Pharyngeal consonant

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A pharyngeal consonant is a consonant that is articulated primarily in the pharynx. Some phoneticians distinguish upper pharyngeal consonants, or "high" pharyngeals, pronounced by retracting the root of the tongue in the mid to upper pharynx, from (ary)epiglottal consonants, or "low" pharyngeals, which are articulated with the aryepiglottic folds against the epiglottis at the entrance of the larynx, as well as from epiglotto-pharyngeal consonants, with both movements being combined.

Stops and trills can be reliably produced only at the epiglottis, and fricatives can be reliably produced only in the upper pharynx.^{[why?][citation needed]} When they are treated as distinct places of articulation, the term radical consonant may be used as a cover term, or the term guttural consonants may be used instead.

Pharyngeal consonants can trigger effects on neighboring vowels. Instead of uvulars, which nearly always trigger retraction, pharyngeals tend to trigger lowering. For example, in Moroccan Arabic, pharyngeals tend to lower neighboring vowels (corresponding to the formant 1).^[1] Meanwhile, in Chechen, it causes lowering as well, in addition to centralization and lengthening of the segment /a/.^[2]

In addition, consonants and vowels may be secondarily pharyngealized. Also, strident vowels are defined by an accompanying epiglottal trill.