Pharyngeal Consonant - Characteristics

Characteristics

Pharyngeals are known primarily from three areas of the world: in North-Africa/Mideast (in the Semitic, Berber, and Cushitic language families); in the Caucasus (in the Northwest Caucasian, and Northeast Caucasian language families); and in British Columbia (in the Salishan, and Wakashan language families). There are scattered reports of pharyngeals elsewhere, such as in the Nilo-Saharan Tama language. In Finnish, a weak pharyngeal fricative is the realization of /h/ after the vowels /ɑ/ or /æ/ in syllable-coda position, e.g. 'star', but since this is mere allophony, it is transcribed as /h/. According to the laryngeal theory, the Proto-Indo-European language might also have contained pharyngeal consonants.

Note that reported pharyngeals frequently turn out to be epiglottals. Such was the case for Dahalo and northern Haida, for example, and is likely to be true for many if not most of the others. This is perhaps because 'epiglottal' was only recently recognized as a distinct place of articulation, rather than a variant of 'pharyngeal'. Contrastive pharyngeals and epiglottals are known only from the Richa dialect of Aghul, a Lezgian language of Dagestan: /ħaw/ "udder" vs. /ʜatʃ/ "apple" and /ʕan/ "belly" vs. /ʢakʷ/ "light".

Recently, a possible new place of articulation, epiglotto-pharyngeal, was reported.