====== More on Hissing ======

Hisses have some paralinguistic functions similar to human sibilants. They can be used to silence someone. Some cultures use hisses as an attention-getter, but the Commonthroat-speaking world uses a yip for that instead. A soft trilled hiss is used to catch the attention of small animals like forest flyers, similar to using /pspspspsps/ to catch the attention of cats. It's thought to mimic the dry stridulating sounds made by the insects they eat.



In several places I've described yinrih hesses as sounding like an angry goose. Humans find the sound somewhat comical paired with the yinrih's typical anemic vocalizations. A hissing yinrih sounds like he's trying and failing to be threatening



Since hisses do not carry tone, the YPA shall use the number 0 in the tone position when describing hisses. It remains to be seen whether hiss semivowels can occur alongside hiss vowels, though they likely can. I'm fairly sure they can occur in both onset and coda positions.



{{tag>biology}}