Bilabial trill: Encyclopedia - Bilabial trill

Bilabial trill

The bilabial trill is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ʙ, and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is B\.

Bilabial trill - Features

Features of the bilabial trill:

• Its manner of articulation is trill, which means it is produced by vibrations of the articulators. In most instances, it is only found as the trilled release of a prenasalized stop.
• Its place of articulation is bilabial which means it is articulated with both lips.
• Its phonation type is voiced, which means the vocal cords are vibrating during the articulation.
• It is an oral consonant, which means air is allowed to escape through the mouth.
• It is a central consonant, which means it is produced by allowing the airstream to flow over the middle of the tongue, rather than the sides.
• The airstream mechanism is pulmonic egressive, which means it is articulated by pushing air out of the lungs and through the vocal tract, rather than from the glottis or the mouth.

Bilabial trill - In English

English does not have the bilabial trill as a phoneme, it is used to express shivering cold, and is spelled brrr.

Bilabial trill - In other languages

The bilabial trill exists as a phoneme in a few languages. In most of the languages where it occurs, it occurs only as a prenasalised bilabial stop with trilled release, [mbʙ]. This developed historically from a prenasalized stop before a relatively high back vowel, such as [mbu], in all but a couple languages, and are usually still limited to such environments. An example is the Kele word [mbʙuen] "its fruit". The known exceptions to this pattern are in Nias and the occasionally trilled fricative vowels of Yi.

Some languages, such as Mangbetu (spoken in North-Eastern Zaire) and Mewun (spoken in Vanuatu), may have both voiced and voiceless bilabial trill.

Bilabial trill - Amuzgo

Amuzg has the bilabial trill, but uses it only exceptionally.

Bilabial trill - Baka

Baka (spoken in Vanuatu) has the bilabial trill, but it is used rarely.

Bilabial trill - Northwest Caucasian languages

In Abkhaz and Ubykh, the "affricates" [tʙ tʙ’ dʙ] are allophones of /tʷ tʷ’ dʷ/.

Bilabial trill - Pirahã

In Pirahã, the bilabial trill is an allophone of /b/.

Bilabial trill - Yi

Liangshang (Cool Mountain) Yi has two "buzzed" or fricative vowels, written ṳ, i̤, which may also be trilled, [ʙ̝, r̝].

See also

• Voiceless dental bilabially trilled affricate
• List of phonetics topics

Categories: Pages containing IPA | Trill | Bilabial

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Bilabial trill", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki