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

consonant In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract. Examples are and pronounced with the lips; and pronounced with the front of the tongue; and pronounced ...

s. When vowels involve the lips, they are called

rounded Round or rounds may refer to: Mathematics and science * The contour of a closed curve or surface with no sharp corners, such as an ellipse, circle, rounded rectangle, cant, or sphere * Rounding, the shortening of a number to reduce the num ...

. The most common labialized consonants are labialized velars. Most other labialized sounds also have simultaneous velarization, and the process may then be more precisely called labio-velarization. In

phonology Phonology is the branch of linguistics that studies how languages or dialects systematically organize their sounds or, for sign languages, their constituent parts of signs. The term can also refer specifically to the sound or sign system of a ...

, labialization may also refer to a type of

assimilation Assimilation may refer to: Culture *Cultural assimilation, the process whereby a minority group gradually adapts to the customs and attitudes of the prevailing culture and customs **Language shift, also known as language assimilation, the progre ...

process.

Occurrence

Labialization is the most widespread secondary articulation in the world's languages. It is phonemically contrastive in

Northwest Caucasian The Northwest Caucasian languages, also called West Caucasian, Abkhazo-Adyghean, Abkhazo-Circassian, Circassic, or sometimes ''Pontic languages'' (from the historical region of Pontus, in contrast to ''Caspian languages'' for the Northeast Cauc ...

(e.g. Adyghe), Athabaskan, and Salishan language families, among others. This contrast is reconstructed also for

Proto-Indo-European Proto-Indo-European (PIE) is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European language family. Its proposed features have been derived by linguistic reconstruction from documented Indo-European languages. No direct record of Proto-Indo- ...

, the common ancestor of the

Indo-European languages The Indo-European languages are a language family native to the overwhelming majority of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and the northern Indian subcontinent. Some European languages of this family, English, French, Portuguese, Russian, ...

; and it survives in

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power ...

and some

Romance languages The Romance languages, sometimes referred to as Latin languages or Neo-Latin languages, are the various modern languages that evolved from Vulgar Latin. They are the only extant subgroup of the Italic languages in the Indo-European language f ...

. It is also found in the Cushitic and Ethio-Semitic languages.

American English American English, sometimes called United States English or U.S. English, is the set of varieties of the English language native to the United States. English is the most widely spoken language in the United States and in most circumstances ...

labializes to various degrees. A few languages, including

Arrernte Arrernte (also spelt Aranda, etc.) is a descriptor related to a group of Aboriginal Australian peoples from Central Australia. It may refer to: * Arrernte (area), land controlled by the Arrernte Council (?) * Arrernte people, Aboriginal Austral ...

and Mba, have contrastive labialized forms for almost all of their consonants.

Types

Out of 706 language inventories surveyed by , labialization occurred most often with velar (42%) and uvular (15%) segments and least often with dental and alveolar segments. With non-dorsal consonants, labialization may include velarization as well. Labialization is not restricted to lip-rounding. The following articulations have either been described as labialization, or been found as allophonic realizations of prototypical labialization: * Labiodental frication, found in Abkhaz * Complete bilabial closure, , found in Abkhaz and Ubykh * "Labialization" (, , and ) without noticeable rounding (protrusion) of the lips, found in the

Iroquoian languages The Iroquoian languages are a language family of indigenous peoples of North America. They are known for their general lack of labial consonants. The Iroquoian languages are polysynthetic and head-marking. As of 2020, all surviving Iroquoian ...

. It may be that they are compressed. * Rounding without velarization, found in Shona and in the

Bzyb dialect Bzyb (also spelled Bzyp) is a major dialect of Abkhaz, native to the Bzyb River region of Caucasus. It differs from standard Abkhaz mainly in terms of phonology. It shares the and sounds with the Sadz dialect, and the , , , , , , and sounds ...

of Abkhaz.

Eastern Arrernte Arrernte or Aranda (; ) or sometimes referred to as Upper Arrernte (Upper Aranda), is a dialect cluster in the Arandic language group spoken in parts of the Northern Territory, Australia, by the Arrernte people. Other spelling variations are ...

has labialization at all places and manners of articulation; this derives historically from adjacent rounded vowels, as is also the case of the Northwest Caucasian languages. Marshallese also has phonemic labialization as a

secondary articulation In phonetics, secondary articulation occurs when the articulation of a consonant is equivalent to the combined articulations of two or three simpler consonants, at least one of which is an approximant. The secondary articulation of such co-artic ...

at all places of articulation except for

labial consonant Labial consonants are consonants in which one or both lips are the active articulator. The two common labial articulations are bilabials, articulated using both lips, and labiodentals, articulated with the lower lip against the upper teeth, b ...

s and coronal obstruents. In North America, languages from a number of families have sounds that sound labialized (and vowels that sound rounded) without participation of the lips. See Tillamook language for an example.

Transcription

In the International Phonetic Alphabet, labialization of velar consonants is indicated with a raised w modifier (

Unicode Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology standard for the consistent encoding, representation, and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems. The standard, ...

U+02B7), as in . (Elsewhere this diacritic generally indicates simultaneous labialization and velarization.) There are also diacritics, respectively , to indicate greater or lesser degrees of rounding. These are normally used with vowels, but may occur with consonants. For example, in the

Athabaskan language Athabaskan (also spelled ''Athabascan'', ''Athapaskan'' or ''Athapascan'', and also known as Dene) is a large family of indigenous languages of North America, located in western North America in three areal language groups: Northern, Pacific Co ...

Hupa, voiceless velar fricatives distinguish three degrees of labialization, transcribed either or . The extensions to the IPA has two additional symbols for degrees of rounding: Spread and open-rounded (as in English). It also has a symbol for labiodentalized sounds, . If precision is desired, the Abkhaz and Ubykh articulations may be transcribed with the appropriate fricative or trill raised as a diacritic: , , , . For simple labialization, resurrected an old IPA symbol, , which would be placed above a letter with a descender such as . However, their chief example is Shona ''sv'' and ''zv,'' which they transcribe and but which actually seem to be whistled sibilants, without necessarily being labialized. Another possibility is to use the IPA diacritic for rounding, distinguishing for example the labialization in English ''soon'' and ''swoon''.John Esling (2010) "Phonetic Notation", in Hardcastle, Laver & Gibbon (eds) ''The Handbook of Phonetic Sciences'', 2nd ed. The open rounding of English is also unvelarized.

Assimilation

Labialization also refers to a specific type of assimilatory process where a given sound become labialized due to the influence of neighboring labial sounds. For example, may become in the environment of , or may become in the environment of or . In the Northwest Caucasian languages as well as some Australian languages rounding has shifted from the vowels to the consonants, producing a wide range of labialized consonants and leaving in some cases only two phonemic vowels. This appears to have been the case in Ubykh and

, for example. The labial vowel sounds usually still remain, but only as allophones next to the now-labial consonant sounds.

Examples

References

Bibliography

*Crowley, Terry. (1997) ''An Introduction to Historical Linguistics.'' 3rd edition. Oxford University Press. * * * {{IPA navigation Assimilation (linguistics) Secondary articulation