Voiced labialized palatal approximant


The voiced labialized palatal approximant, also called the voiced labial–palatal or labio-palatal approximant, is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. It has two constrictions in the vocal tract: with the tongue on the palate, and rounded at the lips. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is, a rotated lowercase letter, or occasionally, since it is a labialized.
The labialized palatal approximant can in many cases be considered the semivocalic equivalent of the close front rounded vowel. The two are almost identical featurally. They alternate with each other in certain languages, such as French, and in the diphthongs of some languages, and with the non-syllabic diacritic are used in different transcription systems to represent the same sound. Sometimes, is written in place of, even though the former symbol denotes an extra-short in the official IPA.
Some languages, though, have a palatal approximant that is unspecified for rounding, and therefore cannot be considered the semivocalic equivalent of either or its unrounded counterpart. An example of such language is Spanish, in which the labialized palatal approximant consonant appears allophonically with rounded vowels in words such as ayuda 'help'. It is not correct to transcribe it with the symbols or ; the only suitable transcription is. See palatal approximant for more information.
There is also the labialized post-palatal approximant in some languages, which is articulated slightly more back compared with the place of articulation of the prototypical labialized palatal approximant, though not as back as the prototypical labialized velar approximant. It can be considered the semivocalic equivalent of the close central rounded vowel. The two are almost identical featurally. The International Phonetic Alphabet does not have a separate symbol for that sound, though it can be transcribed as or , , or . The equivalent X-SAMPA symbols are H_o, H_", w_+ and w_", respectively. Other possible transcriptions include a centralized and labialized and a non-syllabic ( in the IPA,

Compressed palatal approximant

The compressed palatal approximant is typically transcribed in IPA simply as, and that is the convention used in this article. There is no dedicated diacritic for compression in the IPA. However, the compression of the lips can be shown with the letter as or . The spread-lip diacritic may also be used with a labialized approximant letter as an ad hoc symbol, though technically 'spread' means unrounded.
The compressed post-palatal approximant can be transcribed simply as , and that is the convention used in this article. Other possible transcriptions include and .

Features

Features of the compressed palatal approximant:
  • Its place of articulation is called labio-palatal, which means it is labialized palatal, accomplished by raising the body of the tongue toward the palate while compressing the lips.

    Occurrence

Because the labialized palatal approximant is assumed to have compression, and few descriptions cover the distinction, some examples in the table below may actually have protrusion.

Protruded palatal approximant

As there are no diacritics in the IPA to distinguish protruded and compressed rounding, an old diacritic for labialization,, will be used here as an ad hoc symbol for the protruded palatal approximant. Another possible transcription is or .
Acoustically, this sound is "between" the more typical compressed palatal approximant and the non-labialized palatal approximant.

Features

Features of the protruded palatal approximant:
  • Its place of articulation is called labio-palatal, which means it is labialized palatal, accomplished by raising the body of the tongue toward the palate while protruding the lips.

    Occurrence