We believe that the importance of the epiglottis in speech has been generally underestimated in the phonetic literature. Our evidence leads us to conclude that the epiglottis is an active and independent articulator in the production of pharyngeal consonants and that it is involved in the production of the vowel [a] and in whisper. In earlier phonetic works that we have examined, to the extent that the epiglottis is mentioned at all, it is generally said to have no speech function. An exception to this is the work of Russell (1931), Appelman (1967) and Wilson (1976), where they suggest that the epiglottis is crucial to the production of [a], but because they rely on lateral x-rays, they are unable to complete a convincing case.

In this paper it will be claimed that English is currently undergoing a vowel shift similar in effect to the fifteenth century Great Vowel Shift. A comment to this effect is made by Hawkins (1973), but the idea is not developed there. Evidence will be taken from twentieth-century descriptions of English, and from descriptions of varieties of English.

The Neo-Aramaic (NA) language makes noticeable use of the phenomena of aspiration and emphasis (pharyngealization) to enhance its inventory of linguistic units. Aspiration is mainly restricted to plosives and affricates. Except for /q/ and /?/, each plosive and affricate joins in a three-way opposition based on voicing and aspiration. Thus they appear as follows: /b/, /p/, /ph/; /d/, /t/, /th/, /ɟ/, /c/, /ch/; /dʒ/, /t∫/, /t∫h/. Emphasis is more widely exploited than aspiration. Almost all the units of NA have direct emphatic counterparts. What draws the attention is that sounds produced at what could be broadly labelled as the palatal area are the least susceptible to emphasis. For instance, no emphatic counterparts of /ʒ/ or /c/ are attested. Although /t∫/, too, lacks any direct emphatic counterpart, there is nevertheless a linguistic unit describable as a voiceless unaspirated emphatic alveolar affricate, thus /ts/. The existence of this unit, together with certain other phonetic observations, raises the possibility of a phonetic and phonological relationship between /t∫/ and /ŧs/ in the sense that the latter has emerged in the system to function as the emphatic counterpart of the former.

/ ðes god wεðɐ weɐr tɐdee ez trule ɐ pjoɐ plεƷɐ bɐt ae dεɐsee tɐmɒrəo kod izɐle ∫əo SΛmθeŋ dƷΛst hao fα ðɐ brete∫ klaemet kan tən. trεt∫ɐrɐs. /