Labial–velar consonant

Not to be confused with Labialized velar consonant.

Places of articulation
Labial Bilabial Labial–velar Labial–coronal Labiodental Dentolabial Bidental Coronal Linguolabial Interdental Dental Denti-alveolar Alveolar Postalveolar Palato-alveolar Retroflex Dorsal Postalveolar Alveolo-palatal Palatal Labial–palatal Velar Uvular Uvular–epiglottal Radical Pharyngeal Epiglotto-pharyngeal Epiglottal Glottal Peripheral
Tongue shape
Apical Laminal Subapical Lateral Sulcal Palatal Pharyngeal See also: Manner of articulation
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Labial–velar consonants are doubly articulated at the velum and the lips, such as [k͡p]. They are sometimes called "labiovelar consonants", a term that can also refer to labialized velars, such as [kʷ] and the approximant [w].

Truly doubly articulated labial–velars occur as stops and nasals in the majority of languages in West and Central Africa (for example in the name of Laurent Gbagbo, former president of Ivory Coast; they are found in many Niger–Congo languages as well as in the Ubangian, Chadic and Central Sudanic families), and are relatively common in the eastern end of New Guinea. They include [k͡p, ɡ͡b, ŋ͡m]. To pronounce these, one must attempt to say the velar consonants, but then close their lips for the bilabial component, and then release the lips. Note that, while 90% of the occlusion overlaps, the onset of the velar occurs slightly before that of the labial, and the release of the labial occurs slightly after that of the velar, so that the preceding vowel sounds as if followed by a velar, while the following vowel sounds as if preceded by a labial. Thus the order of the letters in ⟨k͡p⟩ and ⟨ɡ͡b⟩ is not arbitrary, but is motivated by the phonetic details of these sounds.

The Yélî Dnye language of Rossel Island, Papua New Guinea, has both labial–velars and labial–alveolar consonants. Labial–velar stops and nasals also occur in Vietnamese, albeit only at the ends of words.

IPA	Description	Example
		Language	Orthography	IPA	Meaning
k͡p	voiceless labial–velar stop	Logba	ò-kpàyɔ̀	[ò-k͡pàjɔ̀]	'God'
ɡ͡b	voiced labial–velar stop	Ewe	Ewegbe	[ɛβɛɡ͡be]	'the Ewe language'
ŋ͡m	labial–velar nasal	Vietnamese	cung	[kuŋ͡m]	'sector'

These sounds are clearly single consonants rather than consonant clusters. The Eggon language, for example, contrasts these possibilities, with /bɡ/ and /ɡb/ both distinct from /ɡ͡b/. Ignoring tone, we have:

Single consonant		Two-consonant sequence
pom	to pound	kba	to dig
abu	a dog	bɡa	to beat, to kill
aku	a room	ak͡pki	a stomach
ɡom	to break	ɡ͡bɡa	to grind
k͡pu	to die	kpu	to kneel
ɡ͡bu	to arrive	ɡba	to divide

Note that, although such symbols are readily understood, they are not sanctioned by the IPA, and have no Unicode values. They can, however, be specified as the way an OpenType font displays gb and kp digraphs.

Labial–velar stops also occur as ejective [k͡pʼ] and implosive [ɠɓ] (the tie bar has been removed for legibility). There may be labial–velar approximants in languages like Japanese. Bilabial clicks are sometimes considered to be labial–velar consonants as well, though the validity of this classification is debated.

For transcribing these sounds ligatures can occasionally be seen instead of digraphs with a tie bar:

See also

• Place of articulation
• List of phonetics topics

References

• Ladefoged, Peter; Maddieson, Ian (1996). The Sounds of the World's Languages. Oxford: Blackwell. ISBN 0-631-19814-8.