In phonetics, labiodentals are consonants articulated with the lower lip and the upper teeth, such as [f] and [v]. In English, labiodentalized /s/, /z/ and /r/ are characteristic of some individuals; these may be written [sᶹ], [zᶹ], [ɹᶹ].
Labiodental consonants in the IPA
The labiodental consonants identified by the International Phonetic Alphabet are:
| IPA | Description | Example | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Language | Orthography | IPA | Meaning | ||
| ɱ̊ | voiceless labiodental nasal | Angami2 | [example needed] | ||
| ɱ | voiced labiodental nasal | Kukuya3 (disputed) | [ɱíì] | 'eyes' | |
| p̪ | voiceless labiodental plosive | Greek | σάπφειρος | [ˈsap̪firo̞s̠] | 'sapphire' |
| b̪ | voiced labiodental plosive | Sika | [example needed] | ||
| p̪͡f | voiceless labiodental affricate | Tsonga | timpfuvu | [tiɱp̪͡fuβu] | 'hippos' |
| b̪͡v | voiced labiodental affricate | Tsonga | shilebvu | [ʃileb̪͡vu] | 'chin' |
| f | voiceless labiodental fricative | English | fan | [fæn] | |
| v | voiced labiodental fricative | English | van | [væn] | |
| ʋ | voiced labiodental approximant | Dutch | wang | [ʋɑŋ] | 'cheek' |
| ⱱ | voiced labiodental flap | Mono | vwa | [ⱱa] | 'send' |
| p̪͡fʼ | labiodental ejective affricate | Tsetsaut45 | apfʼo | [ap̪͡fʼo] | 'boil' |
| fʼ | labiodental ejective fricative | Yapese6 | fʼaang | [fʼaːŋ] | 'type of eel' |
| ʘ̪ | labiodental click release (many different consonants) | Nǁng | ʘoe | [k͡ʘ̪oe] | 'meat' |
The IPA chart shades out labiodental lateral consonants.7 This is sometimes read as indicating that such sounds are not possible. In fact, the fricatives [f] and [v] often have lateral airflow, but no language makes a distinction for centrality, and the allophony is not noticeable.
The IPA symbol 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 [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.8 With most other manners of articulation, the norm are bilabial consonants (which together with labiodentals, form the class of labial consonants).
[ɱ] is quite common, but in all or nearly all languages in which it occurs, it occurs only as an allophone of /m/ before labiodental consonants such as /v/ and /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 ⟨pf⟩, which commences with a bilabial p. All these affricates are rare sounds.
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.9
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, ⟨◌͆⟩, by analogy with the subscript bridge used for labiodentals: thus ⟨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,10 though the voiceless dentolabial fricative [f͆] is used in some of the southwestern dialects of Greenlandic.11
Origins
The extreme commonality of labiodentals (especially f and v) is widely believed to be linked to the agricultural revolution1213
See also
Sources
- Ladefoged, Peter; Maddieson, Ian (1996). The Sounds of the World's Languages. Oxford: Blackwell. ISBN 0-631-19815-6.
- Olson, Kenneth S.; Hajek, John (2003). "Crosslinguistic insights on the labial flap". Linguistic Typology. 7 (2): 157–186. doi:10.1515/lity.2003.014.
- Paulian, Christiane (1975). Le kukuya, langue teke du Congo: phonologie, classes nominales. Paris: SELAF. ISBN 9782852970083.
- Vebæk, Mâliâraq (2006). The southernmost People of Greenland-Dialects and Memories. Monographs on Greenland. Vol. 337. doi:10.26530/OAPEN_342373. ISBN 978-87-635-1273-2.
Further reading
- Blasi, Damián E.; Moran, Steven; Moisik, Scott R.; Widmer, Paul; Dediu, Dan; Bickel, Balthasar (2019). "Human sound systems are shaped by post-Neolithic changes in bite configuration". Science. 363 (6432): eaav3218. doi:10.1126/science.aav3218. PMID 30872490.
- Hockett, Charles (1989). "Distinguished Lecture: F". American Anthropologist. 87 (2): 263–281. doi:10.1525/aa.1985.87.2.02a00020. JSTOR 678561.
- Moran, Steven; Bickel, Balthasar (15 March 2019). "Softer, processed foods changed the way ancient humans spoke". The Conversation.
References
John Laver (1994: 323) Principles of Phonetics. ↩
Blankenship, Barbara; Ladefoged, Peter; Bhaskararao, Peri; Chase, Nichumeno (Fall 1993). "Phonetic structures of Khonoma Angami" (PDF). Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman Area. 16 (2). http://sealang.net/sala/archives/pdf8/blankenship1992phonetic.pdf ↩
Paulian (1975:41) - Paulian, Christiane (1975). Le kukuya, langue teke du Congo: phonologie, classes nominales. Paris: SELAF. ISBN 9782852970083. ↩
Boas, Franz; Goddard, Pliny Earle (July 1924). "Ts'ets'aut, an Athapascan Language from Portland Canal, British Columbia". International Journal of American Linguistics. 3 (1): 1–35. doi:10.1086/463746. https://doi.org/10.1086%2F463746 ↩
Tharp, George W. (January 1972). "The Position of the Tsetsaut among Northern Athapaskans". International Journal of American Linguistics. 38 (1): 14–25. doi:10.1086/465179. JSTOR 1264498. S2CID 145318136. /wiki/Doi_(identifier) ↩
Ballantyne, Keira Gebbie (2005). Textual Structure and Discourse Prominence in Yapese Narrative (PhD dissertation). University of Hawai'i. p. 32. hdl:10125/11702. /wiki/Hdl_(identifier) ↩
IPA (2018). "Consonants (Pulmonic)". International Phonetic Association. Retrieved June 20, 2020. https://www.internationalphoneticassociation.org/IPAcharts/IPA_Kiel_2018_pulmonicC_1200.png ↩
Olson & Hajek (2003). - Olson, Kenneth S.; Hajek, John (2003). "Crosslinguistic insights on the labial flap". Linguistic Typology. 7 (2): 157–186. doi:10.1515/lity.2003.014. https://doi.org/10.1515%2Flity.2003.014 ↩
Hesketh, Anne; Dima, Evgenia; Nelson, Veronica (2007). "Teaching phoneme awareness to pre-literate children with speech disorder: a randomized controlled trial". International Journal of Language & Communication Disorders. 42 (3): 251–271. doi:10.1080/13682820600940141. ISSN 1368-2822. PMID 17514541. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17514541/ ↩
Everett, C.; Chen, S. (2021). "Speech adapts to differences in dentition within and across populations". Scientific Reports. 11 (1): 1066. doi:10.1038/s41598-020-80190-8. PMC 7806889. PMID 33441808. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7806889 ↩
Vebæk (2006), p. 20. - Vebæk, Mâliâraq (2006). The southernmost People of Greenland-Dialects and Memories. Monographs on Greenland. Vol. 337. doi:10.26530/OAPEN_342373. ISBN 978-87-635-1273-2. https://doi.org/10.26530%2FOAPEN_342373 ↩
Staff, ScienceAlert (2019-03-14). "The Rise of Farming And Soft Foods Might Have Forever Changed The Way Humans Speak". ScienceAlert. Retrieved 2025-03-22. https://www.sciencealert.com/softer-foods-actually-changed-the-way-ancient-humans-spoke ↩
#author.fullName}. "Humans couldn't pronounce 'f' and 'v' sounds before farming developed". New Scientist. Retrieved 2025-03-22. {{cite web}}: |last= has generic name (help) https://www.newscientist.com/article/2196580-humans-couldnt-pronounce-f-and-v-sounds-before-farming-developed/ ↩