Linguolabial consonant
consonant produced with tongue against the upper lip
Linguolabials, or more specifically apicolabials and laminolabials, are consonants articulated by placing the tongue tip or blade against the upper lip, which is drawn downward to meet the tongue. They represent one extreme of a coronal articulatory continuum that extends from labio-lingual to subapical-palatal places of articulation. Cross-linguistically, linguolabial consonants are very rare. They are found in a cluster of 17 Southern Oceanic languages in Vanuatu, in the Kajoko dialect of Bijago in Guinea-Bissau, in Umotína (a recently extinct Bororoan language of Brazil), and as paralinguistic sounds elsewhere, such as 'expressive' words in Mochi Chaga. They are also relatively common in disordered speech, and the IPA diacritic is specifically provided for in the extensions to the IPA, as it is otherwise rare enough that speech pathologists might be unaware of it.
Description
Linguolabials are produced by constricting the airflow between the tongue and the upper lip. They are attested in a number of manners of articulation including stops, nasals, and fricatives.
Transcription
Linguolabial consonants are transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet with the "seagull" diacritic, U+033C ◌̼ COMBINING SEAGULL BELOW, or potentially the same diacritic above, U+1AE5 ◌ COMBINING SEAGULL ABOVE, if the letter has a descender.
Transcription is inconsistent. The seagull diacritic was adopted by the IPA at the Kiel Convention in 1989.
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