Labialisation is a secondary articulatory feature of phonemes in a language, most usually used to refer to consonants. Labialisation, simply put, is the usage of the lips as a secondary articulator while the remainder of the oral cavity produces some other phoneme.
Labialisation is not restricted to lip-rounding, although this is certainly the most common type. The following labial articulations have been found as realisations of labialisation:
Labial rounding, with or without protrusion of the lips (found in Navajo)
For example, the voicelesslabializedvelarplosive [kʷ] has only a single stop articulation, velar [k], with a simultaneous [w]-like rounding of the lips, and is usually heard as a kind of [k].
The most frequently encountered are labialization (such as [kʷ]), palatalization (such as the Russian "soft" consonant [tʲ]), velarization (such as the English "dark" L [lˠ]), and pharyngealization (such as the Arabic "emphatic" consonant [tˤ]).
For this reason, the IPA symbols for labialization and palatalization were for a time placed directly under the consonant (as [k̫] and [ƫ]), and there is still an alternate symbol for velarization or pharyngealizaton that is superposed across the consonant (as in [ɫ] for dark L).
Labialized sounds involve the lips while the remainder of the oral cavity produces another sound.
American English has three degrees of labialization: Fully rounded /w/ and initial /ɹ/, open-rounded /ʃ ʒ t͡ʃ d͡ʒ/, and unrounded, which in vowels is sometimes called spread.
The most common form of labialization is rounding of dorsal consonants such as k, g, and q.
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