Labialisation

:"Lip rounding" redirects here. See "Roundedness" for the lip rounding of vowels.

Labialisation 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 used to refer to consonants. When vowels involve the lips, they are usually called rounded.

Labialisation may also refer to a type of assimilation process.

Where found

Labialisation is the most widespread secondary articulation in the world's languages. It is phonemically contrastive in the Northwest Caucasian, Athabaskan, and Salishan language families, among others. This contrast is reconstructed also for Proto-Indo-European, the common ancestor of the Indo-European languages.

American English has three degrees of (phonetic) labialization: Fully rounded IPA|/w/ and initial IPA|/ɹ/, open-rounded IPA|/ʃ/, /ʒ/, /tʃ/, /dʒ/, and unrounded, in which vowels are sometimes called spread. These secondary articulations are not universal. For example, while French shares the English open-rounding of IPA|/ʃ/, /ʒ/ while Russian does not have rounding of its postalveolar fricatives (IPA|/ʂ ʐ ɕ ʑ/). [Harvcoltxt|Ladefoged|Maddieson|1996|p=148]

Types of labialisation

Out of 706 language inventories surveyed by Harvcoltxt|Ruhlen|1976, labialisation occurred most often with velar (42%) and uvular (15%) segments and least often with dental and 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 allophonic realisations of prototypical labialisation:

* Labial rounding, with or without protrusion of the lips (found in Navajo)Fact|date=February 2007
* Labiodental frication, found in AbkhazFact|date=February 2007
* Bilabial frication, found in UbykhFact|date=February 2007
* Bilabial trill, found in UbykhFact|date=February 2007
* Bilabial plosion, found in UbykhFact|date=February 2007
* "Labilialisation" without lip rounding, found in the Iroquois
* Rounding without velarization, found in Shona and in the Bzyb dialect of Abkhaz

Eastern Arrernte is a language with labialisation at all places and 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 IPA| [ʷ] (Unicode U+02B7), as in IPA|/kʷ/. (Elsewhere this diacritic generally indicates simultaneous labialization and velarization.Fact|date=June 2008) There are also diacritics, respectively IPA| [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 IPA|/x/, /x̹/, /xʷ/ or IPA|/x/, /x̜ʷ/, /xʷ/.

The Extensions to the IPA has two additional symbols for degrees of rounding: Spread IPA|/ɹ͍/ and open-rounded IPA|/ʒ^œ/. It also has a symbol for labialdentalized sounds, IPA|/t^ʋ/.

If precision is desired, the Abkhaz and Ubykh articulations may be transcribed with the appropriate fricative or trill raised as a diacritic: IPA| [t^v] , IPA| [t^β] , IPA| [t^ʙ] , IPA| [t^p] .

For simple labialization, Harvcoltxt|Ladefoged|Maddieson|1996 resurrected an old IPA symbol, IPA| [ ̫] . However, their chief example is Shona "sv" and "zv," which they transcribe IPA|/s̫/ and IPA|/z̫/ 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 IPA|/ʃ/ 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, IPA|/k/ may become IPA|/kʷ/ in the environment of IPA|/o/, or IPA|/a/ may become IPA|/o/ in the environment of IPA|/p/ or IPA|/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.

References

Bibliography

*Crowley, Terry. (1997) "An Introduction to Historical Linguistics." 3rd edition. Oxford University Press.
*
* citation
last=Ruhlen
first=M.
year=1976
title=A guide to the languages of the world
publisher=Standford