Doubly Articulated Consonant - Double Articulation in Stops

Double Articulation in Stops

This leaves stops, and both oral and nasal doubly articulated stops are found. However, there is a great asymmetry in the places of their articulation. Of the six possible combinations of labial, coronal, dorsal, and radical, one is common, and the others vanishingly rare.

• The common articulation is labial–dorsal, which is attested by labial–velar stops, such as the mentioned above. These are found throughout West and Central Africa, as well as eastern New Guinea.

• A second possibility, labial–coronal, is attested phonemically by labial–alveolar and labial–postalveolar in a single language, Yélî Dnye of New Guinea. Some West African languages, such as Dagbani & Nzema, have labial–postalveolars as allophones of labial–velars before high front vowels.

• A third possibility, coronal–dorsal, is found marginally in a few languages. Isoko, in Nigeria, has laminal dental stops (plosives and nasals) that, in some dialects, are realized as dental–palatal stops. However, these are not contrastive with either dental or palatal stops, unlike the articulations mentioned above, and Peter Ladefoged considers them to be "accidental contacts in two regions", rather than being inherently double. Hadza has alveolar–palatal lateral affricates, but the dental contact is optional. Similarly, several languages of Australia, such as Maung, have dental–palatals which are variants of laminal postalveolars, with an "extended closure covering the entire region from the teeth to the hard palate". Note that in both cases, the double articulations are variants of laminal consonants, which have inherently broad contact with the roof of the mouth.

• The other three possibilities, which would involve the epiglottis, had not been known until recently. However, with the advent of fiber-optic laryngoscopy, a greater variety of epiglottal and laryngeal activity has been found than had been expected. For example, the Somali /q/ was recently found to be a uvular–epiglottal consonant . It is not known how widespread such sounds might be, or if epiglottal consonants might combine with coronal or labial consonants.