‘Pharyngeal ’ and ‘Pharyngealisation ’ in the Caucasian Languages: Phonological Correlates vs Phonetic Realisations

The indigenous Caucasian languages are renowned for their wide use of secondary articulations (labialisation, palatalisation, pharyngealisation), which leads to an abundance of contrastive consonants (e.g. 81 in Ubykh, 83 in Abaza [Colarusso, 1992, 1994]), including a remarkable array of uvulars and pharyngeals. Whereas ‘pharyngeal ’ has been widely discussed in the phonology literature in relation to Arabic, this is not so for the Caucasian languages. However, interestingly, it appears that both phonetically and phonologically, pharyngeals and ‘pharyngealised ’ segments in Caucasian languages differ in some respects from those in Arabic. For Caucasian there are many reports of epiglottopharyngeals, with some languages contrasting ‘plain ’ and ‘deep’ pharyngeals, unlike Arabic; Caucasian pharyngeals often have lowering and fronting effects on vowels, whereas in Arabic they typically lower (and back) vowels, etc. Typologically, Caucasian languages appear to be rather unusual, for these reasons among others. This paper addresses the above issues from a theoretical angle, seeking to account for ‘anomalies ’ within an existing framework, rather than resorting to inventing new categories. My claim centres on what is meant by ‘pharyngealisation ’ in reference to Caucasian languages (specifically, the Nakh-Daghestanian and Abkhaz-Adyghan groups), and I make appeal to monovalent elements, looking at the phonological behaviour of pharyngealised vowels, pharyngeals and pharyngealised consonants