. In some languages the vocal cords are actively separated, so it is always voiceless; in others the cords are lax, so that it may take on the voicing of adjacent sounds.

• It is an oral consonant, which means air is allowed to escape through the mouth only.

• It is a central consonant, which means it is produced by directing the airstream along the center of the tongue, rather than to the sides.

• The airstream mechanism is pulmonic, which means it is articulated by pushing air solely with the lungs and diaphragm, as in most sounds.

Occurrence

Language		Word	IPA	Meaning	Notes
Adyghe		щы	[ɕə]	'three'
Assamese		ব্ৰিটিছ	[bɹitiɕ]	'British'
Catalan	Eastern and Majorcan[2]	caixa	[ˈkaɕə]	'box'	See Catalan phonology
Chinese	Mandarin	西安/Xī'ān	[ɕí.án]	'Xi'an'	Contrasts with /ʂ/ and /s/. See Mandarin phonology
Chuvash		çиçĕм	[ˈɕiɕ̬əm]	'lightning'	Contrasts with /ʂ/ and /s/.
Danish		sjæl	[ɕeˀl]	'soul'	See Danish phonology
Dutch	Some speakers	sjabloon	[ɕäˈbloːn]	'template'	May be [ʃ] or [sʲ] instead. See Dutch phonology
English	Ghanaian[1]	ship	[ɕip]	'ship'	Educated speakers may use [ʃ], to which this phone corresponds in other dialects.[1]
Guarani	Paraguayan	che	[ɕɛ]	'I'
Japanese[3]		塩/shio	[ɕi.o]	'salt'	See Japanese phonology
Kabardian		щэ	[ɕa]	'hundred'
Korean		시/si	[ɕi]	'poem'	See Korean phonology
Luxembourgish[4]		liicht	[liːɕt]	'light'	Allophone of /χ/ after phonologically front vowels; some speakers merge it with [ʃ].[4] See Luxembourgish phonology
Norwegian	Standard Eastern[5]	kjekk	[ɕɛ̝kː]	'handsome'	Typically transcribed in IPA with ⟨ç⟩; less often realized as palatal [ç]. Younger speakers in Bergen, Stavanger and Oslo merge it with /ʂ/.[5] See Norwegian phonology
Pashto	Wazirwola dialect	لښکي‎	[ˈləɕki]	'little, slight'
Polish[6]		śruba	[ˈɕrubä]	'screw'	Contrasts with /ʂ/ and /s/. See Polish phonology
Portuguese[7][8][9]		mexendo	[meˈɕẽd̪u]	'moving'	Also described as palato-alveolar [ʃ].[10][11] See Portuguese phonology
Romanian	Transylvanian dialects[12]	ce	[ɕɛ]	'what'	Realized as [tʃ] in standard Romanian. See Romanian phonology
Russian		счастье	[ˈɕːæsʲtʲjə]	'happiness'	Also represented by ⟨щ⟩. Contrasts with /ʂ/, /s/, and /sʲ/. See Russian phonology
Sema[13][14]		ashi	[à̠ɕì]	'meat'	Possible allophone of /ʃ/ before /i, e/.[13][14]
Serbo-Croatian	Croatian[15]	miš će	[mîɕ t͡ɕe̞]	'the mouse will'	Allophone of /ʃ/ before /t͡ɕ, d͡ʑ/.[15] See Serbo-Croatian phonology
	Some speakers of Montenegrin	śutra	[ɕutra]	'tomorrow'	Phonemically /sj/ or, in some cases, /s/.
Sorbian	Lower[16]	pśijaśel	[ˈpɕijäɕɛl]	'friend'
Swedish	Finland	sjok	[ɕuːk]	'chunk'	Allophone of /ɧ/.
	Sweden	kjol	[ɕuːl]	'skirt'	See Swedish phonology
Tibetan	Lhasa dialect	བཞི་	[ɕi˨˧]	'four'	Contrasts with /ʂ/.
Uzbek[17]
Xumi	Lower[18]	[^RPd͡ʑi ɕɐ]		'one hundred'
	Upper[19]	[^RPd͡ʑi ɕɜ]
Yi		ꑟ/xi	[ɕi˧]	'thread'

See also

• Index of phonetics articles
• Voiceless palato-alveolar sibilant

References

1. Huber (2004:859)
2. Recasens & Espinosa (2007:145, 167)
3. Okada (1991:94)
4. Gilles & Trouvain (2013), pp. 67–68.
5. Kristoffersen (2000), p. 23.
6. Jassem (2003:103)
7. Mateus & d'Andrade (2000)
8. Silva (2003:32)
9. Guimarães (2004)
10. Cruz-Ferreira (1995:91)
11. Medina (2010)
12. Pop (1938), p. 29.
13. Teo (2012:368)
14. Teo (2014:23)
15. Landau et al. (1999:68)
16. Zygis (2003), pp. 180–181.
17. Sjoberg (1963:11)
18. Chirkova & Chen (2013), p. 365.
19. Chirkova, Chen & Kocjančič Antolík (2013), p. 382.

Bibliography

• Chirkova, Katia; Chen, Yiya (2013), "Xumi, Part 1: Lower Xumi, the Variety of the Lower and Middle Reaches of the Shuiluo River" (PDF), Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 43 (3): 363–379, doi:10.1017/S0025100313000157
• Chirkova, Katia; Chen, Yiya; Kocjančič Antolík, Tanja (2013), "Xumi, Part 2: Upper Xumi, the Variety of the Upper Reaches of the Shuiluo River" (PDF), Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 43 (3): 381–396, doi:10.1017/S0025100313000169
• Cruz-Ferreira, Madalena (1995), "European Portuguese", Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 25 (2): 90–94, doi:10.1017/S0025100300005223
• Gilles, Peter; Trouvain, Jürgen (2013), "Luxembourgish" (PDF), Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 43 (1): 67–74, doi:10.1017/S0025100312000278
• Guimarães, Daniela (2004), Seqüências de (Sibilante + Africada Alveopalatal) no Português Falado em Belo Horizonte (PDF), Belo Horizonte: Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais
• Huber, Magnus (2004), "Ghanaian English: phonology", in Schneider, Edgar W.; Burridge, Kate; Kortmann, Bernd; Mesthrie, Rajend; Upton, Clive, A handbook of varieties of English, 1: Phonology, Mouton de Gruyter, pp. 842–865, ISBN 3-11-017532-0
• Jassem, Wiktor (2003), "Polish", Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 33 (1): 103–107, doi:10.1017/S0025100303001191
• Kristoffersen, Gjert (2000), The Phonology of Norwegian, Oxford University Press, ISBN 978-0-19-823765-5
• Landau, Ernestina; Lončarić, Mijo; Horga, Damir; Škarić, Ivo (1999), "Croatian", Handbook of the International Phonetic Association: A guide to the use of the International Phonetic Alphabet, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 66–69, ISBN 0-521-65236-7
• Mateus, Maria Helena; d'Andrade, Ernesto (2000), The Phonology of Portuguese, Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-823581-X
• Medina, Flávio (2010), Análise Acústica de Sequências de Fricativas Seguidas de [i] Produzidas por Japoneses Aprendizes de Português Brasileiro (PDF), Anais do IX Encontro do CELSUL Palhoça, SC, Palhoça: Universidade do Sul de Santa Catarina
• Okada, Hideo (1991), "Japanese", Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 21 (2): 94–97, doi:10.1017/S002510030000445X
• Pop, Sever (1938), Micul Atlas Linguistic Român, Muzeul Limbii Române Cluj
• Recasens, Daniel; Espinosa, Aina (2007), "An electropalatographic and acoustic study of affricates and fricatives in two Catalan dialects" (PDF), Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 37 (2): 143–172, doi:10.1017/S0025100306002829
• Silva, Thaïs Cristófaro (2003), Fonética e Fonologia do Português: Roteiro de Estudos e Guia de Exercícios (7th ed.), São Paulo: Contexto, ISBN 85-7244-102-6
• Sjoberg, Andrée F. (1963), Uzbek Structural Grammar, Uralic and Altaic Series, 18, Bloomington: Indiana University
• Teo, Amos B. (2012), "Sumi (Sema)", Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 42 (03): 365–373, doi:10.1017/S0025100312000254
• Teo, Amos B. (2014), A phonological and phonetic description of Sumi, a Tibeto-Burman language of Nagaland (PDF), Canberra: Asia-Pacific Linguistics, ISBN 978-1-922185-10-5
• Zygis, Marzena (2003), "Phonetic and Phonological Aspects of Slavic Sibilant Fricatives" (PDF), ZAS Papers in Linguistics, 3: 175–213