Linguolabial consonant

Linguolabials or apicolabials are consonants articulated by placing the tongue tip or blade against the upper lip, which is drawn downward to meet the tongue. They represent one extreme of a coronal articulatory continuum which extends from linguolabial to subapical palatal places of articulation. Cross-linguistically, linguolabial consonants are very rare. They are found in a cluster of languages in Vanuatu, in the Kajoko dialect of Bijago in Guinea-Bissau, in Umotína (a recently extinct Bororoan language of Brazil), and as paralinguistic sounds elsewhere. They are also relatively common in disordered speech, and the diacritic is specifically provided for in the extensions to the IPA.

Linguolabial consonants are transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet by adding the "seagull"Template:Sfnp diacritic, Template:Unichar, to the corresponding alveolar consonant, or with the apical diacritic, Template:Unichar, on the corresponding bilabial consonant.

Description

File:Linguolabial stop.png

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).Template:SfnpTemplate:Sfnp Acoustically they are more similar to alveolars than bilabials. Linguolabials can be distinguished from bilabials and alveolars acoustically by formant transitions and nasal resonances.Template:Sfnp

List of consonants

IPA (two transcriptions)		Description	Example
			Language	Orthography	IPA	Meaning
		linguolabial nasal	Araki			"laugh"
		voiceless linguolabial plosive	Tangoa			"butterfly"
		voiced linguolabial plosive	Kajoko dialect of Bijago			"stone"Template:Sfnp
		prenasalized voiced linguolabial plosive	Vao			"bow"
		voiceless linguolabial fricative	Big Nambas			"he is asthmatic"
		voiced linguolabial fricative	Tangoa			"stone"
		voiced linguolabial flap	Kajoko dialect of Bijago			"stone"Template:Sfnp
	—	linguolabial lateral approximant	(common in disordered speech)
	—	voiceless linguolabial lateral fricative	(in disordered speech)
	—	voiced linguolabial lateral fricative	(in disordered speech)
	—	linguolabial lateral flap (uses lower lip)	Piraha (part of allophone for /ɡ/, [ɺ͡ɺ̼])			"hoe"
		linguolabial trill (uses lower lip)	Coatlán Zapotec	(paralinguistic)		used as mimesis for a child's flatulence. (similar to blowing a raspberry, but involving only upper lip)
or		linguolabial click release (multiple consonants)	Coatlán Zapotec	(paralinguistic)		used as mimesis for eating soup or a pig drinking water

Linguolabials as a diachronic stage in sound shifts

In Vanuatu, some of the Santo–Malekula languages have shifted historically from bilabial to alveolar consonants via an intermediate linguolabial stage, which remains in other Santo and Malekula languages.

While labials have become linguolabial before nonrounded vowels in various languages (e.g. Tangoa, Araki, Nese), the sound shift went further in languages such as Tolomako, which shifted the linguolabials to full alveolar consonants: *b > *[p] > p̈ > t [t]; *m > m̈ > n [n]. Thus, POc *bebe Template:Gloss > (spelled in Tangoa or in Araki) later became in Tolomako. Likewise, POc *tama Template:Gloss > (cf. Tangoa , Araki ) > Tolomako .

See also

• Place of articulation
• List of phonetics topics

References

• Template:SOWL