Voiced pharyngeal fricative

The voiced pharyngeal approximant or fricative is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ⟨ʕ⟩, and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is ?\. Epiglottals and epiglotto-pharyngeals are often mistakenly taken to be pharyngeal.

Although traditionally placed in the fricative row of the IPA chart, [ʕ] is usually an approximant. The IPA symbol itself is ambiguous, but no language is known to make a phonemic distinction between fricatives and approximants at this place of articulation.

The IPA letter ⟨ʕ⟩ is caseless. Capital ⟨꟎⟩ and lower-case ⟨꟏⟩ are pending at Unicode U+A7CE and U+A7CF.

Features

Features of the voiced pharyngeal approximant fricative:

Its manner of articulation varies between approximant and fricative, which means it is produced by narrowing the vocal tract at the place of articulation, but generally not enough to produce much turbulence in the airstream. Languages do not distinguish voiced fricatives from approximants produced in the throat.
Its place of articulation is pharyngeal, which means it is articulated with the tongue root against the back of the throat (the pharynx).
Its phonation is voiced, which means the vocal cords vibrate during the articulation.
It is an oral consonant, which means air is allowed to escape through the mouth only.
It is a central consonant, which means it is produced by directing the airstream along the center of the tongue, rather than to the sides.
Its airstream mechanism is pulmonic, which means it is articulated by pushing air solely with the intercostal muscles and abdominal muscles, as in most sounds.

Occurrence

Cased forms of the IPA letter in the Pilaga alphabet. They have been accepted by Unicode.

Pharyngeal consonants are not widespread. Sometimes, a pharyngeal approximant develops from a uvular approximant. Many languages that have been described as having pharyngeal fricatives or approximants turn out on closer inspection to have epiglottal consonants instead. For example, the candidate /ʕ/ sound in Arabic and standard Hebrew (not modern Hebrew – Israelis generally pronounce this as a glottal stop) has been variously described as a voiced epiglottal fricative, an epiglottal approximant,^[1] or a pharyngealized glottal stop.^[2]

Citations

^ Ladefoged & Maddieson (1996:167–168)
^ Thelwall (1990)
^ Doak, Ivy Grace (1997). Coeur d'Alene grammatical relations (PhD dissertation). Austin: University of Texas.
^ a b Ladefoged & Maddieson (1996:323)
^ Basbøll (2005:62)
^ Grimes, Charles E. (1999). Dardjowidjojo, Soenjono; Nasanius, Yassir (eds.). Implikasi penelitian fonologis untuk cara menulis bahasa-bahasa daerah di Kawasan Timur Indonesia [Implications from phonological research for ways of writing vernacular languages in eastern Indonesia] (PDF). PELBBA 12: Pertemuan Linguistik (Pusat Kajian) Bahasa dan Budaya Atma Jaya Kedua Belas (in Indonesian). Yogyakarta: Kanisius. pp. 173–197.
^ a b Collins & Mees (2003:201)
^ a b Dudenredaktion, Kleiner & Knöbl (2015:51)
^ a b c d Hiller, Markus. "Pharyngeals and 'lax' vowel quality" (PDF). Mannheim: Institut für Deutsche Sprache. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2014-05-28. Retrieved 2015-02-24.
^ Bonafont (2006:9)
^ Mohamed, Noriah (June 2009). "The Malay Chetty Creole Language of Malacca: A Historical and Linguistic Perspective". Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society. 82 (1 (296)): 60. JSTOR 41493734.
^ Pattison, Lois Cornelia. "Douglas Lake Okanagan: Phonology and Morphology." University of British Columbia. 1978.

General references

Basbøll, Hans (2005), The Phonology of Danish, Taylor & Francis, ISBN 0-203-97876-5
Bonafont, Door Rosa (2006), Guia de conversa universitaria amazic-catala/Tamazight-Takatalant amalal usiwel asdawan, University of Barcelona, ISBN 9788447531141
Collins, Beverley; Mees, Inger M. (2003) [First published 1981], The Phonetics of English and Dutch (5th ed.), Leiden: Brill Publishers, ISBN 9004103406
Danylenko, Andrii; Vakulenko, Serhii (1995), Ukrainian, Lincom Europa, ISBN 9783929075083
Dudenredaktion; Kleiner, Stefan; Knöbl, Ralf (2015) [First published 1962], Das Aussprachewörterbuch (in German) (7th ed.), Berlin: Dudenverlag, ISBN 978-3-411-04067-4
Ladefoged, Peter; Maddieson, Ian (1996). The Sounds of the World's Languages. Oxford: Blackwell. ISBN 0-631-19815-6.
Thelwall, Robin (1990). "Arabic". Journal of the International Phonetic Association. 20 (2): 37–41. doi:10.1017/S0025100300004266. S2CID 243640727.

External links