Velars areconsonantsarticulated with the back part of thetongue (the dorsum) against thesoft palate, the back part of the roof of the mouth (also known as the "velum").
Since the velar region of the roof of the mouth is relatively extensive and the movements of the dorsumare not very precise, velars easily undergoassimilation, shifting their articulation back or to the frontdepending on the quality of adjacent vowels.[1] They often become automaticallyfronted, that is partly or completelypalatal before a following front vowel, andretracted, that is partly or completelyuvular before back vowels.
Palatalised velars (like English/k/ inkeen orcube) are sometimes referred to aspalatovelars. Many languages also havelabialized velars, such as[kʷ], in which the articulation is accompanied by rounding of the lips. There are alsolabial–velar consonants, which are doubly articulated at the velum and at the lips, such as[k͡p]. This distinction disappears with theapproximant consonant[w] since labialization involves adding of a labial approximant articulation to a sound, and this ambiguous situation is often calledlabiovelar.
A velartrill ortap is not possible according to theInternational Phonetics Association: see the shaded boxes on thetable 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 avelar trill or flap.[2]
The only languages recorded to lack velars (and any dorsal consonant at all) may beXavante, standardTahitian (though /tVt/ is pronounced [kVt], a pattern also found in theNiihau dialect of Hawaiian), and arguably severalSkou languages (Wutung, the Dumo dialect ofVanimo, andBobe), which have a coda[ŋ] that has been analyzed as the realization ofnasal vowels. InPirahã, men may lack the only velar consonant.
Other languages lack simple velars. An areal feature of theindigenous languages of the Americas of the coastal regions of thePacific Northwest is that historical *k was palatalized. When such sounds remained stops, they were transcribed ⟨kʸ⟩ inAmericanist phonetic notation, presumably corresponding to IPA ⟨c⟩, but in others, such as theSaanich dialect ofCoastal Salish,Salish-Spokane-Kalispel, andChemakum, *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 theNorthwest Caucasian languages, historical *[k] has also become palatalized, becoming/kʲ/ inUbykh and/tʃ/ in mostCircassian varieties. In both regions the languages retain alabialized velar series (e.g.[kʷ],[kʼʷ],[xʷ],[w] in the Pacific Northwest) as well asuvular consonants.[7] In the languages of those families that retain plain velars, both the plain and labialized velars arepre-velar, perhaps to make them more distinct from the uvulars which may bepost-velar. Prevelar consonants are susceptible to palatalization. A similar system, contrasting*kʲ with*kʷ and leaving*k marginal at best, is reconstructed forProto-Indo-European.
Apart from the voiceless plosive[k], no other velar consonant is particularly common, even the[w] and[ŋ] that occur in English. There can be no phoneme/ɡ/ in a language that lacks voiced stops, likeMandarin Chinese,[c] but it is sporadically missing elsewhere. Of the languages surveyed in theWorld Atlas of Language Structures, about 10% of languages that otherwise have/pbtdk/ are missing/ɡ/.[8]
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.
SeveralKhoisan 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 theairstream mechanism rather than the place of articulation of the consonant.)Khoekhoe, for example, does not allow velars in medial or final position, but inJuǀʼhoan velars are rare even in initial position.
Normal velar consonants aredorso-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 alsovelo-dorsal stops, with the opposite articulation: The velum lowers to contact the tongue, which remains static. In theextensions to the IPA for disordered speech, these are transcribed by reversing the IPA letter for a velar consonant, e.g. ⟨𝼃⟩ for a voiceless velodorsal stop,[d] ⟨𝼁⟩ for voiced, and ⟨𝼇⟩ for a nasal.
^Viacheslav A. Chirikba, 1996,Common West Caucasian: the reconstruction of its phonological system and parts of its lexicon and morphology, p. 192. Research School CNWS: Leiden.
