Velar consonant

Velar consonant
Places of
articulation

Labial
Bilabial
Labial–velar
Labial–coronal
Labiodental
Dentolabial

Bidental

Coronal
Linguolabial
Interdental
Dental
Denti-alveolar
Alveolar
Postalveolar
Palato-alveolar
Alveolo-palatal
Retroflex

Dorsal
Palatal
Labial–palatal
Velar
Uvular
Uvular–epiglottal

Radical
Pharyngeal
Epiglotto-pharyngeal
Epiglottal

Glottal
Tongue shape

Apical
Laminal
Subapical

Lateral
Sulcal

Palatal
Pharyngeal

See also: Manner of articulation
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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, known also 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. They often become automatically fronted, that is partly or completely palatal before a following front vowel, and retracted 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 [kʷ], 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 [k͡p]. This distinction disappears with the approximant [w], since labialization involves adding of a labial approximant articulation to a sound, and this ambiguous situation is often called labiovelar.

The velar consonants identified by the International Phonetic Alphabet are:

IPA Description Example
Language Orthography IPA Meaning
Xsampa-N2.png velar nasal English ring [ɹʷɪŋ] ring
Xsampa-k.png voiceless velar plosive English skip [skɪp] skip
Xsampa-g.png voiced velar plosive English get [ɡɛt] get
Xsampa-x.png voiceless velar fricative German Bauch [baʊx] abdomen
Xsampa-G2.png voiced velar fricative Greek γάτα [ɣata] cat
Xsampa-X.png voiceless labio-velar approximant English which[1] [ʍɪtʃ] which
Xsampa-Mslash.png velar approximant Spanish pagar[2] [paɰaɾ] to pay
Xsampa-Lslash.png velar lateral approximant Mid-Wahgi aʟaʟe [aʟaʟe] dizzy
Xsampa-w2.png voiced labio-velar approximant English witch [wɪtʃ] witch
velar ejective plosive Archi кIан [an] bottom
ɠ voiced velar implosive Sindhi əro/ڳرو [ɠəro] heavy

A velar trill or tap is not possible - see the shaded boxes on the consonant table at the bottom. In the velar position the tongue has an extremely restricted ability to carry out the type of motion associated with trills or taps. Nor does the body of the tongue have the freedom to move quickly enough to produce a velar trill or flap.[3]

Contents

Lack of velars

The velar consonant [k] is the most common consonant in human languages.[4] The only languages recorded to lack velars—indeed, to lack any dorsal consonant at all—may be Xavante and Tahitian. However, there are other languages that lack simple velars. An areal feature of the Pacific Northwest coast is that historical *k has become palatalized in many languages, in many languages becoming [kʲ], but, in others, such as Saanich, Salish, and Chemakun becoming [tʃ]. (Likewise, historical *k’ has become [tʃʼ] and historical *x has become [ʃ]; there was no *g or *ŋ.) However, all three languages retain a labiovelar series [kʷ], [kʼʷ], [xʷ], [w], as well as a uvular series.

Apart from [ɡ], none of the other velars are particularly common, not even [w] and [ŋ], which occur in English. Of course, [ɡ] does not occur in languages that lack voiced stops, like Mandarin Chinese, 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], such as Modern Standard Arabic, are missing [ɡ].[5]

The Pirahã language has both a [k] and a [ɡ] phonetically. However, the [k] does not behave as other consonants, and the argument has been made that it is phonemically /hi/, leaving Pirahã with only [ɡ] as an underlyingly velar consonant. Hawaiian does not distinguish [k] from [t]; the sound spelled k tends toward [k] at the beginnings of utterances, [t] before [i], and is variable elsewhere, especially in the dialect of Niʻihau and Kauaʻi. Since Hawaiian has no [ŋ], and w similarly varies between [w] and labial [v], it is not clear that it is meaningful to say that Hawaiian has velar consonants.

Notes

  1. ^ In dialects that distinguish between which and witch.
  2. ^ Intervocalic g in Spanish often described instead as a very lightly articulated voiced velar fricative.[citation needed]
  3. ^ The International phonetic Alphabet
  4. ^ Ian Maddieson and Sandra Ferrari Disner, 1984, Patterns of Sounds. Cambridge University Press
  5. ^ The World Atlas of Language Structures Online:Voicing and Gaps in Plosive Systems

References

See also


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