Pharyngeal consonant

A pharyngeal consonant is a consonant that is articulated primarily in the pharynx. 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 the aryepiglottic folds against the epiglottis in the lower larynx, and even epiglotto-pharyngeal consonants consisting of both those movements combined. Stops and trills can only be reliably produced at the epiglottis, while fricatives can only be reliably produced in the upper pharynx. When these are treated as distinct places of articulation, the term radical consonant may be used as a cover term, or people may speak of guttural consonants instead.

In many languages, pharyngeal consonants trigger retraction of neighboring vowels, but in others they do not. Pharyngeals thereby differ from uvulars, which nearly always trigger retraction. For example, in Arabic, the vowel /a/ is fronted to [æ] next to pharyngeals, but retracted to [ɑ] next to uvulars, as in حال [ħæːl] 'condition' with a pharyngeal fricative and a fronted vowel, vs. خال [χɑːl] 'maternal uncle' with a uvular consonant and a retracted vowel.

In addition to these consonantal sounds, consonants and vowels may be secondarily pharyngealized, and strident vowels are defined by an accompanying epiglottal trill.

Pharyngeal consonants in the IPA

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

IPA	Description	Example
		Language	Orthography	IPA	Meaning
	voiceless* pharyngeal (epiglottal) stop	Aghul, Richa dialect		[jaʡ]	'center'
	voiceless pharyngeal fricative			[ħaw]	'udder'
	voiced pharyngeal fricative**			[ʕan]	'belly'
	voiceless pharyngeal (epiglottal) trill			[ʜatʃ]	'apple'
	voiced pharyngeal (epiglottal) trill			[ʢakʷ]	'light'
ʡ̯	pharyngeal (epiglottal) flap	Dahalo		(intervocalic allophone of /ʡ/)
ʕ̞	pharyngeal approximant	Danish	ravn	[ʕ̞ɑʊ̯ˀn]	'raven'
ʡʼ	pharyngeal (epiglottal) ejective	Dargwa

*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, voiceless vs voiced affricates or off-glides are attested: [ʡħ, ʡʕ] (Esling 2010: 695).

** Although traditionally placed in the fricative row of the IPA chart, [ʕ] 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: [ʕ̞], and a raising diacritic to specify that the manner is fricative: [ʕ̝].

The Hydaburg dialect of Haida has a trilled epiglottal [ʜ] and a trilled epiglottal affricate <phonos file="Voiceless_epiglottal_affricate.ogg">[ʡʜ]</phonos>. (There is some voicing in all Haida affricates, but it's analyzed as an effect of the vowel.)

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 reevaluate this position. Since a trill can only be made 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 produced epiglottal fricatives, will generally result in trilling, there is no contrast between (upper) pharyngeal and epiglottal based solely on place of articulation. Thus Esling (2010) restores a unitary pharyngeal place of articulation, with the consonants described by the IPA as epiglottal fricatives differing from pharyngeal fricatives in their manner of articulation rather than in their place:

The so-called "Epiglottal fricatives" are represented [here] as pharyngeal trills, [ʜ ʢ], since the place of articulation is identical to [ħ ʕ], 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 [ħ ʕ], but a higher larynx position is also more likely to induce trilling than in a pharyngeal fricative with a lowered larynx position. Because [ʜ ʢ] and [ħ ʕ] 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.

Edmondson et al. distinguish several subtypes of pharyngeal consonant. Pharyngeal/epiglottal stops and trills are usually produced by contracting the aryepiglottic folds of the larynx against the epiglottis. This 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, these two movements are combined, with the aryepiglottic folds and epiglottis brought together and retracted against the pharyngeal wall, an articulation that's been termed epiglotto-pharyngeal. The International Phonetic Alphabet does not have diacritics to distinguish this articulation from standard aryepiglottals; Edmonson et al. use the ad hoc and somewhat misleading transcriptions ⟨ʕ͡ʡ⟩ and ⟨ʜ͡ħ⟩. There are however several diacritics for subtypes of pharyngeal sound among the Voice Quality Symbols.

Although upper-pharyngeal stops are not found in the world's languages, so far as is known, they do occur in disordered speech.

Distribution

Pharyngeals are known primarily from three areas of the world: in North-Africa, in the Semitic, Berber, and Cushitic language families (see, for example, Somali phonology); in the Caucasus, in the Northwest, and Northeast Caucasian language families; and in British Columbia, in Haida and the Salishan and Wakashan language families. There are scattered reports of pharyngeals elsewhere, as in Sorani and Kurmanji Kurdish, Marshallese, the Nilo-Saharan language Tama, the Siouan language Nakoda, and the Californian language Achumawi. In Finnish, a weak pharyngeal fricative is the realization of /h/ after the vowels /ɑ/ or /æ/ in syllable-coda position, e.g. [tæħti] 'star', but this is mere allophony. The approximant is more common, being the realization of /r/ in such European languages as Danish and Swabian German. According to the laryngeal theory, the Proto-Indo-European language might have had pharyngeal consonants.

The fricatives and trills (that is, the pharyngeal and epiglottal fricatives) are frequently conflated as pharyngeal fricatives in the literature. Such was the case for Dahalo and northern Haida, for example, and is likely to be true for many other languages. The distinction between these sounds was only recognized by the IPA in 1989, and was not well investigated until the 1990s.

See also

• Pharyngealization
• Strident vowel
• Ayin
• Heth
• Guttural

General references

• 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)