Labiodental consonant

This article contains phonetic transcriptions in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA. For the distinction between [ ], / / and ⟨ ⟩, see IPA § Brackets and transcription delimiters.

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].^[1]

Labiodental consonants in the IPA

The labiodental consonants identified by the International Phonetic Alphabet are:

IPA	Description	Example
IPA	Description	Language	Orthography	IPA	Meaning
ɱ̊	voiceless labiodental nasal	Angami^[2]	^{[example needed]}		allophone of /m̥/ before /ə/
ɱ	voiced labiodental nasal	Kukuya^[3] (disputed)	[ɱíì]		'eyes'
p̪	voiceless labiodental plosive	Greek	σάπφειρος	[ˈsap̪firo̞s̠]	'sapphire'
b̪	voiced labiodental plosive	Sika	^{[example needed]}
p̪͜f	voiceless labiodental affricate	Tsonga	timpfuvu	[tiɱp̪͜fuβu]	'hippos'
b̪͜v	voiced labiodental affricate	Tsonga	shilebvu	[ʃileb̪͜vu]	'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'
p̪͜fʼ	labiodental ejective affricate	Tsetsaut^[4]^[5]	apfʼo	[ap̪͜fʼo]	'boil'
fʼ	labiodental ejective fricative	Yapese^[6]	fʼaang	[fʼaːŋ]	'type of eel'
ʘ̪	labiodental click release (many different consonants)	Nǁng	ʘoe	[k͜ʘ̪oe]	'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 was devised for a consonant of Swedish that has various pronunciations, in one dialect a rounded velarized labiodental less ambiguously transcribed 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 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.^{[citation needed]}

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]

Origins

The frequency of labiodentals (especially f and v) has been argued to be linked to the Agricultural Revolution.^[10]^[11]

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). doi:10.32655/LTBA.16.2.03.
^ Paulian (1975), p. 41.
^ 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.
^ 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.
^ Ballantyne, Keira Gebbie (2005). Textual Structure and Discourse Prominence in Yapese Narrative (PhD dissertation). University of Hawaiʻi. p. 32. hdl:10125/11702.
^ IPA (2018). "Consonants (Pulmonic)". International Phonetic Association. Archived from the original on June 22, 2020. Retrieved June 20, 2020.
^ Olson & Hajek (2003).
^ 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.
^ 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.
^ George, Alison. "Humans couldn't pronounce 'f' and 'v' sounds before farming developed". New Scientist. Retrieved 2025-03-22.

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 978-2-85297-008-3.
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.

Labiodental consonant