The Prevalence of Voiceless Realisations of /ʕ/ as Produced by Young Iraqi Arabic Speakers

Most studies investigating the pharyngeal consonant /ʕ/ found it to be voiced whether approximant or fricative. few instances in some arabic dialects, iraqi being among them, were found to be voiceless and with those being related to stops only. further investigations showed what seems to be an increase of voicelessness. accordingly, acoustic and auditory analyses of the realizations of /ʕ/ were investigated in recordings of university-aged male iraqi arabic speakers from a number of iraqi cities. results showed /ʕ/ has more „voicelessness‟ than voicing for all three manners of articulation. the sound is found to be characterized as a voiceless fricative, a voiceless approximant, or a voiceless stop. these voiceless productions were found in both initial and final word positions, but more prevalent in final position. few productions were of voiced approximants; those were mostly found in initial position. /ʕ/ is also accompanied by glottal bursts, creak and aspiration. the age range of the speakers could explain the frequency of occurrence of the voicelessness of the sound, which has not been previously, reported in the literature.