Re: Velarization, uvularization, pharyngealization

On Jan 28, 2007, at 7:48 AM, Benct Philip Jonsson wrote:
> Eric Christopherson skrev:
> > I've noticed that descriptions of the "emphatic"
> > consonants in Arabic usually say that they are
> > pharyngealized, but sometimes they are described as
> > velarized instead. Also, the tilde diacritic through a
> > letter (not above it) in IPA is described as "velarized or
> > pharyngealized". For this reason I am led to ask: do
> > languages which have velarization or pharyngealization
> > generally not distinguish between the two? Are speakers
> > free in any given utterance to select velarization or
> > pharyngealization or something in between?
> I think we may assume that there is such variation in
> Arabic, and that this is the reason for the ambiguous tilde
> overlay symbol in the first place. Olden IPA was even more
> phonologically oriented than present IPA, and rather much
> oriented towards the 'major' European languages and the
> 'major' languages of their colonial dependencies.
> IPA doesn't even have an official symbol for
> uvularization, although Unicode has the obvious small
> raised turned R at \u02B6.
> BTW, doesn't /q/ rather much function as the emphatic
> counterpart of /k/ in Semitic languages. (Steg, are
> you here?)
> --
> /BP 8^)
> --
>   B.Philip Jonsson mailto:melrochX@melroch.se (delete X)

I am not here (unless this email goes through)... i'm set NOMAIL.
Thanks for pointing this directly my way.
I remember when learning Arabic the emphatics were definitely
pharyngealized.  That doesn't mean that other dialects couldn't be
velarized, though.  Or it could be that the two features are closely
linked due to the way the tongue is pulled back to produce them.

/q/ does function as the emphatic equivalent of /k/, at least in
those languages that use pharyngealization(/velarization?).  If i
remember correctly, there are others that have glottalization, where
it's a straight glottalized /k/.


-Stephen (Steg)