Voiced bilabial trill

"Bilabial trill" redirects here. For the voiceless consonant, see Voiceless bilabial trill.

A voiced bilabial trill is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents the sound is ⟨ʙ⟩, a small capital letter b.

Voiced bilabial trill
ʙ
IPA number	121
Audio sample
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Encoding
Entity (decimal)	ʙ
Unicode (hex)	U+0299
X-SAMPA	B\
Braille
Image

Features

Features of a voiced bilabial trill:

• Its manner of articulation is trill, which means it is produced by directing air over an articulator so that it vibrates. 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 is voiced, which means the vocal cords vibrate during the articulation.
• It is an oral consonant, which means that air is not allowed to escape through the nose.
• Because the sound is not produced with airflow over the tongue, the central–lateral dichotomy does not apply.
• Its airstream mechanism is pulmonic, which means it is articulated by pushing air only with the intercostal muscles and abdominal muscles, as in most sounds.

Occurrence

Plain

Occurrences of [ʙ] in various languages

Language		Word	IPA	Meaning	Notes
Medumba		mʙʉ	[mʙʉ́][citation needed]	'dog'
Ngwe	Lebang dialect	[àʙɨ́ ́]		'ash'
Pirahã		kaoáíbogi	[kàò̯áí̯ʙòˈɡì]	'evil spirit'	Allophone of /b/ before /o/
		ʔíbogi	[ʔíʙoi]ⓘ	'milk'
Damin		prуuu	[ʙjuː]	'branch'	Varies between single pr [ʙ] or doubled pr2 [ʙ\ʙ]
Komi-Permyak[1]		Бунгаг	[ʙuŋɡaɡ]	'dung beetle'	Generally paralinguistic. This is the only true word it is found in.
Kwomtari[2]		[example needed]
Sko[2]		[example needed]

Prenasalized

Occurrences of [ᵐʙ] in various languages

Language		Word	IPA	Meaning	Notes
Kele[3][4]		[ᵐʙulim]		'face'	And other languages of the Admiralty Islands
Titan[3][4]		[ᵐʙutukei]		'wooden plate'
Unua[5]		[ᵐʙue]		'pig'
Ahamb[6]		[nãᵐʙwas]		'pig'	Phonemic; contrasts between /ᵐʙ/ and /ʙ̥/.
Kilmeri[2]		[example needed]

Prestopped trills and stops with trill release

Language	Word	IPA	Meaning	Notes
Sangtam	[t͡ʙàŋ][7]		'needle'	Phonemic as /t͡ʙ/, contrasts with /t͡ʙ̥ʰ/.[7]
Lizu[8][9]	TU,	[tʙ̩˥˩]	'bean'	Syllabic; allophone of /u/ after initial /pʰ, p, b, tʰ, t, d/.[8]
Namuyi[10]	tbĭh	[t͡ʙ̩˨][10]	'to slaughter'	Phonemic according to Pavlík (2017) occurring before /u/ or as a syllabic consonant. [ʙ] is classified as an allophone of /u/ following a /p/, /b/, /t/ or /d/ in the phonemic analysis of Huáng (1992:673–674), and Yǐn (2016).[11] No bilabial trills are present in the phonemic analysis of Nishida (2013).
	dbù	[d͡ʙu˥˨][10]	'wild'
	pbĭh	[p͡ʙ̩][10]	'to deliver'
	[b͡ʙuda][10]		surname
Pumi[9]	biiv	[pʙ̩˥]	'to dig'	Syllabic; allophone of /ə/ after /pʰ, p, b, tʰ, t, d/.

Phonology

In many of the languages in which the bilabial trill occurs, it occurs only as part of a prenasalized bilabial stop with trilled release, [mbʙ]. That developed historically from a prenasalized stop before a relatively high back vowel like [mbu]. In such instances, the sounds are usually still limited to the environment of a following [u]. However, the trills in Mangbetu may precede any vowel^[12] and are sometimes preceded by only a nasal.

See also

• Index of phonetics articles
• Voiceless bilabial trill