Labialization

"Lip rounding" redirects here. For the lip rounding of vowels, see Roundedness.

This article is about labial rounding. For internal rounding, see sulcalization.

Labialized
◌ᵝ

Labial(-velar)ized with protrusion
◌ʷ

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. Most other labialized sounds also have simultaneous velarization, and the process may then be more precisely called labio-velarization. The "labialization" of bilabial consonants often refers to protrusion instead of a secondary articulatory feature velarization. [pʷ] doesn't mean [pˠ] although [w] refers to a labial–velar approximant. In phonology, labialization may also refer to a type of assimilation process.

Occurrence

Labialization is the most widespread secondary articulation in the world's languages. It is phonemically contrastive in Northwest Caucasian (e.g. Adyghe), Athabaskan, and Salishan language families, among others. This contrast is reconstructed also for Proto-Indo-European, the common ancestor of the Indo-European languages; and it survives in Latin and some Romance languages. It is also found in the Cushitic and Ethio-Semitic languages. American English labializes /r, ʃ, ʒ, tʃ, dʒ/ to various degrees. A few languages, including Arrernte and Mba, have contrastive labialized forms for almost all of their consonants. In many Salishan languages, such as Klallam, velar consonants only occur in their labialized forms (except /k/, which occurs in some loanwords). However, uvular consonants occur abundantly labialized and unrounded.

Types

Open-labialized
◌ꟹ

Out of 706 language inventories surveyed by Ruhlen (1976), labialization occurred most often with velar (42%) and uvular (15%) segments and least often with dental and alveolar segments. With non-dorsal consonants, labialization may include velarization as well. Labialization is not restricted to lip-rounding. The following articulations have either been described as labialization or been found as allophonic realizations of prototypical labialization:

• Labiodental frication, found in Abkhaz
• Complete bilabial closure, [d͡b, t͡p, t͡pʼ], found in Abkhaz and Ubykh
• "Labialization" (/w/, /ɡʷ/, and /kʷ/) without noticeable rounding (protrusion) of the lips, found in the Iroquoian languages. It may be that they are compressed.
• Rounding without velarization, found in Shona and in the Bzyb dialect of Abkhaz.

Eastern Arrernte has labialization at all places and manners of articulation; this derives historically from adjacent rounded vowels, as is also the case of the Northwest Caucasian languages. Marshallese also has phonemic labialization as a secondary articulation at all places of articulation except for labial consonants and coronal obstruents. In North America, languages from a number of families have sounds that sound labialized (and vowels that sound rounded) without the participation of the lips. See Tillamook language for an example.

Prelabialization

In Slovene, sounds can be prelabialized. Furthermore, the change is phonemic and all phonemes have prelabialized pairs (though not all of their allophones can have pairs). Compare stati 'stand' [ˈs̪t̪àːt̪í] and vstati 'stand up' [ˈʷs̪t̪àːt̪í]. The prelabialization part, however, is usually not considered as being part of the same phoneme as prelabialized sound, but rather as an allophone of /ʋ/ as it changes depending on the environment, e. g. vzeti 'take' [ˈʷz̪èːt̪í] and povzeti 'summarize' [pou̯ˈz̪èːt̪í]. See Slovene phonology for more details.

Transcription

In the International Phonetic Alphabet, labialization of velar consonants is indicated with a raised w modifier [ʷ] (Unicode U+02B7), as in /kʷ/. (Elsewhere this diacritic generally indicates simultaneous labialization and velarization.) There are also diacritics, respectively [ɔ̹], [ɔ̜], to indicate greater or lesser degrees of rounding. These are normally used with vowels but may occur with consonants. For example, in the Athabaskan language Hupa, voiceless velar fricatives distinguish three degrees of labialization, transcribed either /x/, /x̹/, /xʷ/ or /x/, /x̜ʷ/, /xʷ/. The extensions to the IPA has two additional symbols for degrees of rounding: Spread [ɹ͍] and open-rounded [ʒꟹ] (as in English). It also has a symbol for labiodentalized sounds, [tᶹ]. If precision is desired, the Abkhaz and Ubykh articulations may be transcribed with the appropriate fricative or trill raised as a diacritic: [tᵛ], [tᵝ], [t^ʙ], [tᵖ]. For simple labialization, Ladefoged & Maddieson (1996) resurrected an old IPA symbol, [ ̫], which would be placed above a letter with a descender such as ɡ. However, their chief example is Shona sv and zv, which they transcribe /s̫/ and /z̫/ but which actually seem to be whistled sibilants, without necessarily being labialized. Another possibility is to use the IPA diacritic for rounding, distinguishing for example the labialization in English soon [s̹] and [sʷ] swoon. The open rounding of English /ʃ/ is also unvelarized.

Assimilation

Labialization also refers to a specific type of assimilatory process where a given sound become labialized due to the influence of neighboring labial sounds. For example, /k/ may become /kʷ/ in the environment of /o/, or /a/ may become /o/ in the environment of /p/ or /kʷ/. 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.

List of labialized consonants

type		Phone	IPA	Languages
Stops	plain	protruded voiceless bilabial stop		Chaha, Paha
		protruded voiced bilabial stop		Chaha, Paha, Mayo, Yaqui
		labzd voiceless alveolar stop		Archi, Abkhaz, Lao, Paha, Ubykh
		labzd voiced alveolar stop		Archi, Abkhaz, Ubykh
		labzd voiceless velar stop		Abaza, Abkhaz, Adyghe, Halkomelem, Kabardian, Taos, Chipewyan, Hadza, Gwichʼin, Tlingit, Akan, Nez Perce, Archi, Cantonese, Wariʼ, Chaha, Dahalo, Hausa, Igala, Igbo, Lao, Latin, Nahuatl, Nawat, Okinawan, Ossetic, Paha, Portuguese, Thai, Tigrinya, Hiw, Ubykh, Bearlake Slavey, Breton, Gothic
		labzd voiced velar stop		Abaza, Abkhaz, Adyghe, Akan, Archi, Chaha, Dahalo, Hausa, Okinawan, Oowekyala, Ossetic, Hadza, Igala, Igbo, Gwichʼin, Kabardian, Paha, Portuguese, Tigrinya, Ubykh, Breton, Yoruba, Gothic
		labzd voiceless uvular stop		Abaza, Abkhaz, Adyghe, Kabardian, Ossetic, Paha, Tlingit, Nez Perce, Ubykh
		labzd pharyngealized voiceless uvular stop	[qˤʷ]	Archi, Ubykh
		labzd voiced uvular stop		Oowekyala, Kwak'wala, Tsakhur
		labzd glottal stop		Adyghe, Kabardian, Lao, Tlingit
		labzd prenasalized voiced bilabial plosive	[ᵐbʷ]	Tamambo
	Labial–velar	protruded voiceless labio–velar stop	[k͡pʷ]	Dorig, Mwotlap
		protruded prenasalized voiced labial–velar stop	[ᵑɡ͡bʷ]	Volow
Affricates	sibilant	labzd voiceless alveolar affricate		Adyghe, Archi, Lezgian, Tsakhur
		labzd voiced alveolar affricate		Adyghe, Dahalo
		labzd voiceless palato-alveolar affricate		Archi, Abaza, Adyghe, Paha, Aghul, German
		labzd voiced palato-alveolar affricate		Abaza, Aghul, Tsakhur, German
		labzd voiceless alveolo-palatal affricate	[t͡ɕʷ]	Abkhaz, Akan, Ubykh
		labzd voiced alveolo-palatal affricate	[d͡ʑʷ]	Abkhaz, Akan, Ubykh
	non-sibilant	labzd voiceless velar affricate		Navajo
		labzd voiceless uvular affricate		Kabardian, Lillooet
	lateral	labzd voiceless velar lateral affricate		Archi
Fricatives	sibilant	labzd voiceless alveolar sibilant		Archi, Lao, Lezgian
		labzd voiced alveolar sibilant		Archi, Tsakhur, Lezgian
		labzd voiceless palato-alveolar sibilant		Archi, Abaza, Abkhaz, Adyghe, Paha, Aghul, Ubykh
		labzd voiced palato-alveolar sibilant		Archi, Abaza, Abkhaz, Adyghe, Aghul, Ubykh
		labzd voiceless retroflex sibilant		Bzhedug
		labzd voiced retroflex sibilant		Bzhedug
		labzd voiceless alveolo-palatal sibilant		Abkhaz, Ubykh
		labzd voiced alveolo-palatal sibilant		Abkhaz, Ubykh
	non-sibilant	protruded voiceless bilabial fricative	[ɸʷ]	Okinawan
		protruded voiced bilabial fricative	[βʷ]	Tamambo
		labzd voiceless labiodental fricative		Hadza, Chaha
		labzd voiced labiodental fricative
		labzd voiceless dental fricative		Paha
		labzd voiced dental fricative		Paha
		labzd voiceless palatal fricative		Akan
		labzd voiceless velar fricative		Abaza, Adyghe, Avestan, Chaha, Halkomelem, Kabardian, Oowekyala, Taos, Navajo, Tigrinya, Lillooet, Tlingit
		labzd voiced velar fricative		Abaza, Navajo, Lillooet, Gwichʼin, possibly Proto-Indo-European
		labzd voiceless uvular fricative		Abkhaz, Adyghe, Archi, Halkomelem, Kabardian, Lillooet, Tlingit, Wariʼ, Chipewyan, Oowekyala, Ossetic, Ubykh
		labzd pharyngealized voiceless uvular fricative	[χˤʷ]	Abkhaz, Archi, Ubykh
		labzd voiced uvular fricative		Abkhaz, Adyghe, Chipewyan, Kabardian, Ubykh
		labzd pharyngealized voiced uvular fricative	[ʁˤʷ]	Archi, Ubykh
		labzd voiceless pharyngeal fricative		Abaza, Abkhaz
		labzd voiced pharyngeal fricative		Abaza, Lillooet
	Pseudo-fricatives	labzd voiceless glottal fricative		Akan, Tlingit, Tsakhur
	Lateral fricatives	labzd voiceless alveolar lateral fricative		Dahalo
		labzd voiceless velar lateral fricative		Archi
Nasals		protruded bilabial nasal		Adyghe, Chaha, Paha, Tamambo
		labzd palatal nasal	[ɲʷ]	Akan
		labzd velar nasal	[ŋʷ]	Akan, Avestan, Lao, Hiw, Igala
		protruded labial-velar nasal	[ŋ͡mʷ]	Dorig, Mwotlap
Approximants		labzd alveolar lateral approximant		Lao
		labzd labiodental approximant	[ʋʷ]	Russian
		labialized palatal approximant	[ɥ]	Abkhaz, Akan, French, Mandarin, Paha
		Labio-velar approximant (voiced)	[ɰᵝ]	in Japanese
		Protruded labio-velar approximant (voiced)	[ɰʷ]	widespread; in every above-mentioned language, as well as e.g. Arabic, English, Korean, Vietnamese
		Voiceless labio-velar approximant	[ʍ]	certain dialects of English, Gothic
		nasal labialized velar approximant	[w̃]	Polish, Portuguese
		labzd postalveolar approximant	[ɹ̠ʷ]	many dialects of English
Ejectives		protruded bilabial ejective		Adyghe
		labzd alveolar ejective		Abkhaz, Adyghe, Ubykh
		labzd velar ejective		Abaza, Abkhaz, Adyghe, Archi, Bearlake Slavey, Chipewyan, Halkomelem, Kabardian, Ossetic, Tlingit, Ubykh
		labzd palato-alveolar ejective fricative		Adyghe
		labzd uvular ejective		Abaza, Abkhaz, Archi, Halkomelem, Hakuchi, Tlingit, Ubykh
		labzd pharyngealized uvular ejective	[qˤʷʼ]	Archi, Ubykh
		labzd alveolar ejective affricate	[t͡sʷʼ]	Archi, Khwarshi
		labzd alveolar lateral ejective affricate	[t͡ɬʷʼ]	Khwarshi
		labzd palato-alveolar ejective affricate	[t͡ʃʷʼ]	Abaza, Archi, Khwarshi
		labzd alveolo-palatal ejective affricate	[t͡ɕʷʼ]	Abkhaz, Ubykh
		labzd retroflex ejective affricate	[ʈ͡ʂʷʼ]	allophonic in Adyghe
		labzd velar lateral ejective affricate	[k͡ʟ̝̊ʷʼ]	Archi
		labzd velar ejective fricative	[xʷʼ]	Tlingit
		labzd uvular ejective fricative	[χʷʼ]	Tlingit

See also

• Labio-palatalization (◌ᶣ)

Bibliography

• Crowley, Terry (1997). An Introduction to Historical Linguistics (3rd ed.). Oxford University Press.
• Ladefoged, Peter; Maddieson, Ian (1996). The Sounds of the World's Languages. Oxford: Blackwell. ISBN 0-631-19815-6.
• Ruhlen, Merritt (1976). A Guide to the Languages of the World. Stanford University Press.
• Yanushevskaya, Irena; Bunčić, Daniel (2015). "Russian". Journal of the International Phonetic Association. 45 (2): 221–228. doi:10.1017/S0025100314000395.