phonetics Phonetics is a branch of linguistics that studies how humans produce and perceive sounds or, in the case of sign languages, the equivalent aspects of sign. Linguists who specialize in studying the physical properties of speech are phoneticians ...

, labiodentals 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 ...

articulated An articulated vehicle is a vehicle which has a permanent or semi-permanent coupling in its construction. This coupling works as a large pivot joint, allowing it to bend and turn more sharply. There are many kinds, from heavy equipment to buse ...

with the lower

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 ...

and the upper

teeth A tooth (: teeth) is a hard, calcified structure found in the jaws (or mouths) of many vertebrates and used to break down food. Some animals, particularly carnivores and omnivores, also use teeth to help with capturing or wounding prey, tear ...

, such as and . In English, labiodentalized /s/, /z/ and /r/ are characteristic of some individuals; these may be written .

Labiodental consonants in the IPA

The labiodental consonants identified by 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 ...

are: The IPA chart shades out ''labiodental lateral consonants''. This is sometimes read as indicating that such sounds are not possible. In fact, the fricatives and often have lateral airflow, but no language makes a distinction for centrality, and the allophony is not noticeable. The IPA symbol refers to a sound occurring in Swedish, officially described as similar to the

velar Velar may refer to: * Velar consonant Velar consonants are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue (the dorsum) against the soft palate, the back part of the roof of the mouth (also known as the "velum"). Since the velar region ...

fricative but one dialectal variant is a rounded, velarized labiodental, less ambiguously rendered as . The labiodental click is an allophonic variant of the (bi)labial click.

Occurrence

The only common labiodental sounds to occur phonemically are the fricatives and the approximant. The labiodental flap occurs phonemically in over a dozen languages, but it is restricted geographically to central and southeastern Africa. With most other

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 ...

, the norm are

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 ...

s (which together with labiodentals, form the class of

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). is quite common, but in all or nearly all languages in which it occurs, it occurs only as an

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 ...

of before labiodental consonants such as and . It has been reported to occur phonemically in a dialect of Teke, but similar claims in the past have proven spurious. The XiNkuna dialect of

Tsonga Tsonga may refer to: * Tsonga language, a Bantu language spoken in southern Africa * Tsonga people, a large group of people living mainly in southern Mozambique and South Africa. * Jo-Wilfried Tsonga Jo-Wilfried Tsonga (; born 17 April 1985) ...

features a pair of affricates as phonemes. In some other languages, such as

Xhosa Xhosa may refer to: * Xhosa people, a nation, and ethnic group, who live in south-central and southeasterly region of South Africa * Xhosa language, one of the 11 official languages of South Africa, principally spoken by the Xhosa people See als ...

, affricates may occur as allophones of the fricatives. These differ from the

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany, the country of the Germans and German things **Germania (Roman era) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizenship in Germany, see also Ge ...

voiceless labiodental affricate The voiceless labiodental affricate ( in IPA) is a rare affricate consonant that is initiated as a labiodental stop and released as a voiceless labiodental fricative . The XiNkuna dialect of Tsonga has this affricate, as in "hippopotamuses" ...

, which commences with a bilabial p. All these affricates are rare sounds. The stops are not confirmed to exist as separate

phoneme A phoneme () is any set of similar Phone (phonetics), speech sounds that are perceptually regarded by the speakers of a language as a single basic sound—a smallest possible Phonetics, phonetic unit—that helps distinguish one word fr ...

s in any language. They are sometimes written as ''ȹ ȸ'' ''(qp'' and ''db''

ligature Ligature may refer to: Language * Ligature (writing), a combination of two or more letters into a single symbol (typography and calligraphy) * Ligature (grammar), a morpheme that links two words Medicine * Ligature (medicine), a piece of suture us ...

s). They may also be found in children's speech or as speech impediments.

consonants

Dentolabial consonants are the articulatory opposite of labiodentals: They are pronounced by contacting lower teeth against the

upper 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 ...

. The diacritic for dentolabial in the extensions of the IPA for disordered speech is a superscript bridge, , by analogy with the subscript bridge used for labiodentals: thus . Complex consonants such as affricates, prenasalized stops and the like are also possible. These are rare cross-linguistically, likely due to the prevalence of dental malocclusions (especially

retrognathism Retrognathia is a type of malocclusion which refers to an abnormal posterior positioning of the maxilla or mandible, particularly the mandible, relative to the facial skeleton and soft tissues. A retrognathic mandible is commonly referred to as ...

) that make them difficult to produce, though the voiceless dentolabial fricative is used in some of the southwestern dialects of Greenlandic.

Origins

The commonality of labiodentals (especially f and v) has been argued to be linked to the Agricultural Revolution.

References

Sources

* * * *