Re: Velarization, uvularization, pharyngealization

Personally I've never really seen the tilde-through symbol in use much
before except with the letter 'l' or 'L'. I too was a little
confounded when I first picked up Arabic, because the usual lay way of
pronunciation description didn't register at all in my brain how on
earth to pronounce those obscure sounds -- but then, I think it was on
Wikipedia, I saw that the emphatics were transcribed with a
superscript gamma (the velar fricative, not the vowel) and everything
became much clearer. Where is it that you saw the tilde used?

Eugene

2007/1/27, Eric Christopherson <rakko@...>:
> 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?
>
> Also, there doesn't seem to be much mention of uvularization out
> there. Is this because of the continuum between pharyngealization and
> velarization that I hypothesized in the above paragraph? Does any
> language have uvularization separate from either velarization or
> pharyngealization?
>
> Finally, when pharyngealized consonants are pronounced in (e.g.)
> Arabic, the pharyngeal component doesn't have a fricative character,
> does it? Is it similar (or identical) to pronouncing a consonant and
> a pharyngeal approximant simultaneously?
>