ABSTRACT
Arabic has a relatively large number of speech sounds whose primary or secondary articulation lies in the pharynx. Among these sounds are the pharyngeal class, including /ħ ʕ/ < ح ع> and the emphatic or pharyngealized class, including (in Standard Arabic) /sˁ dˁ tˁ ðˁ/ < ظ ط ض ص >, which stand in phonemic contrast to the plain class /s d t ð/ < س د ت ذ >. Some examples of the plain/emphatic contrast include the following minimal pairs: /nasaba/ ‘imputed’ vs. /nasˁaba/ ‘erected’; /tin/ ‘fig’ vs. /tˁin/ ‘clay’; and /darb/ ‘path’ vs. /dˁarb/ ‘hitting’. An emphatic tap has been posited as a marginal phoneme in at least one dialect (Watson 2002). In addition, a variety of other consonants may be realized as emphatic allophones: [bˁ lˁ mˁ] (Watson 2002). Symbolic transcriptions tend to suggest uniformity in the production of a speech sound, which may be misleading. According to Ladefoged (1993, p. 280), “As soon as [phonetic] data is segmented or described in any way … phonological considerations are bound to be present.” For both the emphatics and pharyngeals, a symbolic transcription seems too phonologically reductive to capture the degree of phonetic variation attested in the literature. Both emphatics and pharyngeals still require significant study, particularly in terms of whole-vocal-tract imaging, to better understand their articulatory and consequent acoustic characteristics across speakers, dialects, and speech styles. Because the sounds are relatively well-studied in Arabic, it will be beneficial to study the sounds as they are realized in other Semitic and Caucasian languages, as well (Maddieson 2009).
