ABSTRACT
Arabic has a relatively large number of speech sounds whose primary or secondary articulation lies in the pharynx. The pharyngeals are traditionally transcribed with symbols that may not capture even coarse-grained phonetic parameters, like manner of articulation. Reports vary widely as to the articulatory nature of the pharyngeals. It appears that both the pharyngeals and emphatics are marked by a high degree of phonetic variability across speakers, dialects, and speech styles. The chapter discusses the acoustic and articulatory characteristics of the pharyngeal and emphatic classes in Arabic. It provides a discussion of future directions in the study of these speech sounds, including recent work on real-time magnetic resonance imaging (rt-MRI) of pharyngeal and emphatics in running speech. These innovative techniques allow one for the first time to visualize the pharynx from multiple angles during speech. The articulatory realization of the consonants has implications for dialectology, sound change, models of articulatory control, acoustic-articulatory mapping, and language pedagogy.
