labiodental consonant
{{Short description|Consonants articulated with the lower lip and the upper teeth}}
{{More citations needed|date=December 2014}}
{{IPA notice}}
In phonetics, labiodentals are consonants articulated with the lower lip and the upper teeth, such as {{IPA|[f]}} and {{IPA|[v]}}. In English, labiodentalized /s/, /z/ and /r/ are characteristic of some individuals; these may be written {{IPA|[sᶹ], [zᶹ], [ɹᶹ]}}.John Laver (1994: 323) Principles of Phonetics.
Labiodental consonants in the IPA
The labiodental consonants identified by the International Phonetic Alphabet are:
The IPA chart shades out labiodental lateral consonants.{{Cite web|last=IPA|date=2018|title=Consonants (Pulmonic)|url=https://www.internationalphoneticassociation.org/IPAcharts/IPA_Kiel_2018_pulmonicC_1200.png|access-date=June 20, 2020|website=International Phonetic Association}} This is sometimes read as indicating that such sounds are not possible. In fact, the fricatives {{IPA|[f]}} and {{IPA|[v]}} often have lateral airflow, but no language makes a distinction for centrality, and the allophony is not noticeable.
The IPA symbol {{IPA|ɧ}} refers to a sound occurring in Swedish, officially described as similar to the velar fricative [x], but one dialectal variant is a rounded, velarized labiodental, less ambiguously rendered as {{IPA|[fˠʷ]}}. The labiodental click is an allophonic variant of the (bi)labial click.
Occurrence
The only common labiodental sounds to occur phonemically are the fricatives and the approximant. The labiodental flap occurs phonemically in over a dozen languages, but it is restricted geographically to central and southeastern Africa.{{sfnp|Olson|Hajek|2003}} With most other manners of articulation, the norm are bilabial consonants (which together with labiodentals, form the class of labial consonants).
{{IPA|[ɱ]}} is quite common, but in all or nearly all languages in which it occurs, it occurs only as an allophone of {{IPA|/m/}} before labiodental consonants such as {{IPA|/v/}} and {{IPA|/f/}}. It has been reported to occur phonemically in a dialect of Teke, but similar claims in the past have proven spurious.
The XiNkuna dialect of Tsonga features a pair of affricates as phonemes. In some other languages, such as Xhosa, affricates may occur as allophones of the fricatives. These differ from the German voiceless labiodental affricate {{angbr|pf}}, which commences with a bilabial p. All these affricates are rare sounds.{{cn|reason=This can't include the last example, since in German they are not rare.|date=November 2020}}
The stops are not confirmed to exist as separate phonemes in any language. They are sometimes written as ȹ ȸ (qp and db ligatures). They may also be found in children's speech or as speech impediments.{{Cite journal |first1=Anne |last1=Hesketh |first2=Evgenia |last2=Dima |first3=Veronica |last3=Nelson |date=2007 |title=Teaching phoneme awareness to pre-literate children with speech disorder: a randomized controlled trial |url=https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17514541/ |journal=International Journal of Language & Communication Disorders |language=en |volume=42 |issue=3 |pages=251–271 |doi=10.1080/13682820600940141 |issn=1368-2822 |pmid=17514541}}
{{vanchor|Dentolabial}} consonants
Dentolabial consonants are the articulatory opposite of labiodentals: They are pronounced by contacting lower teeth against the upper lip. The diacritic for dentolabial in the extensions of the IPA for disordered speech is a superscript bridge, {{angbr IPA|◌͆}}, by analogy with the subscript bridge used for labiodentals: thus {{angbr IPA|m͆ p͆ b͆ f͆ v͆}}. Complex consonants such as affricates, prenasalized stops and the like are also possible.
These are rare cross-linguistically, likely due to the prevalence of dental malocclusions (especially retrognathism) that make them difficult to produce,{{cite journal |pmid=33441808 |date=2021 |last1=Everett |first1=C. |last2=Chen |first2=S. |title=Speech adapts to differences in dentition within and across populations |journal=Scientific Reports |volume=11 |issue=1 |page=1066 |doi=10.1038/s41598-020-80190-8 |pmc=7806889 }} though the voiceless dentolabial fricative {{IPA|[f͆]}} is used in some of the southwestern dialects of Greenlandic.{{sfnp|Vebæk|2006|p=20}}
Origins
The extreme commonality of labiodentals (especially f and v) is widely believed to be linked to the Agricultural Revolution.{{Cite web |last=Staff |first=ScienceAlert |date=2019-03-14 |title=The Rise of Farming And Soft Foods Might Have Forever Changed The Way Humans Speak |url=https://www.sciencealert.com/softer-foods-actually-changed-the-way-ancient-humans-spoke |access-date=2025-03-22 |website=ScienceAlert |language=en-US}}{{Cite web |last=#author.fullName} |title=Humans couldn't pronounce 'f' and 'v' sounds before farming developed |url=https://www.newscientist.com/article/2196580-humans-couldnt-pronounce-f-and-v-sounds-before-farming-developed/ |access-date=2025-03-22 |website=New Scientist |language=en-US}}
See also
References
{{Reflist}}
Sources
- {{SOWL}}
- {{cite journal |last1=Olson |first1=Kenneth S. |first2=John |last2=Hajek |year=2003 |title=Crosslinguistic insights on the labial flap |journal=Linguistic Typology |volume=7 |issue=2 |pages=157–186 |doi=10.1515/lity.2003.014}}
- {{cite book |last=Paulian |first=Christiane |year=1975 |title=Le kukuya, langue teke du Congo: phonologie, classes nominales |publisher=SELAF |location=Paris |isbn=9782852970083}}
- {{cite book |last=Vebæk |first=Mâliâraq |year=2006 |title=The southernmost People of Greenland-Dialects and Memories |isbn=978-87-635-1273-2 |doi=10.26530/OAPEN_342373 |doi-access=free |series=Monographs on Greenland |volume=337}}
Further reading
- {{cite journal
|last1=Blasi
|first1=Damián E.
|last2=Moran
|first2=Steven
|last3=Moisik
|first3=Scott R.
|last4=Widmer
|first4=Paul
|last5=Dediu
|first5=Dan
|last6=Bickel
|first6=Balthasar
|year=2019
|title=Human sound systems are shaped by post-Neolithic changes in bite configuration
|journal=Science
|volume=363
|issue=6432
|page=eaav3218
|doi=10.1126/science.aav3218
|pmid=30872490
|doi-access=free
}}
- {{cite journal
|last=Hockett
|first=Charles
|year=1989
|title=Distinguished Lecture: F
|journal=American Anthropologist
|volume=87
|issue=2
|pages=263–281
|doi=10.1525/aa.1985.87.2.02a00020
|doi-access=
|jstor=678561
}}
- {{cite news
|last1=Moran
|first1=Steven
|last2=Bickel
|first2=Balthasar
|date=15 March 2019
|url=https://theconversation.com/softer-processed-foods-changed-the-way-ancient-humans-spoke-113599
|title=Softer, processed foods changed the way ancient humans spoke
|work=The Conversation
}}
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