An Aerodynamic Study of the Effect of Guttural and Emphatic Consonants on the Spread of Consonantal Nasality in Arabic

This research paper falls within the realm of experimental phonetics. It investigates the aerodynamic effect of guttural and emphatic consonants on the spread of nasality in Arabic. There is relatively little research done that explores the aerodynamic properties of guttural and emphatic consonants and their effect on the extent of consonantal nasality. Temporal measurements of aerodynamic data, collected using EVA2 System, indicate that the contexts of glottal consonant /h/ and pharyngeal consonants /(sic) h/ are the most conducive to the spreading of nasality. They also reveal that emphatic consonants (/t((sic)), d((sic)), s((sic)), o((sic))/) are less opaque to the extent of nasalization than their non-emphatic counterparts. On the other hand, measurements of airflow quantities confirm the former measurements and show that glottal and pharyngeal consonants allow adjacent vowels to gain the maximum proportional nasal airflow. The same result applies to the context of emphatics in juxtaposition with their non-emphatic counterparts.