|
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 in ''keen'' or ''cube'') are sometimes referred to as palatovelars. Many languages also have labialized velars, such as , 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 . This distinction disappears with the approximant 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: 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.〔(The International phonetic Alphabet )〕 The velar consonants identified by the International Phonetic Alphabet are: ==Lack of velars== The velar consonant is the most common consonant in human languages.〔Ian Maddieson and Sandra Ferrari Disner, 1984, ''Patterns of Sounds.'' Cambridge University Press〕 The only languages recorded to lack velars (and any dorsal consonant at all) may be Xavante, Tahitian Wutung, Vanimo, and Nori. Other languages lack simple velars. An areal feature of the Pacific Northwest coast is that historical *k became palatalized in many languages. When such sounds remained stops there were transcribed in Americanist phonetic notation, presumably corresponding to IPA , but in others, such as Saanich, Salish, and Chemakum, *k went further and affricated to . Likewise, historical *k’ has become and historical *x has become ; there was no *g or *ŋ. In the Northwest Caucasian languages, historical * has also become palatalized, becoming in Ubykh and in most Circassian varieties. In both regions the languages retain a labiovelar series (e.g. in the Pacific Northwest) as well as uvular consonants.〔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.〕 In the languages of those families that do retain plain velars, both the plain and labialized velars are actually ''pre-velar'', perhaps to make them more distinct from the uvulars which may actually be ''post-velar''. Prevelar consonants are susceptible to palatalization. A similar system, contrasting with and leaving marginal at best, is reconstructed for Proto-Indo-European. Apart from the voiced stop , no other velar consonant is particularly common, even the and that occur in English. Of course, 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 are missing .〔(The World Atlas of Language Structures Online:Voicing and Gaps in Plosive Systems )〕 Pirahã has both a and a phonetically. However, the does not behave as other consonants, and the argument has been made that it is phonemically , leaving Pirahã with only as an underlyingly velar consonant. Hawaiian does not distinguish from ; tends toward at the beginning of utterances, before , and is variable elsewhere, especially in the dialect of Niihau and Kauai. Since Hawaiian has no , and varies between and , 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 Juǀ'hoan velars are rare even in initial position. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Velar consonant」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|