Re: Do I say [s] correctly?

On Wed, 11 Jul 2007 02:59:45 -0400, John Crowe <johnxcrowe@...> wrote:

>What has frustrated me recently is that the description of a fairly common
>sound, [s] is not the way I say it. I must admit, many aspects of phonetics
>confuse me.
>
>My understanding of the normal description:
>The tip or blade of the tongue is supposed to be the articulator, which is
>placed up against the alveolar ridge (which from what I read is right
behind the
>upper teeth) but not completely stopping airflow, creating high-frequency
>turbulence. Air then passes over the sharp edges of teeth.
>
>How I say [s]:
>First of all, the tip of my tongue is no where near the alveolar ridge (that's
>how it feels, at least), but rather the spot right behind the _lower_
teeth. (But
>it is not here where the friction occurs.) Air comes out through the small gap
>between the upper and lower teeth, producing the sound. It seems to me that
>the articulator is the lower teeth, and the place of articulation is the upper
>teeth.
>
>No one ever told me that I have a speech problem, and the way I say it
>sounds normal to me. Do I misunderstand the descriptions or do I say [s]
>incorrectly?
I knew I'd heard of two different ways that English speakers articulate [s]
before, one with the tongue tip near the lower teeth, maybe in an intro
linguistics class once?  But it took awhile to track down a statement of
that.  This from _American Indian Linguistics and Literature_ by William Bright:

|   (i) Once our attention is focused on these distinctions, it becomes
| easier to recognize that, among what are generally thought of as the
| hissing sibilants of familiar European languages, phonetic distinctions
| may also exist.  For instance, although Spanish has no contrasts in
| sibilant position, its single voiceless sibilant is a relatively
| retracted [s.] in Castilian, though it is usually nonretracted [s] in
| Latin-American dialects.  Furthermore, both retracted and nonretracted
| esses are common in English, though references on English phonetics give
| a rather confusing picture.  Some authorities give equal status to both
| varieties; thus Jones (1966:102) says: ``Some articulate this sound [i.e.
| /s/] with the tip of the tongue and others with the blade (keeping the
| tip down near the lower teeth)''.  Jones goes on to suggest a physical
| reason for the difference: ``The manner of articulation depends largely
| on the shape of the individual skeaper's teeth and palate.  The degree of
| hissing varies with individuals; with some it is physically impossible to
| make a very penetrating hiss''.  Several other writers describe both
| variants, but give priority to the apical variant; thus Wise (1957:125)
| says: ``The acoustic effect in both cases is the same....  However, the
| tongue-tip [s] is usually regarded as typical''.  _Webster's New World
| Dictionary_ (Whitehall 1962:xviii) goes further by simply listing English
| _s_ as a `tongue apex' sound, without qualification.  On the other hand,
| _The Random House Dictionary_ (Stein 1966:xxvii) states: ``The sound is
| formed usually with the blade of the tongue held close to the alveolar
| ridge''.  My impression is that some scholars, like most laymen, have
| assumed that the normal articulation is the one which they themselves
| use, and have not always been aware of the segree of variatoin that
| exists.

On [s.] (really s with dot below) Bright writes "For present purposes I
write [s.] for either the retroflex or the apico-alveolar sibilant, since I
know of no language that distinguishes them."  But I can't find reference,
at least in the narrow window that Google Books shows me, to any language
distinguishing (blade-alveolar) [s] and apico-alveolar [s.] either, and from
my English perspective this strikes me as a nicer distinction.  So I wonder
what induced the apico-alveolar sibilant to be called an [s.] instead of an
[s], and whether any language distinguishes the two English [s]s.

Alex

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