Acoustic Evidence of the Prevalence of the Emphatic Feature over the Word in Arabic

An acoustic study is carried out to see whether the phenomenon of pharyngalization and/or velarizsation is confined to the emphatic consonant and the adjacent vowels or it extends over the whole word in Arabic. Measurements in Hz of F1 & F2 of front unrounded vowels in monosyllabic, bisyllabic and trisyllabic words in ISA having emphatic vs. non-emphatic consonants were made. They showed significant narrowing between F1 & F2 for vowels in the vicinity of emphatic consonants than those in the vicinity of non-emphatic consonants. This is attributed to the secondary coarticulatory configuration formed in the pharyngeal region by the projection of the root of the tongue toward the back wall of the pharynx and possible lowering of the velum toward rising tongue dorsum which prevails, though in different levels of significance, over the other syllables of the