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Labialisation


- ''"Lip rounding" redirects here. See ''Roundedness'' for the lip rounding of vowels.
Labialisation is a Secondary articulation|secondary articulatory feature of sounds in some languages. Labialized sounds involve the lips while the remainder of the mouth|oral cavity produces another sound. The term is normally used to refer to consonants. When vowels involve the lips, they are usually called rounded vowel|rounded. The most common labialised consonants are labio-velar|labialized velars. Most other labialized sounds also have simultaneous velarization, and the process may then be more precisely called '''labio-velarization'''. Labialisation may also refer to a type of Assimilation (linguistics)|assimilation process.

Where found

Labialisation is the most widespread secondary articulation in the world's languages. It is phonemically contrastive in the Northwest Caucasian languages|Northwest Caucasian, Athabaskan languages|Athabaskan, and Salishan languages|Salishan language family|language families, among others. This contrast is reconstructed also for Proto-Indo-European language|Proto-Indo-European, the common ancestor of the Indo-European languages. American English has three degrees of (phonetic) labialization: Fully rounded and initial , open-rounded , and unrounded, in which vowels are sometimes called spread. These secondary articulations are not universal. For example, French language|French shares the English language|English open-rounding of while Russian language|Russian does not have rounding of its postalveolar fricatives ().

Types of labialisation

Out of 706 language inventories surveyed by , labialisation occurred most often with velar consonant|velar (42%) and uvular consonant|uvular (15%) segments and least often with dental consonant|dental and alveolar consonant|alveolar segments. With non-dorsal consonants, labialisation may include velarisation as well. Labialisation is not restricted to lip-rounding. The following articulations have either been described as labialisation, or been found as allophone|allophonic realisations of prototypical labialisation:
- Labial rounding, with or without protrusion of the lips (found in Navajo language|Navajo)
- Labiodental frication, found in Abkhaz language|Abkhaz
- Bilabial frication, found in Ubykh language|Ubykh
- Bilabial trill, found in Ubykh
- Bilabial plosion, found in Ubykh
- "Labialisation" without lip rounding, found in the Iroquoian languages|Iroquois
- Rounding without velarization, found in Shona language|Shona and in the Bzyb dialect of Abkhaz language|Abkhaz Eastern Arrernte language|Arrernte is a language with labialisation at all place of articulation|places and manner of articulation|manners of articulation. The labialisation derives historically from adjacent rounded vowels, as is also the case of the Northwest Caucasian languages.

Transcription

In the International Phonetic Alphabet, labialisation of velar consonants is indicated with a raised w modifier (Unicode 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 languages|Athabaskan language Hupa language|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 . It also has a symbol for labiodental approximant|labialdentalized 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, . 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.http://www.cefala.org/issp2006/cdrom/articles/shosted.pdf The open rounding of English is also unvelarized.

Labial assimilation

Labialisation also refers to a specific type of assimilatory process where a given sound become labialised 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 Eastern Arrernte, for example. The labial vowel sounds usually still remain, but only as allophones next to the now-labial consonant sounds.

References

Bibliography


- Crowley, Terry. (1997) ''An Introduction to Historical Linguistics.'' 3rd edition. Oxford University Press.
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- Category:Labial consonants Category:Assimilation

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