Labialization
Secondary articulatory feature of sounds in some languages
title: "Labialization" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["labialized-consonants", "assimilation-(linguistics)", "secondary-articulation"] description: "Secondary articulatory feature of sounds in some languages" topic_path: "linguistics" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labialization" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0
::summary Secondary articulatory feature of sounds in some languages ::
::data[format=table title="Infobox IPA"]
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| above | Labial(-velar)ized with protrusion (rounded lips) |
| ipa symbol | ◌ʷ |
| :: |
| above = Labial(-velar)ized with protrusion (rounded lips) | ipa symbol = ◌ʷ | above = Labialized with compression (flat lips) | ipa symbol = ◌ᵝ
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, though generally transcribed with as if it were labiovelar, is often a protrusion of the lips without velarization of the tongue.
Labialization has been attested with pulmonic, implosive, ejective and click consonants.
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 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
| above = Open-labialized | ipa symbol = ◌ꟹ | ipa number = | decimal1 = | above = Labiodentalized | ipa symbol = ◌ᶹ | ipa number = | decimal1 = | above = Labio-palatalized | ipa symbol = ◌ᶣ | ipa number = | decimal1 =
Out of 706 language inventories surveyed by , 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
- Labiodentalization is a common idiosyncrasy of English and , and especially of .
- Complete bilabial closure, , found in Abkhaz and Ubykh
- "Labialization" (, , and ) 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.
Similarly to the distinction between the labio-palatal and labio-velar semivowels, some languages exhibit labio-palatalization , rather than labio-velarization .
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 'stand' and 'stand up' . The prelabialization part, however, is usually not considered as being part of the same phoneme as prelabialized sound, but rather as an allophone of as it changes depending on the environment, e. g. 'take' and 'summarize' . See Slovene phonology for more details.
Transcription
In the International Phonetic Alphabet, labialization of velar consonants is indicated with a raised w modifier (Unicode U+02B7), as in . (Elsewhere this diacritic generally indicates simultaneous labialization and velarization.) There are also diacritics, respectively , 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 or .
The VoQS system has two additional symbols for degrees of rounding, originally introduced as part of the extensions to the IPA: Spread and open-rounded (as in English). It also has a symbol for labiodentalized sounds, .
If precision is desired, the Abkhaz and Ubykh articulations may be transcribed with the appropriate fricative or trill raised as a diacritic: , , , .
For simple labialization, resurrected an old IPA symbol, , which would be placed above a letter with a descender such as . However, their chief example is Shona sv and zv, which they transcribe and 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 and swoon. The open rounding of English 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, may become in the environment of , or may become in the environment of or .
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
::data[format=table title=""]
Note that labialized palatal clicks are not attested in Yeyi and are not reconstructed for Proto-Kxʼa. Xhosa also has prenasalized tenuis/ejective and aspirated clicks, which also occur labialized (nkqw, nkxw, nchw, nqhw, nxhw).
References
Bibliography
-
{{cite book |last=Ruhlen |first=Merritt |author-link=Merritt Ruhlen |year=1976 |title=A Guide to the Languages of the World |publisher=Stanford University Press
-
{{cite journal |last1=Yanushevskaya |first1=Irena |last2=Bunčić |first2=Daniel |year=2015 |title=Russian |journal=Journal of the International Phonetic Association |volume=45 |issue=2 |pages=221–228 |doi=10.1017/S0025100314000395 |doi-access=free
References
- (1977). "Annual Review of Anthropology". Annual Reviews Incorporated.
- John Laver [1994: 321] ''Principles of Phonetics''
- Jurgec, Peter. (2007). "Novejše besedje s stališča fonologije Primer slovenščine".
- As a mnemonic, the more-rounded diacritics resemble the rounded vowel {{angbr IPA. ɔ.
- International Phonetic Association. (1999). "Handbook of the International Phonetic Association: A Guide to the Use of the International Phonetic Alphabet". Cambridge University Press.
- This is not a subscript ''w'' but originally a subscript omega that "recalls the letter ''w''" (Jespersen & Pedersen, 1926, ''Phonetic Transcription and Transliteration: Proposals of the Copenhagen Conference, April 1925.'' Oxford University Press).
- See [http://www.cefala.org/issp2006/cdrom/articles/shosted.pdf]. {{webarchive. link. (May 16, 2008)
- John Esling (2010) "Phonetic Notation", in Hardcastle, Laver & Gibbon (eds) ''The Handbook of Phonetic Sciences'', 2nd ed.
- "PBase".
- {{Harvcoltxt. Yanushevskaya. Bunčić. 2015
- Inventory in Lukusa (2002) ''Groundwork in Shiyeyi Grammar'', p. XXI ''ff''
- Inventory in Donnelly (2002) ''Yeeyi''
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