Epiglotto-pharyngeal consonant

An epiglotto-pharyngeal consonant is a newly reported type of consonant, articulated with the epiglottis against the back wall of the pharynx. This contrasts with the pharyngeal consonants, where the root of the tongue contacts the back wall of the pharynx, and prototypical epiglottal consonants, where the aryepiglottic folds contact the epiglottis.

Epiglotto-pharyngeal consonants have been reported (and videotaped) in one language, the Formosan language Ami of Taiwan, which has a released stop and, apparently, a fricative as phrase-final allophones of its (ary)epiglottal consonants. The International Phonetic Alphabet does not have diacritics to distinguish these sounds from the epiglottals; the discoverers used the ad hoc and somewhat misleading transcriptions [ʕ͡ʡ] and [ʜ͡ħ].
They are also said to occur in the Tsez language of southwestern Dagestan.

[edit] References

• Paper on the articulation, with photos (pdf)
• Video clips
• Maddieson, Ian; & Wright, Richard. (1995). The vowels and consonants of Amis: A preliminary phonetic report. In I. Maddieson (Ed.), UCLA working papers in phonetics: Fieldwork studies of targeted languages III (No. 91, pp. 45-66). Los Angeles: The UCLA Phonetics Laboratory Group.

[edit] See also

• Place of articulation
• List of phonetics topics