Labial–velar consonants are
doubly articulated at the
velum and the
lip
The lips are a horizontal pair of soft appendages attached to the jaws and are the most visible part of the mouth of many animals, including humans. Mammal lips are soft, movable and serve to facilitate the ingestion of food (e.g. sucklin ...
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 (, ), lip ...
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 prod ...
.
Labial-velars are often written as
digraphs. In the
Kâte language, 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. There are 2 other isolated cases, allophonically in Vietnamese and in the Adu dialect of Nuosu (Yi).
Plain labial-velar stops
Truly doubly articulated labial-velars include the
stops , 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
* ...
, and the
implosive
Implosive consonants are a group of stop consonants (and possibly also some affricates) with a mixed glottalic ingressive and pulmonic egressive airstream mechanism. That is, the airstream is controlled by moving the glottis downward in additi ...
. 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 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 Romance langu ...
and
Central Africa
Central Africa (French language, French: ''Afrique centrale''; Spanish language, Spanish: ''África central''; Portuguese language, Portuguese: ''África Central'') is a subregion of the African continent comprising various countries accordin ...
(for example in the name of
Laurent Gbagbo, former president of
Ivory Coast
Ivory Coast, also known as Côte d'Ivoire and officially the Republic of Côte d'Ivoire, is a country on the southern coast of West Africa. Its capital city of Yamoussoukro is located in the centre of the country, while its largest List of ci ...
; 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 ...
as well as in the
Ubangian,
Chadic 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, Sudan, South Sudan, Uganda, Congo (DRC), Nige ...
families), and are relatively common in the eastern end of
New Guinea
New Guinea (; Hiri Motu: ''Niu Gini''; , fossilized , also known as Papua or historically ) is the List of islands by area, world's second-largest island, with an area of . Located in Melanesia in the southwestern Pacific Ocean, the island is ...
. The rare implosive is only found in
Lese, a
Nilo-Saharan
The Nilo-Saharan languages are a proposed family of around 210 African languages spoken by somewhere around 70 million speakers, mainly in the upper parts of the Chari and Nile rivers, including historic Nubia, north of where the two tributari ...
language of the
Democratic Republic of the Congo
The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), also known as the DR Congo, Congo-Kinshasa, or simply the Congo (the last ambiguously also referring to the neighbouring Republic of the Congo), is a country in Central Africa. By land area, it is t ...
. 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 can also occur as an
ejective
In phonetics, ejective consonants are usually voiceless consonants that are pronounced with a glottalic egressive airstream. In the phonology of a particular language, ejectives may contrast with aspirated, voiced and tenuis consonants. Some l ...
(unattested) and a
voiceless implosive . Floyd (1981) and Clark (1990) report that voiced and voiceless implosives occur in Central Igbo. As stated above, the voiced implosive has been confirmed in Lese.
The
Yele language 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 ...
, 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 one of multiple possible spoken soundsor '' phones''used to pronounce a single phoneme in a particular language. For example, in English, the voiceless plosi ...
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, 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 ...
and 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 ...
, combine the labial–velar consonants with a
labial–velar approximant release: , . The extinct language
Volow 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 invol ...
.
[See p.116 of: .]Presentation of the Volow language
by linguist A. François.
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
In phonetics, the airstream mechanism is the method by which airflow is created in the vocal tract. Along with phonation and articulation, it is one of three main components of speech production. The airstream mechanism is mandatory for most sou ...
, 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 an approximate location along the vocal tract where its production occurs. It is a point where a constriction is made between an active and a pa ...
* 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 e ...
Notes
References
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Labial-Velar Consonant
Place of articulation
Labial–velar consonants