Linguolabial consonant

Linguolabials or apicolabials are consonants articulated by placing the tongue tip or blade against the upper lip, which is drawn downward to meet the tongue. They represent one extreme of a coronal articulatory continuum which extends from linguolabial to sub-apical palatal places of articulation. Cross-linguistically, linguolabial consonants are very rare, though they do not represent a particularly exotic combination of articulatory configurations, unlike click consonants or ejectives. They are found in a cluster of languages in Vanuatu, as well as in Umotína, a recently extinct Bororoan language of Brazil, and as extraphonotactic sounds worldwide.

Sagittal section of linguolabial stop

The linguolabial consonants are transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet by adding the "seagull" diacritic to the corresponding alveolar consonant. They are sometimes seen with the letter for a bilabial consonant instead, but this usage is not recognized by the International Phonetic Association, and would imply that both lips are used.

IPA	Description	Example
		Language	Orthography	IPA	Meaning
n̼	linguolabial nasal	Tangoa		[n̼ata]	"eye"
	voiceless linguolabial plosive	Tangoa		[t̼et̼e]	"butterfly"
	voiced linguolabial plosive	Vao		[nan̼d̼ak]	"bow"
	voiceless linguolabial fricative	Big Nambas		[ˈinɛθ̼]	"he is asthmatic"
	voiced linguolabial fricative	Tangoa		[ð̼atu]	"stone"
r̼	linguolabial trill (uses lower lip)	Coatlán Zapotec		r̼ʔ	mimesis for a child's fart[1] (blowing a raspberry)
ǀ̼	linguolabial click	Coatlán Zapotec		ǀ̼ʔ	mimesis for a pig drinking water[1]

See also

• place of articulation
• List of phonetics topics

Notes

References

• Ladefoged, Peter; Ian Maddieson (1996). The Sounds of the World's Languages. Oxford: Blackwell. ISBN 0-631-19814-8. 
• Maddieson, Ian. Linguolabials. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, Volume 81, Issue S1 (May 1987), p. S65.