Linguolabials or apicolabials are

consonant In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract, except for the h sound, which is pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Examples are and pronou ...

s articulated by placing the tongue tip or blade against the upper lip, which is drawn downward to meet the tongue. They represent one extreme of a coronal articulatory continuum which extends from linguolabial to subapical palatal places of articulation. Cross-linguistically, linguolabial consonants are very rare. They are found in a cluster of languages in

Vanuatu Vanuatu ( or ; ), officially the Republic of Vanuatu (; ), is an island country in Melanesia located in the South Pacific Ocean. The archipelago, which is of volcanic origin, is east of northern Australia, northeast of New Caledonia, east o ...

, in the Kajoko dialect of Bijago in Guinea-Bissau, in Umotína (a recently extinct Bororoan language of

Brazil Brazil, officially the Federative Republic of Brazil, is the largest country in South America. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by area, fifth-largest country by area and the List of countries and dependencies by population ...

), and as paralinguistic sounds elsewhere. They are also relatively common in

disordered speech Speech disorders, impairments, or impediments, are a type of communication disorder in which normal speech is disrupted. This can mean fluency disorders like stuttering and cluttering. Someone who is unable to speak due to a speech disorder is co ...

, and the diacritic is specifically provided for in the

extensions to the IPA The Extensions to the International Phonetic Alphabet for Disordered Speech, commonly abbreviated extIPA , are a set of letters and diacritics devised by the International Clinical Phonetics and Linguistics Association to augment the Internati ...

. Linguolabial consonants are transcribed in the

International Phonetic Alphabet The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is an alphabetic system of phonetic notation based primarily on the Latin script. It was devised by the International Phonetic Association in the late 19th century as a standard written representation ...

by adding the "seagull" diacritic, , to the corresponding

alveolar consonant Alveolar consonants (; UK also ) are articulated with the tongue against or close to the superior alveolar ridge, which is called that because it contains the alveoli (the sockets) of the upper teeth. Alveolar consonants may be articulated wi ...

, or with the apical diacritic, , on the corresponding

bilabial consonant In phonetics, a bilabial consonant is a labial consonant articulated with both lips. Frequency Bilabial consonants are very common across languages. Only around 0.7% of the world's languages lack bilabial consonants altogether, including Tli ...

Description

Linguolabials are produced by constricting the airflow between the tongue and the upper lip. They are attested in a number of

manners of articulation In articulatory phonetics, the manner of articulation is the configuration and interaction of the articulators (speech organs such as the tongue, lips, and palate) when making a speech sound. One parameter of manner is ''stricture,'' that is, h ...

including stops, nasals, and fricatives, and can be produced with the tip of the tongue (apical), blade of the tongue (laminal), or the bottom of the tongue (sublaminal). Acoustically they are more similar to alveolars than bilabials. Linguolabials can be distinguished from bilabials and alveolars acoustically by formant transitions and nasal resonances.

List of consonants

Linguolabials as a diachronic stage in sound shifts

In Vanuatu, some of the Santo–Malekula languages have shifted historically from bilabial to

s via an intermediate linguolabial stage, which remains in other Santo and Malekula languages. While labials have become linguolabial before nonrounded vowels in various languages (e.g. Tangoa,

Araki Araki may refer to: People * Araki (surname) (荒木) * Hirohiko Araki (荒木飛呂彦), a Japanese manga artist, fashion designer and illustrator * Nobuyoshi Araki (荒木経惟), a Japanese photographer and contemporary artist also known by t ...

Nese Nese may refer to: * Nese, Italy, a village in northern Italy * Nese, Norway, a village in south-western Norway * Nese language, an Oceanic language or dialect spoken in Vanuatu * Tony Nese, American professional wrestler See also * Neşe, ...

), the sound shift went further in languages such as Tolomako, which shifted the linguolabials to full alveolar consonants: *b > * > ''p̈'' > ''t'' *m > ''m̈'' > ''n'' Thus, POc *bebe > (spelled in Tangoa or in Araki) later became in Tolomako. Likewise, POc *tama > (cf. Tangoa , Araki A. François, ''An online Araki-English-French dictionary''. Electronic publication
entry ''r̄am̈a''
/ref>) > Tolomako .

Notes

References

* * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Linguolabial Consonant Place of articulation Linguolabial consonants