more on my "pharyngeal fricative"

Wow, I could do a whole month of research and experimentation on this!

I'm attempting to perform a pharyngeal stop. I erroneously said it was
impossible (or at least injurious), but I'm coming up with a sound not much
like that of "ahem" without the [m], i.e. politely clearing one's throat.

The sound is either a pharyngeal ejective, or a simultaneous glottal stop
and voiceless pharyngeal fricative. Sergei Starostin reconstructs at least
something like this sound for Proto-North Caucasian, and Agul may in fact
have just that in its inventory. His symbol is a barred glottal stop, which
of course is IPA for an epiglottal stop.

Agul, by the way, has pharyngeal and epiglottals, but no glottals. To have
all three phoenically appears to violate a linguistic universal, or at least
seems to be unreasonable. But I was surprised to see both bilabial and
labiodental fricatives in one African language, according to Ladefoged; same
goes for voiced lateral fricative AND voiced lateral approximant in Zulu.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm working out a layout for a 17-tone microtonal
bandoneon (tango accordion)...

Reply