Labial–velar consonants are
doubly articulated at the
velum
Velum may refer to:
Human anatomy
* Superior medullary velum, anterior medullary velum or valve of Vieussens, white matter, in the brain, which stretches between the superior cerebellar peduncles
** Frenulum of superior medullary velum, a slightl ...
and the
lip
The lips are the visible body part at the mouth of many animals, including humans. Lips are soft, movable, and serve as the opening for food intake and in the articulation of sound and speech. Human lips are a tactile sensory organ, and can be ...
s, such as . They are sometimes called "labiovelar consonants", a term that can also refer to
labialized velars, such as the
stop consonant
In phonetics, a plosive, also known as an occlusive or simply a stop, is a pulmonic consonant in which the vocal tract is blocked so that all airflow ceases.
The occlusion may be made with the tongue tip or blade (, ), tongue body (, ), li ...
and the
approximant
Approximants are speech sounds that involve the articulators approaching each other but not narrowly enough nor with enough articulatory precision to create turbulent airflow. Therefore, approximants fall between fricatives, which do produce ...
.
Labial-velars are often written as
digraphs. In the
Kâte language
Kâte is a Papuan language spoken by about 6,000 people in the Finschhafen District of Morobe Province, Papua New Guinea. It is part of the Finisterre–Huon branch of the Trans–New Guinea language family (McElhanon 1975, Ross 2005). It was a ...
, however, is written Q q, and as
Ɋ ɋ.
Globally, these types of consonants are quite rare, only existing in two regions: West and Central Africa on the one hand, Eastern New Guinea and northern Vanuatu on the other.
Labial-velar stops
Truly doubly articulated labial-velars include the
stops and the
nasal
Nasal is an adjective referring to the nose, part of human or animal anatomy. It may also be shorthand for the following uses in combination:
* With reference to the human nose:
** Nasal administration, a method of pharmaceutical drug delivery
* ...
. To pronounce them, one must attempt to say the velar consonants but then close their lips for the bilabial component, and then release the lips. While 90% of the occlusion overlaps, the onset of the velar occurs slightly before that of the labial, and the release of the labial occurs slightly after that of the velar so the preceding vowel sounds as if it were followed by a velar, and the following vowel sounds as if it were preceded by a labial. The order of the letters in and is therefore not arbitrary but motivated by the phonetic details of the sounds.
Phonemic labial–velars occur in the majority of languages in
West
West or Occident is one of the four cardinal directions or points of the compass. It is the opposite direction from east and is the direction in which the Sun sets on the Earth.
Etymology
The word "west" is a Germanic word passed into some ...
and
Central Africa
Central Africa is a subregion of the African continent comprising various countries according to different definitions. Angola, Burundi, the Central African Republic, Chad, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Republic of the Co ...
(for example in the name of
, former president of
Ivory Coast
Ivory Coast, also known as Côte d'Ivoire, officially the Republic of Côte d'Ivoire, is a country on the southern coast of West Africa. Its capital is Yamoussoukro, in the centre of the country, while its largest city and economic centre i ...
; they are found in many
Niger–Congo languages
Niger–Congo is a hypothetical language family spoken over the majority of sub-Saharan Africa. It unites the Mande languages, the Atlantic-Congo languages (which share a characteristic noun class system), and possibly several smaller groups of ...
as well as in the
Ubangian
The Ubangian languages form a diverse linkage of some seventy languages centered on the Central African Republic. They are the predominant languages of the CAR, spoken by 2–3 million people, and include the national language, Sango. They ar ...
,
Chadic
The Chadic languages form a branch of the Afroasiatic language family. They are spoken in parts of the Sahel. They include 150 languages spoken across northern Nigeria, southern Niger, southern Chad, the Central African Republic, and northern Ca ...
and
Central Sudanic
Central Sudanic is a family of about sixty languages that have been included in the proposed Nilo-Saharan language family. Central Sudanic languages are spoken in the Central African Republic, Chad, South Sudan, Uganda, Congo (DRC), Nigeria an ...
families), and are relatively common in the eastern end of
New Guinea
New Guinea (; Hiri Motu: ''Niu Gini''; id, Papua, or , historically ) is the world's second-largest island with an area of . Located in Oceania in the southwestern Pacific Ocean, the island is separated from Australia by the wide Torres ...
. In Southeast Asia, they occur in the Adu dialect of
Nuosu (Yi), which aside from its isolated location, is unusual in having a relatively large inventory of labial-velar consonants, including the rare
aspirated version: .
Labial–velar stops also occur as
ejective and
implosive (often transcribed ). Floyd (1981) reports a
voiceless implosive
Implosive consonants are a group of stop consonants (and possibly also some affricates) with a mixed glottalic ingressive and pulmonic egressive airstream mechanism.''Phonetics for communication disorders.'' Martin J. Ball and Nicole Müller. Rou ...
from Igbo.
The
Yele language
The Yele language, or ''Yélî Dnye'', is the language of Rossel Island, the easternmost island in the Louisiade Archipelago off the eastern tip of Papua New Guinea. There were some 4,000 speakers in 1998, comprising the entire ethnic population. ...
of
Rossel Island,
Papua New Guinea
Papua New Guinea (abbreviated PNG; , ; tpi, Papua Niugini; ho, Papua Niu Gini), officially the Independent State of Papua New Guinea ( tpi, Independen Stet bilong Papua Niugini; ho, Independen Stet bilong Papua Niu Gini), is a country i ...
, has both labial–velars and
labial–alveolar consonants. Labial–velar stops and nasals also occur in
Vietnamese but only word-finally.
These sounds are clearly single consonants rather than
consonant cluster
In linguistics, a consonant cluster, consonant sequence or consonant compound, is a group of consonants which have no intervening vowel. In English, for example, the groups and are consonant clusters in the word ''splits''. In the education fie ...
s. For example,
Eggon contrasts , , and . The following possibilities are possible if tone is ignored:
Allophonic
In phonology, an allophone (; from the Greek , , 'other' and , , 'voice, sound') is a set of multiple possible spoken soundsor ''phones''or signs used to pronounce a single phoneme in a particular language. For example, in English, (as in ' ...
labial-velars are known from
Vietnamese, where they are variants of the plain velar consonants and .
Labialized labial-velars
Some languages, especially in
Papua New Guinea
Papua New Guinea (abbreviated PNG; , ; tpi, Papua Niugini; ho, Papua Niu Gini), officially the Independent State of Papua New Guinea ( tpi, Independen Stet bilong Papua Niugini; ho, Independen Stet bilong Papua Niu Gini), is a country i ...
and in
Vanuatu
Vanuatu ( or ; ), officially the Republic of Vanuatu (french: link=no, République de Vanuatu; bi, Ripablik blong Vanuatu), is an island country located in the South Pacific Ocean. The archipelago, which is of volcanic origin, is east of ...
, combine the labial–velar consonants with a
labial–velar approximant release: , . The extinct language
Volow
Volow (formerly known as ''Valuwa'' or ''Valuga'') is an Oceanic language variety which used to be spoken in the area of Aplow, in the eastern part of the island of Motalava, in Vanuatu.
Name
The name ''Volow'' is originally a placename: it ...
had a prenasalised labial-velar stop with
labialization
Labialization is a secondary articulatory feature of sounds in some languages. Labialized sounds involve the lips while the remainder of the oral cavity produces another sound. The term is normally restricted to consonants. When vowels involv ...
.
[See p.116 of: .]
Velar labial clicks
Bilabial clicks are stops that involve closure at both the lips and the soft palate. Treatments often analyze the dorsal articulation as part of the
airstream mechanism, and so consider such stops to be labial. However, there may be a distinction between the velar labial clicks and the uvular labial clicks , which is not captured if they are described as simply labial.
See also
*
Place of articulation
In articulatory phonetics, the place of articulation (also point of articulation) of a consonant is a location along the vocal tract where its production occurs. It is a point where a constriction is made between an active and a passive articula ...
*
List of phonetics topics
A
* Acoustic phonetics
* Active articulator
* Affricate
* Airstream mechanism
* Alexander John Ellis
* Alexander Melville Bell
* Alfred C. Gimson
* Allophone
* Alveolar approximant ()
* Alveolar click ()
* Alveolar consonant
* Alveolar ej ...
Notes
References
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Labial-Velar Consonant
Place of articulation
Labial–velar consonants