24 - Orals, gutturals, and the jaw

Summary

Introduction

In Arabic, gutturals – uvular fricatives, pharyngeal fricatives and laryngeals –behave phonologically as a natural class in terms of some phonological phenomena such as co-occurrence restrictions and guttural lowering rules. The uvular stop /q/ does not pattern with gutturals with respect to these two phonological phenomena in Arabic. As shown in Figure 24.1a, gutturals have traditionally been specified as [-anterior, -hi] in the SPE system. The features [low] and [back] distinguish the uvulars, pharyngeals, and laryngeals from one another. However, this analysis suffers from phonetic unrealism. The features [low] and [back] in the SPE system are defined in terms of tongue body position. Yet laryngeals, which are said to be [+low], cannot involve the tongue at all, and pharyngeals, which are said to be [+low, +back], involve the tongue root instead of the tongue body.

The specification of gutturals also provides problems in feature geometries developed within non-linear models of phonology, such as those of Clements (1985) and Sagey (1986). First, if we translate the SPE feature specifications directly into these frameworks, the use of [anterior] for gutturals is impossible since in these feature geometry frameworks, it is used for specifications only of coronal consonants. The more crucial problem for these frameworks, especially for articulator-based feature geometry frameworks such as Sagey's (1986), is that gutturals do not share a single major articulator.