A labial–coronal consonant is a

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 ...

produced with two simultaneous articulators: with the lips ('labial'; a , , or sound), and with the tongue (at the teeth or gums, a 'dental' or 'alveolar' , or sound, or further back, a 'post-alveolar' or 'retroflex' , or sound). Several languages have been claimed to have such sounds, such as Margi and Bura in Nigeria. However, most researchers interpret them as having sequences of labial and coronal consonants, a rather common occurrence in Africa. The

Yélî Dnye language The Yele language, or (), is the language of Rossel Island, the easternmost island in the Louisiade Archipelago off the eastern tip of Papua New Guinea. There were an estimated 5,000 speakers in 2015, comprising the entire ethnic population. It ...

of Rossel Island,

Papua New Guinea Papua New Guinea, officially the Independent State of Papua New Guinea, is an island country in Oceania that comprises the eastern half of the island of New Guinea and offshore islands in Melanesia, a region of the southwestern Pacific Ocean n ...

, appears to be unique in having distinct laminal labial–alveolar (i.e. labial– denti-alveolar) and labial–retroflex (i.e. apical to sub-apical labial–postalveolar) places of articulation, as illustrated below.

Labial–coronal allophones

In some Ghanaian languages such as

Dagbani Dagbani (or Dagbane), also known as Dagbanli or Dagbanle, is a Gur language spoken in Ghana and Northern Togo. Its native speakers are estimated around 1,170,000. Dagbani is the most widely spoken language in northern Ghana, specifically among ...

, and Nzema, there are palatalized

allophone In phonology, an allophone (; from the Greek , , 'other' and , , 'voice, sound') is one of multiple possible spoken soundsor '' phones''used to pronounce a single phoneme in a particular language. For example, in English, the voiceless plos ...

s of labial–velars. These are sometimes mistakenly referred to as labial–alveolars, though they actually have a

post-alveolar Postalveolar (post-alveolar) consonants are consonants articulated with the tongue near or touching the ''back'' of the alveolar ridge. Articulation is farther back in the mouth than the alveolar consonants, which are at the ridge itself, but no ...

palatal The palate () is the roof of the mouth in humans and other mammals. It separates the oral cavity from the nasal cavity. A similar structure is found in crocodilians, but in most other tetrapods, the oral and nasal cavities are not truly sepa ...

articulation instead of a true alveolar one. Something similar is found with the

labialized 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 invol ...

alveolar stops in several

Northwest The points of the compass are a set of horizontal, radially arrayed compass directions (or azimuths) used in navigation and cartography. A '' compass rose'' is primarily composed of four cardinal directions—north, east, south, and west— ...

and

Northeast Caucasian languages The Northeast Caucasian languages, also called East Caucasian, Nakh-Daghestani or Vainakh-Daghestani, or sometimes Caspian languages (from the Caspian Sea, in contrast to ''Pontic languages'' for the Northwest Caucasian languages), is a langu ...

such as Abkhaz and Lak. Although the double stop articulation may be more common, they are generally considered to be essentially labialized alveolars because the labial contact is light, and moreover the contact is between the inner surfaces of the lips, which are protruded as they are for This is quite different from the normal contact for in these languages. The labial contact may also be realized as a trill. Compare the following minimal sets in Ubykh: Some speakers of

!Xóõ Taa ( ), also known as ǃXóõ ( ; ; also spelled ǃKhong and ǃXoon), formerly called by the dialect name ǂHoan, thus also known as Western ǂHoan, is a Tuu language notable for its large number of phonemes, perhaps the largest in the world. ...

have a labial–dental allophone, (or ), of the bilabial click in some cases (Traill 1985: 103–104). Discounting clicks otherwise as having a velar/lingual airstream mechanism rather than a double articulation, nearly all other

doubly articulated consonant Doubly articulated consonants are consonants with two simultaneous primary places of articulation of the same manner (both plosive, or both nasal, etc.). They are a subset of co-articulated consonants. They are to be distinguished from co-artic ...

s in the world are labial–velars. The labial-alveolars reported from some

Chadic languages The Chadic languages form a branch of the Afroasiatic language family. They are spoken in parts of the Sahel. They include 196 languages spoken across northern Nigeria, southern Niger, southern Chad, and northern Cameroon. By far the most widely ...

have upon investigation turned out to be , , and sequences, not single consonants. (See Margi language.)

References

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Labial-Alveolar Consonant Place of articulation