PHONETICS AND PHONOLOGY
Segmental Aspects
THE AMOUNT OF HIGH-FREQUENCY ENERGY
The increased amount of high–frequency energy is present in the consonants pronounced with greater loudness at high frequencies. Such consonants have more acoustic energy and they are called sibilants.
Roach recognises the two different classes of fricatives. He defines the fricatives “which make a sharp or strong hissing noise (e.g. s, ʃ) and those which produce only a soft noise (e.g. f, θ)“ (Roach, 2009, p. 78). As he adds with a bit of humour, “in English we use the sibilant sound ʃ to command silence (e.g. in a classroom). Some other cultures use s, but it is hard to imagine anyone using f or θ for this purpose“ (ibid.).
In Slovak, two more sibilants exist compared to English, hence not only /s, z, ʃ, ʒ, ʧ, ʤ/ occur, but also the alveolar /c/ (=/ts/) and /dz/ are recognised as the Slovak sibilant consonants. They differ only in voicing (c is voiceless, dz is voiced).
English:
SIBILANTS: s, z, ʃ, ʒ, ʧ ʤ
Slovak:
SIBILANTS: s, z, ʃ, ʒ, c, dz, ʧ, ʤ