Whence Come Voiced Pharyngeal Consonants?

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Hydroeccentricity
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Whence Come Voiced Pharyngeal Consonants?

Post by Hydroeccentricity »

I'm certain this question has been asked before, but I searched and didn't find it. Where do these consonants come from in Arabic and other languages? What are some of the most common sound changes that can lead to voiced pharyngeal fricatives?
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Re: Whence Come Voiced Pharyngeal Consonants?

Post by vokzhen »

Arabic itself has pharyngeals as far back as we can trace, Proto-Afro-Asiatic is reconstructed with them.

Scattered Germanic languages/dialects have a shift of /r/ to pharyngeal, along with dialects of Portuguese and maybe a few others.

During Biblical Hebrew times, the back fricatives *x *ɣ (or *χ *ʁ) merged with already-existing *ħ *ʕ. Pretty sure I've heard of uvulars backing in other places as well; I *think* the epiglottals in Amis corresponds to *q in other Formosan languages. In Chechen and Ingush, /k'/ is apparently post-velar and /q'/ is farther back than the other uvulars. You've also got Somali that has an epiglottalized uvular or uvular-epiglottal.

There can also be allophony of /h/ near back vowels like /ɑ/, just like it palatalizes or labializes next to /i/ and /u/ in some languages.

Galician has intervocalic /g/ > [ɣ] > [ħ], along with other voiceless back fricatives as possibilities. Apparently Ukrainian might have [ʕ] instead of the more common /g/ (Russian) or /ɦ/ (<ɣ<g) (Czech). Compare /r/ > /ʕ/, which goes through a voiced velar/uvular continuant stage first as well.

There's also the shift of ejectives to pharyngealized stops in Aramaic, Hebrew, Arabic, and Abkhaz-Abaza, though it doesn't create pure pharyngeals. Pharyngealization of vowels or consonants can cause shedding of pharyngeal consonants, e.g. in Chechen and Ingush (where pharyngealization is analyzed as a feature of consonants and vowels, respectively) where /t d/ are unaspirated and full voiced, while under pharyngealization they have epiglottal aspiration and epiglottal murmur, something like [t d tʜ dʢʱ]. Apparently native speaker intuition is that it's a cluster in Chechen, and for Ingush with the voiceless consonants, but afaict is historically vocalic in nature.

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Re: Whence Come Voiced Pharyngeal Consonants?

Post by Pabappa »

I wonder if nasal vowels could go pharyngral, as in an inverse of [[rhinoglottophilia]]. Even if so, i dont thbnink thatd work for consonants.

Id expect /ʕ/ to mlsty just come from debuccalization of another voiced conosnants. if /s/ can go to /h/ in so many langauges, why not /z/ > /ʕ/ ? or /v/, /ɣ/, etc. Ive used that shift in conlangs. Ive also used /0/ > /ʕ/ when the second syllable is accented., i.e. a vowel hiatus of , e.g. /eo/ > /eô/ where ^ indicates phagryngeralization.

Lastly I dont know if this is attested but, if you generate pharyngealized consonants from some other shigft, could they damp out to just /ʕ/ as well? As above, if /pʰ tʰ kʰ/ > /h/ (in Marathi), why not /pʕ/ etc > /ʕ/ ?
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Re: Whence Come Voiced Pharyngeal Consonants?

Post by CatDoom »

I'm not sure there are examples of it actually happening, but I know I've seen speculation about laterals becoming pharyngeal via the pathway l > ɫ > ʕ.

The pharyngeal approximant ʕ̞ is considered to be equivalent to ɑ̯, so ɑ could go to ʕ̞ in hiatus or something.

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Re: Whence Come Voiced Pharyngeal Consonants?

Post by Nortaneous »

CatDoom wrote:I'm not sure there are examples of it actually happening, but I know I've seen speculation about laterals becoming pharyngeal via the pathway l > ɫ > ʕ.

The pharyngeal approximant ʕ̞ is considered to be equivalent to ɑ̯, so ɑ could go to ʕ̞ in hiatus or something.
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Re: Whence Come Voiced Pharyngeal Consonants?

Post by Šọ̈́gala »

One might imagine that pharyngeal consonants could derive from assimilation with pharyngealized vowels. Various phonation effects can be caused by tone, so that might be the ultimate culprit.

In my conlang, I once had it that pharyngealized vowels ultimately derive from something like VgV > VɣV > VʁV > VʕV > Vˤ, which in principal looks like it includes a pharyngeal consonant stage, but really I imagine the pharyngeal articulation to occur just about simultaneously with complete loss of the consonant. I have no idea how realistic this scenario is. I'm currently agnostic as to whether this scenario or a low tone or god know's what else was the original source of the marked phonation.

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Re: Whence Come Voiced Pharyngeal Consonants?

Post by Αυτοβοτα »

In Northern Haida, the pharyngeals (realized by some as epiglottal trills) descend from earlier uvulars.
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