The Emphatic and Pharyngeal Sounds in Hebrew and in Arabic

Abstract

This study addresses physiological, acoustic, and linguistic issues in the production of the emphatic sounds // and the pharyngeal sounds //. Approximately 300 minutes of video recordings were obtained from nine Hebrew and Arabic speakers; using a fiberscope positioned in the upper pharynx and simultaneous audio recording through an external microphone. We also studied a cineradiographic film of three Arabic speakers. Results clearly show that all the emphatic sounds, when pronounced as such, share pharyngealization as a secondary articulation. A constriction is formed between the pharyngeal walls and the tip of the epiglottis, which tilts backwards. To a lesser degree, the lower part of the root of the tongue is also retracted. The data show that all the emphatic and pharyngeal sounds we studied are made with qualitatively the same pharyngeal constriction. However, the pharyngeal constriction is more extreme and less variable for the pharyngeal sounds, where it is the primary articulation, than for the emphatic sounds, where it is a secondary articulation. Because the same sort of pharyngealization is seen for all the emphatics, we use a common notational symbol, [~], for all of them, including // in place of /q/. We note that where pharyngeals and pharyngealized sounds were realized, the Hebrew and Arabic speakers produced them in essentially the same way.