Place of articulation
Velars
are
consonants
articulated
with the back part of the
tongue
(the dorsum) against the
soft palate
, the back part of the roof of the mouth (also known as the "velum").
Since the velar region of the roof of the mouth is relatively extensive and the movements of the dorsum
are not very precise, velars easily undergo
assimilation
, shifting their articulation back or to the front
depending on the quality of adjacent vowels.
[1]
They often become automatically
fronted
, that is partly or completely
palatal
before a following front vowel, and
retracted
, that is partly or completely
uvular
before back vowels.
Palatalised
velars (like English
/k/
in
keen
or
cube
) are sometimes referred to as
palatovelars
. Many languages also have
labialized
velars, such as
[k?]
, in which the articulation is accompanied by rounding of the lips. There are also
labial?velar consonants
, which are doubly articulated at the velum and at the lips, such as
[k?p]
. This distinction disappears with the
approximant consonant
[w]
since labialization involves adding of a labial approximant articulation to a sound, and this ambiguous situation is often called
labiovelar
.
A velar
trill
or
tap
is not possible according to the
International Phonetics Association
: see the shaded boxes on the
table of pulmonic consonants
. In the velar position, the tongue has an extremely restricted ability to carry out the type of motion associated with trills or taps, and the body of the tongue has no freedom to move quickly enough to produce a
velar trill
or flap.
[2]
Examples
[
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]
The velar consonants identified by the
International Phonetic Alphabet
are:
Lack of velars
[
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]
The velar consonant
[k]
is the most common consonant in human languages.
[7]
The only languages recorded to lack velars (and any dorsal consonant at all) may be
Xavante
,
Tahitian
, and (phonologically but not phonetically) several
Skou languages
(
Wutung
, a dialect of
Vanimo
, and
Bobe
). In
Piraha
, men may lack the only velar consonant.
Other languages lack simple velars. An areal feature of the
indigenous languages of the Americas
of the coastal regions of the
Pacific Northwest
is that historical *k was palatalized. When such sounds remained stops, they were transcribed ⟨
k?
⟩ in
Americanist phonetic notation
, presumably corresponding to IPA ⟨
c
⟩, but in others, such as the
Saanich dialect
of
Coastal Salish
,
Salish-Spokane-Kalispel
, and
Chemakum
, *k went further and affricated to
[t?]
. Likewise, historical *k’ has become
[t??]
and historical *x has become
[?]
; there was no *g or *ŋ. In the
Northwest Caucasian languages
, historical *
[k]
has also become palatalized, becoming
/k?/
in
Ubykh
and
/t?/
in most
Circassian
varieties. In both regions the languages retain a
labialized velar series
(e.g.
[k?],
[k??],
[x?],
[w]
in the Pacific Northwest) as well as
uvular consonants
.
[8]
In the languages of those families that retain plain velars, both the plain and labialized velars are
pre-velar
, perhaps to make them more distinct from the uvulars which may be
post-velar
. Prevelar consonants are susceptible to palatalization. A similar system, contrasting
*k?
with
*k?
and leaving
*k
marginal at best, is reconstructed for
Proto-Indo-European
.
Apart from the voiceless plosive
[k]
, no other velar consonant is particularly common, even the
[w]
and
[ŋ]
that occur in English. There can be no phoneme
/?/
in a language that lacks voiced stops, like
Mandarin Chinese
,
[c]
but it is sporadically missing elsewhere. Of the languages surveyed in the
World Atlas of Language Structures
, about 10% of languages that otherwise have
/p
b
t
d
k/
are missing
/?/
.
[9]
Piraha
has both a
[k]
and a
[?]
phonetically. However, the
[k]
does not behave as other consonants, and the argument has been made that it is phonemically
/hi/
, leaving Piraha with only
/?/
as an underlyingly velar consonant.
Hawaiian
does not distinguish
[k]
from
[t]
;
⟨k⟩
tends toward
[k]
at the beginning of utterances,
[t]
before
[i]
, and is variable elsewhere, especially in the dialect of Ni?ihau and Kaua?i. Since Hawaiian has no
[ŋ]
, and
⟨w⟩
varies between
[w]
and
[v]
, it is not clearly meaningful to say that Hawaiian has phonemic velar consonants.
Several
Khoisan languages
have limited numbers or distributions of pulmonic velar consonants. (Their click consonants are articulated in the uvular or possibly velar region, but that occlusion is part of the
airstream mechanism
rather than the place of articulation of the consonant.)
Khoekhoe
, for example, does not allow velars in medial or final position, but in
Ju??hoan
velars are rare even in initial position.
Velodorsal
consonants
[
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]
Normal velar consonants are
dorso-velar
: The dorsum (body) of the tongue rises to contact the velum (soft palate) of the roof of the mouth. In disordered speech there are also
velo-dorsal
stops, with the opposite articulation: The velum lowers to contact the tongue, which remains static. In the
extensions to the IPA
for disordered speech, these are transcribed by reversing the IPA letter for a velar consonant, e.g. ⟨
??
⟩ for a voiceless velodorsal stop,
[d]
⟨
??
⟩ for voiced, and ⟨
??
⟩ for a nasal.
extIPA
|
(html)
|
Description
|
𝼃
|
k
|
Voiceless velodorsal plosive
|
𝼁
|
?
|
Voiced velodorsal plosive
|
𝼇
|
ŋ
|
Velodorsal nasal
|
|
?
|
Velodorsal approximant
[e]
|
See also
[
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]
Notes
[
edit
]
- ^
Occasional allophone of /?/ for some speakers of Scouse, RP and Cockney.
- ^
In
dialects
that distinguish between
which
and
witch
.
- ^
What is written
g
in
pinyin
is
/k/
, though that sound does have an allophone
[?]
in atonic syllables.
- ^
The old letter for a
back-released velar click
, turned-k ⟨
?
⟩, was used from 2008 to 2015.
- ^
Not in Unicode or extIPA; unattested from disordered speech
References
[
edit
]
- ^
Stroud, Kevin (August 2013).
"Episode 5: Centum, Satem and the Letter C | The History of English Podcast"
.
The History of English Podcast
. Archived from
the original
on 24 August 2013
. Retrieved
29 January
2017
.
- ^
The International phonetic Alphabet
- ^
a
b
"The Archi Language Tutorial"
(PDF)
. Archived from
the original
(PDF)
on 2011-09-04
. Retrieved
2009-12-23
.
(The source uses the symbol for the
voiced alveolar lateral fricative
, ⟨
?
⟩, but also notes that the sound to be prevelar.)
- ^
Donald J. Phillips (1976).
Wahgi Phonology and Morphology
(PDF)
. B-36. Pacific Linguistics. p. 18.
- ^
Bennett, Ryan; Harvey, Meg; Henderson, Robert; Mendez Lopez, Tomas Alberto (September 2022).
"The phonetics and phonology of Uspanteko (Mayan)"
.
Language and Linguistics Compass
.
16
(9).
doi
:
10.1111/lnc3.12467
.
ISSN
1749-818X
.
S2CID
252453913
.
- ^
Ian Maddieson and Sandra Ferrari Disner, 1984,
Patterns of Sounds.
Cambridge University Press
- ^
Viacheslav A. Chirikba, 1996,
Common West Caucasian: the reconstruction of its phonological system and parts of its lexicon and morphology
, p. 192. Research School CNWS: Leiden.
- ^
The World Atlas of Language Structures Online:Voicing and Gaps in Plosive Systems
Further reading
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