Voiceless bilabial trill

The voiceless 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 ⟨ʙ̥⟩.

Voiceless bilabial trill
ʙ̥
Encoding
X-SAMPAB\_0
Audio sample
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This sound is typologically extremely rare. It occurs in languages such as Pará Arára[1] and Sercquiais.

Only a few languages contrast voiced and voiceless bilabial trills phonemically – e.g. Mangbetu of Congo and Ninde of Vanuatu.[2][3]

There is also a very rare voiceless alveolar bilabially trilled affricate, [t̪͡ʙ̥] (written ⟨tᵖ̃⟩ in Everett & Kern) reported from Pirahã and from a few words in the Chapacuran languages Wari’ and Oro Win. The sound also appears as an allophone of the labialized voiceless alveolar stop /tʷ/ of Abkhaz and Ubykh, but in those languages it is more often realised by a doubly articulated stop [t͡p]. In the Chapacuran languages, [tʙ̥] is reported almost exclusively before rounded vowels such as [o] and [y].

Features

Features of the bilabial trill:

  • Its phonation is voiceless, which means it is produced without vibrations of the vocal cords. In some languages the vocal cords are actively separated, so it is always voiceless; in others the cords are lax, so that it may take on the voicing of adjacent sounds.
  • It is an oral consonant, which means air is allowed to escape through the mouth only.
  • Because the sound is not produced with airflow over the tongue, the central–lateral dichotomy does not apply.

Occurrence
Language Word IPA Meaning Notes
Pará Arára[1] [ʙ̥utakeni] 'small and round cultivated field'
Kom bɨmɨ [ʙ̥ɨmɨ] 'to believe'
Neverver[4] [naɣaᵐʙ̥] 'fire, firewood'
Pará Arára[5] [ʙ̥uta] 'to throw away'
Sercquiais fritt [ʙ̥rɪt] 'crop'
Ubykh[6] тваҳəбза/tuaqhəbza [t͡ʙ̥aχəbza] 'Ubykh language' Allophone of /tʷ/. See Ubykh phonology
Wari’ tpotpowe [t͡ʙ̥ot͡ʙ̥oweʔ] 'chicken'

Notes
  1. de Souza, Isaac Costa (2010). "3". A Phonological Description of “Pet Talk” in Arara (MA). University of North Dakota. Retrieved 2020-03-30.
  2. Linguist Wins Symbolic Victory for 'Labiodental Flap'. NPR (2005-12-17). Retrieved on 2010-12-08.
  3. LINGUIST List 8.45: Bilabial trill. Linguistlist.org. Retrieved on 2010-12-08.
  4. See pp.33-34 of: Barbour, Julie (2012). A Grammar of Neverver. Germany: Mouton de Gruyter. ISBN 9783110289619.
  5. de Souza, Isaac Costa (2010). "3". A Phonological Description of “Pet Talk” in Arara (PDF) (MA). SIL Brazil. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2013-10-12. Retrieved 2014-01-09.
  6. Ladefoged (2005:165)
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