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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 involve the lips, they are called rounded. The most common labialized consonants are labialized velars.
While most languages make use of purely labial phonemes, a few generally lack them. Examples are Tlingit, Eyak (both Na-Dené), Wichita , and the Iroquoian languages except Cherokee. Many of these languages are transcribed with /w/ and with labialized consonants. However, it is not always clear to what extent the lips are involved in such sounds.
In Akan, for example, the is compressed, as are labio-palatalized consonants as in Twi [tɕᶣi̘] "Twi" and adwuma [adʑᶣu̘ma] "work", whereas [w] and simply labialized consonants are protruded. [10] In Japanese, the /w/ is compressed rather than protruded, paralleling the Japanese /u/. The distinction applies marginally to other consonants.
However, a labialized palatal approximant and labio-palatalized consonants appear in some languages without front rounded vowels in the Caucasus and in West Africa, [2] such as Abkhaz, and as allophones of labialized consonants before /i/, including the [tsᶣ] at the beginning of the language name Twi.
A labialized velar or labiovelar is a velar consonant that is labialized, with a /w/-like secondary articulation.Examples are [kʷ, ɡʷ, xʷ, ɣʷ, ŋʷ], which are pronounced like a [k, ɡ, x, ɣ, ŋ], with rounded lips, such as the labialized voiceless velar plosive [kʷ] and labialized voiced velar plosive [ɡʷ], obstruents being common among the sounds that undergo labialization.
Tamil phonology is characterised by the presence of "true-subapical" retroflex consonants and multiple rhotic consonants.Its script does not distinguish between voiced and unvoiced consonants; phonetically, voice is assigned depending on a consonant's position in a word, voiced intervocalically and after nasals except when geminated. [1]
Sagittal section of linguolabial stop. Linguolabials are produced by constricting the airflow between the tongue and the upper lip. They are attested in a number of manners of articulation 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).
Some languages, though, have a palatal approximant that is unspecified for rounding, and therefore cannot be considered the semivocalic equivalent of either [y] or its unrounded counterpart . An example of such a language is Spanish, in which the labialized palatal approximant (not a semivowel) appears allophonically with rounded vowels in ...