Labial-velar consonant

Labial-velar consonants are doubly articulated at the velum and the lips. They are sometimes called "labiovelar consonants", a term which can also refer to labialized velars, such as the approximant IPA| [w] .

Truly doubly articulated labial-velars occur as plosives and nasal stops in the majority of languages in West and Central Africa, and are relatively common in the eastern end of New Guinea. They include IPA| [k͡p, g͡b, ŋ͡m] . The Yélî Dnye language of Rossel Island, Papua New Guinea, has both labial-velars and labial-alveolar consonants. Labial velar unvoiced plosives and nasals also occur in Vietnamese, albeit only at the end of words.

To pronounce these, try saying IPA| [k, ɡ, ŋ] , but close your lips as you would for IPA| [p, b, m] . Then release just as you would do to produce these sounds. Note that while 90% of the occlusion overlaps, the onset of the velar occurs slightly before that of the labial, and the release of the labial occurs slightly after that of the velar, so that the preceding vowel sounds like it's followed by a velar, while the following vowel sounds like it's following a labial. Thus the order of the symbols in IPA|k͡p and IPA|ɡ͡b is motivated by the phonetic details of these sounds.

These sounds are clearly single consonants rather than consonant clusters. The Eggon language, for example, contrasts these possibilities, with /bɡ/ and /ɡb/ both distinct from IPA|/ɡ͡b/. Ignoring tone, we have:

For transcribing these sounds, occasionally ligatures will be seen instead of digraphs with a tie bar:

Note that although such symbols are readily understood, they are not sanctioned by the IPA, and have no Unicode values. They can, however, be specified as the way an OpenType font displays "gb" and "kp" digraphs.

Labial-velar plosives also occur as ejective IPA| [k͡p’] and implosive IPA| [ɠɓ] (the tie bar has been removed for legibility). There may be labial-velar approximants in languages like Japanese; see labiovelar consonant. Bilabial clicks are sometimes considered to be labial-velar consonants as well, though the validity of this classification is debated.

ee also

* Place of articulation
* List of phonetics topics

References

*SOWL