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, 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 [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 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:
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 velar consonants identified by the International Phonetic Alphabet
are:
== Lack of velars == The velar consonant [k] is the most common
consonant in human languages. The only languages recorded to lack velars (and any dorsal consonant
at all) may be Xavante, Tahitian, Wutung, Vanimo, Nori, and Waimiri-Atroari.
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 ⟨kʸ⟩ 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 [tʃ]. Likewise, historical *k’ has become [tʃʼ] and historical *x has become [ʃ];
there was no *g or *ŋ. In the Northwest Caucasian languages, historical *[k] has also become
palatalized, becoming /kʲ/ in Ubykh and /tʃ/ in most Circassian varieties. In both regions
the languages retain a labialized velar series (e.g. [kʷ], [kʼʷ], [xʷ], [w] in the Pacific
Northwest) as well as uvular consonants. 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 *kʲ with *kʷ and leaving *k marginal at
best, is reconstructed for Proto-Indo-European. Apart from the voiced stop [ɡ], no other
velar consonant is particularly common, even the [w] and [ŋ] that occur in English. Of
course, there can be no phoneme /ɡ/ in a language that lacks 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/ are missing
/ɡ/.Pirahã 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];
⟨k⟩ tends toward [k] at the beginning of utterances, [t] before [i], and is variable
elsewhere, especially in the dialect of Niʻihau and Kauaʻi. 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 Juǀ'hoan velars are rare even in initial
position.
== Velodorsal consonants == 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. ⟨k⟩ for a voiceless velodorsal stop.
== See also == Velarization
Place of articulation List of phonetics topics
== Notes ==
== References ==
== Further reading == Ladefoged, Peter; Maddieson, Ian (1996). The
Sounds of the World's Languages. Oxford: Blackwell. ISBN 0-631-19814-8.