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In Modern Standard Arabic, phonemic /lˤ/ (a.k.a. "emphatic l") only occurs in one native word: Allah /ʔalˤˈlˤaːh/. (According to the linked article, it also occurs in a few loanwords.)

This seems like a profoundly weird situation. If a phoneme exists at all, you'd expect it to show up more than once. Imagine a time before the loanwords with /lˤ/ were borrowed. Would allah then have been the only instance of /lˤ/ in the entire lexicon of the language? I know that's logically possible, but intuitively it strikes me as completely bizarre.

So what happened? How did this weird situation come about? (Or is it less of a weird situation than I think? I'd be happy to hear about other languages that have similar "one-off" phonemes.)

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One could hypothesize that the pharyngeality is due to the effect of the two glottal consonants /ʔ/ and /h/ at the beginning and end of the word. This probably isn’t the case however, since this hypothesis would imply that there should be other words with pharyngealization of the middle consonant due to glottal consonants appearing at the beginning and end of the word. I doubt that they exist, given that you say /lˤ/ only occurs in /ʔalˤˈlˤaːh/.

There is an article about the pharyngealized voiced lateral approximant “emphatic l” in Arabic:

  • Ferguson, Charles A. 1956. The emphatic l in Arabic. Language 32.3: 446–452.

Another article discusses the spread of pharyngealization in the context of Grounded Phonology.

  • Davis, Stuart. 1995. Emphasis spread in Arabic and Grounded Phonology. Linguistic Inquiry 26.3: 465–498.

These might at least give you some references to dig further.

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The Ferguson paper has a really nice statement of the problem. It doesn't seem to offer a solution, but it's still good to know I'm not completely off-base in being confused. – Dan Velleman Nov 17 '11 at 17:54
Also, since you mentioned spreading: There are (in many modern dialects) words where [lˤ] shows up as a predictable allophone of /l/, conditioned by an emphatic consonant elsewhere in the word. The puzzling thing is that "Allah" doesn't have any other emphatic consonants in it. /ʔ/ and /h/ don't trigger this sort of predictable emphasis spreading. So in this one specific case, you have to treat the /lˤ/ as phonemic. – Dan Velleman Nov 17 '11 at 17:57
Note that the glottal stop is normally only pronounced when it's at the beginning of the sentence, otherwise it would be absorbed by the final vowel of the preceding word, like "Abdullah", and the l will still be emphatic in those cases. – Louis Rhys♦ Nov 18 '11 at 18:13
@LouisRhys: You should know that "Abdullah" is in fact derived from "Allah" - it means "servant of Allah". At least in the local pronunciation where I live (Israel), the last part is pronounced as is "Allah". – dotancohen May 2 at 21:12
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up vote 4 down vote

This is not unheard of in onomatopoeic and other "expressive" parts of the lexicon. English for example has "unh-uh" /ʌ̃ʔʌ/ (meaning approximately "no"), which has a nasalized vowel and a medial glottal stop, otherwise not present in the language (as underlying segments). Allah isn't quite in this category, but (given a cultural background of monotheism etc.) it might be "special" enough to sustain an exceptional phoneme.

(Of course, this is just one possible explanation; I don't know anything about the actual history of the word.)

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I added the "wedge-with-a-tilde" you were looking for ;-) – Otavio Macedo♦ Nov 16 '11 at 22:47
perhaps this explains how they are sustained, but do you know how did they occur in the first place? – Louis Rhys♦ Nov 17 '11 at 10:11
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There is something tempting about the idea that it's phonologically special just because it's theologically special. But does that occur in any other language? Special phonemes that are reserved for culturally important words? – Dan Velleman Nov 17 '11 at 18:04
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@DanVelleman, the other example that springs to mind is Damin, a ceremonial language/dialect of Australia. It is the only click language outside of Australia (although it is thought to have arisen by conscious invention as opposed to spontaneously). – Aaron Nov 29 '11 at 22:08
@Aaron: "Outside of Africa", I'm assuming? – jogloran Feb 29 at 3:41
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