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Apharyngeal consonant is aconsonant that isarticulated primarily in thepharynx. Some phoneticians distinguish upper pharyngeal consonants, or "high" pharyngeals, pronounced by retracting the root of the tongue in the mid to upper pharynx, from (ary)epiglottal consonants, or "low" pharyngeals, which are articulated with thearyepiglottic folds against theepiglottis at the entrance of the larynx, as well as from epiglotto-pharyngeal consonants, with both movements being combined.
Stops and trills can be reliably produced only at the epiglottis, and fricatives can be reliably produced only in the upper pharynx.[why?][citation needed] When they are treated as distinct places of articulation, the termradical consonant may be used as a cover term, or the termguttural consonants may be used instead.
Pharyngeal consonants can trigger effects on neighboring vowels. Instead ofuvulars, which nearly always trigger retraction, pharyngeals tend to trigger lowering. For example, inMoroccan Arabic, pharyngeals tend to lower neighboring vowels (corresponding to the formant 1).[1] In Chechen, it causes lowering as well, in addition to centralization and lengthening of the segment/a/.[2]
In addition, consonants and vowels may be secondarilypharyngealized. Also,strident vowels are defined by an accompanying epiglottal trill.
Pharyngeal/epiglottal consonants in theInternational Phonetic Alphabet (IPA):
| IPA | Description | Example | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Language | Orthography | IPA | Meaning | ||
| ʡ | voiceless* pharyngeal (epiglottal) plosive | Aghul, Richa dialect[3] | йагьІ | [jaʡ][citation needed] | 'center' |
| ʜ | voiceless pharyngeal (epiglottal) trill | хІач | [ʜatʃ] | 'apple' | |
| ʢ | voiced pharyngeal (epiglottal) trill | Іекв | [ʢakʷ] | 'light' | |
| ħ | voiceless pharyngeal fricative | Arabic | حَـر | [ħar] | 'heat' |
| ʕ | voiced pharyngeal fricative** | عـين | [ʕajn] | 'eye' | |
| ʡ̮ | pharyngeal (epiglottal) flap | Dahalo | [nd̠ódoʡ̮o]ⓘ | 'mud' | |
| ʕ̞ | pharyngeal approximant | Danish | ravn | [ʕ̞ɑʊ̯ˀn] | 'raven' |
| ʡ͜ʜ | Voiceless epiglottal affricate | Haida (Hydaburg Dialect) | x̱ung[4] | [ʡ͜ʜuŋ] | 'father' |
| ʡ͜ʢ | Voiced epiglottal affricate | Somali[5] | cad | [ʡ͜ʢaʔ͜t] | 'white' |
| ꞯ | Voiceless upper-pharyngeal plosive | [Ext-IPA for speech pathology] | |||
| 𝼂 | Voiced upper-pharyngeal plosive | ||||
The Hydaburg dialect ofHaida has a trilled epiglottal[ʜ] and a trilled epiglottal affricate[ʡʜ]~[ʡʢ]. (There is some voicing in all Haida affricates, but it is analyzed as an effect of the vowel.)[citation needed]
For transcribingdisordered speech, theextIPA provides symbols for upper-pharyngeal stops, ⟨ꞯ⟩ and ⟨𝼂⟩.
The IPA first distinguished epiglottal consonants in 1989, with a contrast between pharyngeal and epiglottal fricatives, but advances inlaryngoscopy since then have caused specialists to re-evaluate their position. Since a trill can be made only in the pharynx with thearyepiglottic folds (in the pharyngeal trill of the northern dialect ofHaida, for example), and incomplete constriction at the epiglottis, as would be required to produce epiglottal fricatives, generally results in trilling,[why?] 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 theirmanner of articulation rather than in their place:
The so-called "Epiglottal fricatives" are represented [here] as pharyngeal trills,[ʜʢ], since the place of articulation is identical to[ħʕ], but trilling of the aryepiglottic folds is more likely to occur in tighter settings of the laryngeal constrictor or with more forceful airflow. The same "epiglottal" symbols could represent pharyngeal fricatives that have a higher larynx position than[ħʕ], but a higher larynx position is also more likely to induce trilling than in a pharyngeal fricative with a lowered larynx position. Because[ʜʢ] and[ħʕ] occur at the same Pharyngeal/Epiglottal place of articulation (Esling, 1999), the logical phonetic distinction to make between them is in manner of articulation, trill versus fricative.[6]
Edmondson et al. distinguish several subtypes of pharyngeal consonant.[7] 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 asaryepiglottal. In pharyngeal fricatives, the root of the tongue is retracted against the back wall of the pharynx. In a few languages, such asAchumawi,[8]Amis ofTaiwan[9] and perhaps some of theSalishan 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 termedepiglotto-pharyngeal. The IPA does not have diacritics to distinguish this articulation from standard aryepiglottals; Edmondson et al. use thead hoc, somewhat misleading, transcriptions ⟨ʕ͡ʡ⟩ and ⟨ʜ͡ħ⟩.[7] There are, however, several diacritics for subtypes of pharyngeal sound among theVoice Quality Symbols.
Although upper-pharyngeal plosives are not found in the world's languages, apart from the rear closure of someclick consonants, they occur in disordered speech. Seevoiceless upper-pharyngeal plosive andvoiced upper-pharyngeal plosive.
Pharyngeals are known primarily from three areas of the world:
There are scattered reports of pharyngeals elsewhere, as in:
The fricatives and trills (the pharyngeal and epiglottal fricatives) are frequently conflated with pharyngeal fricatives in literature. That was the case forDahalo and NorthernHaida, 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.
