Pharyngeal consonant

Pharyngeal consonants in the IPA

Pharyngeal/epiglottal consonants in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA):

:Affricates*A voiced epiglottal stop may not be possible. When an epiglottal stop becomes voiced intervocalically in Dahalo, for example, it becomes a tap. Phonetically, however, both voiceless and voiced affricates and off-glides are attested: (Esling 2010: 695). :** Although traditionally placed in the fricative row of the IPA chart, is usually an approximant. Frication is difficult to produce or to distinguish because the voicing in the glottis and the constriction in the pharynx are so close to each other (Esling 2010: 695, after Laufer 1996). The IPA symbol is ambiguous, but no language distinguishes fricative and approximant at this place of articulation. For clarity, the lowering diacritic may used to specify that the manner is approximant () and a raising diacritic to specify that the manner is fricative ().

The Hydaburg dialect of Haida has a trilled epiglottal and a trilled epiglottal affricate ~. (There is some voicing in all Haida affricates, but it is analyzed as an effect of the vowel.)

For transcribing disordered speech, the extIPA provides symbols for upper-pharyngeal stops, ⟨⟩ and ⟨⟩.

Place of articulation

The IPA first distinguished epiglottal consonants in 1989, with a contrast between pharyngeal and epiglottal fricatives, but advances in laryngoscopy since then have caused specialists to re-evaluate their position. Since a trill can be made only in the pharynx with the aryepiglottic folds (in the pharyngeal trill of the northern dialect of Haida, for example), and incomplete constriction at the epiglottis, as would be required to produce epiglottal fricatives, generally results in trilling, there is no contrast between (upper) pharyngeal and epiglottal based solely on place of articulation. Esling (2010) thus restores a unitary pharyngeal place of articulation, with the consonants being described by the IPA as epiglottal fricatives differing from pharyngeal fricatives in their manner of articulation rather than in their place:

Epiglotto-pharyngeal consonantEdmondson et al. distinguish several subtypes of pharyngeal consonant. Pharyngeal or epiglottal stops and trills are usually produced by contracting the aryepiglottic folds of the larynx against the epiglottis. That articulation has been distinguished as aryepiglottal. In pharyngeal fricatives, the root of the tongue is retracted against the back wall of the pharynx. In a few languages, such as Achumawi, Amis of Taiwan and perhaps some of the Salishan languages, the two movements are combined, with the aryepiglottic folds and epiglottis brought together and retracted against the pharyngeal wall, an articulation that has been termed epiglotto-pharyngeal. The IPA does not have diacritics to distinguish this articulation from standard aryepiglottals; Edmondson et al. use the ad hoc, somewhat misleading, transcriptions and . There are, however, several diacritics for subtypes of pharyngeal sound among the Voice Quality Symbols.

Although upper-pharyngeal plosives are not found in the world's languages, apart from the rear closure of some click consonants, they occur in disordered speech. See voiceless upper-pharyngeal plosive and voiced upper-pharyngeal plosive.

Distribution

Pharyngeals are known primarily from three areas of the world:

1. the Middle East, North Africa and the Horn of Africa, in the Semitic, Berber (mostly in borrowings from Arabic) and Cushitic branches of the Afroasiatic language family
2. the Caucasus, in the Northwest, and Northeast Caucasian language families
3. the endangered native languages of British Columbia, in the Northern Haida dialects, in the Interior Salish branch of the Salishan language family, and in the southern branch of the Wakashan language family.

There are scattered reports of pharyngeals elsewhere, as in:

• Indo-European languages:
  • According to the laryngeal theory, Proto-Indo-European might have had pharyngeal consonants.
  • Indo-Iranian:
    • Iranian:
      • Western:
        • Northwestern:
          • Kurdish: ,
          • Zaza–Gorani:
            • Zaza: ,
            • Gorani: ,
        • Southwestern:
          • Kumzari:
          • Persian:
            • Tat:
              • Judeo-Tat: ,
      • Eastern:
        • Northeastern:
          • Yaghnobi: ,
    • Nuristani:
      • Northern:
        • Kalasha-ala: ,
        • Kamkata-vari:
          • Kamviri dialect: ,
    • Indo-Aryan:
      • Northern
        • Western Pahari
          • Kullui:
      • Eastern
        • Bengali-Assamese
          • some eastern Bengali dialects:
      • Western:
        • Domari: ,
      • Northwestern:
        • Sindhi:
          • Luwati: ,
  • Slavic:
    • East:
      • Ukrainian: {{efn|name=ukrainian|According to some linguists, Ukrainian may have a pharyngeal (when devoiced, or sometimes in weak positions). According to others, it is glottal .The sound is described as "laryngeal fricative consonant" ({{lang|uk|гортанний щілинний приголосний}}) in the official orthography: '§ 14. Letter H' in Український правопис, Kyiv: Naukova dumka, 2012, p. 19 (see e-text)}}
  • Germanic:
    • the approximant is a realization of in such Germanic languages as Danish and Swabian German.
  • Romance:
    • Italo-Western:
      • Western:
        • Iberian:
          • West:
            • Galician-Portuguese:
              • some dialects of Galician:
            • Castilian:
              • Judeo-Spanish:
                • Haketia: ,
• Austronesian languages:
  • Formosan:
    • East:
      • Amis: ~ ,
    • Atayalic:
      • Atayal:
    • Northern:
      • Pazeh:
  • Malayo-Polynesian:
    • Malayic:
      • Kedah Malay:
    • Central–Eastern:
      • Central:
        • Sumba–Flores:
          • Savu:
            • Dhao:
        • Timoric:
          • Mambai:
• Niger–Congo languages:
  • Atlantic-Congo:
    • Volta-Congo:
      • Volta-Niger:
        • Gbe:
          • Ewe:
    • Senufo:
      • Suppire–Mamara:
        • Minyanka:
• Nilo-Saharan languages:
  • Bʼaga:
    • Daatsʼiin:
  • Saharan:
    • Eastern:
      • Zaghawa:
  • Songhay:
    • Northern:
      • Tadaksahak: ,
      • Tagdal: ,
      • Korandje: ,
• Chukotko-Kamchatkan languages:
  • Chukotkan:
    • Koryak:
    • Alyutor:
    • Kerek:
• the language isolate Kusunda of Nepal:
• the Papuan language Teiwa:
• the Guaicuruan language Pilagá:
• the Mayan language Achi:
• the Siouan language Stoney (Nakoda): ,
• the Achumawi language of California:

The fricatives and trills (the pharyngeal and epiglottal fricatives) are frequently conflated with pharyngeal fricatives in literature. That was the case for Dahalo and Northern Haida, for example, and it is likely to be true for many other languages. The distinction between these sounds was recognized by IPA only in 1989, and it was little investigated until the 1990s.

Notes

Sources

• Maddieson, I., & Wright, R. (1995). The vowels and consonants of Amis: A preliminary phonetic report. In I. Maddieson (Ed.), UCLA working papers in phonetics: Fieldwork studies of targeted languages III (No. 91, pp. 45–66). Los Angeles: The UCLA Phonetics Laboratory Group. (in pdf)

References

1. (13 November 2021). "The Articulatory and acoustics Effects of Pharyngeal Consonants on Adjacent Vowels in Arabic Language". Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Natural Language and Speech Processing (ICNLSP 2021).
2. Polinsky, Maria. (2020). "The Oxford handbook of languages of the Caucasus". Oxford university press.
3. Kodzasov, S. V. Pharyngeal Features in the Daghestan Languages. ''Proceedings of the Eleventh International Congress of Phonetic Sciences'' (Tallinn, Estonia, Aug 1-7 1987), pp. 142-144.
4. "Haida Words".
5. "Supraglottal cavity shape, linguistic register, and other phonetic features of Somali".
6. John Esling (2010) "Phonetic Notation", in Hardcastle, Laver & Gibbon (eds) The Handbook of Phonetic Sciences, 2nd ed., p 695.
   The reference "Esling, 1999" is to "The iPA categories 'pharyngeal' and 'epiglottal': laryngoscopic observations of the pharyngeal articulations and larynx height." ''Language and Speech'', 42, 349–372.
7. Edmondson, Jerold A., John H. Esling, Jimmy G. Harris, & Huang Tung-chiou (n.d.) [http://ling.uta.edu/~jerry/amisf.pdf "A laryngoscopic study of glottal and epiglottal/pharyngeal stop and continuant articulations in Amis—an Austronesian language of Taiwan"] {{Webarchive. link. (July 17, 2012)
8. Nevin, Bruce. (1998). "Aspects of Pit River Phonology". The University of Pennsylvania.
9. "Video clips".
10. Kossmann, Maarten. (2017-03-29). "Berber-Arabic Language Contact".
11. (1995). "Ukrainian". Lincom Europa.
12. (2005). "Ukrainian: A Comprehensive Grammar". Routledge.
13. Українська мова: енциклопедія, Kyiv, 2000, p. 85.