Pausing and its Effect on Blended letters

Pausing and its Effect on Blended letters

Mr. Dr. Ali Hussein Khudair

Pausing in language: is an indication of a pause, and technically: it cuts off the sound from the end of the word for a period of time, during which it is usually breathed, to resume reading again either with what follows the suspended letter, or what precedes it. Before discussing the effect of pausing on blended sounds, it is worth defining the notion blending: it is the integration of one sound with another, a combination of two sounds, in other words: it is the auditory effect accompanying the sounds that are pressed in their places when pausing.

The issue of blending:

It is the intensity of the sounds pressure from their positions in the state of the pause, that is: the character of the blending is formed only by the availability of two elements: the pressure element and the pausing element, with attention to the difference in the pressure ratio. The following diagram shows the issue of blending.

First: Sibawayh said: “Know that among the letters are blended letters that are pressed from their places, and when they pause, they come out of the mouth with a certain sound positioned based on the tongue, and they are the letters of the Qalqalah.”

Secondly: “And among the blended are letters, if you pause at it, it goes out with a puff and the pressure would be different from the first, which are Zay, Dha’, Dhal, and Dhad, because when these letters come out with the sound of the chest, the end of it slips and stops from between the folds because it finds an outlet, so you hear a puff.”

Third: “As for the whispered letters, they all pause with a puff, because they come out with the breath, not the sound of the chest, but rather slip with it.”

Fourth: “And among them are blended letters, after which you do not hear any of what we mentioned earlier, because they did not put the pressure on the qaf and do not find an outlet as it was found in the four letters. Those are the letters lam and noon; they rise between the folds and could not find an outlet. As for the letter ‘meem’ because the lips are already shut.

The same is true of the letters ‘aayn’,  ‘ghayn’ and the ‘hamza’, because if you wanted to blow from their places, it would not be similar to the positions of the lam and the meem. If you put your tongue in its four positions then you could puff the sounds out, the sound /r/ towards the sound Dhad.

With an exhaustive look at what Sibawayh mentioned in the texts, you will find that he divides the letters - according to the way they are pronounced or the positions of the articulators - into two types: the first: what you hear (another sounds) with. The second: what you do not hear anything with.

The first: You do hear a puff with: Sibawayh divided the degrees of impurity in the sounds of Arabic into three sections, shown as follows:

1- The phonetic or oral blending

They are letters if you pause at them, an accompanying sound comes out and the tongue rises from its place, such as : (baa, jim, dal, taa, and qaf) and they are called: qalqalah letters, although these sounds belong to one group, we find characteristics that are considered secondary but separate them, there is what is pronounced from a posterior position of the articulators such as the taa and the qaf when they are occluded, and there is what is pronounced from a front position of the articulators, namely the ba, the jim, and the dal.

2- The puff or larynx blending

They are letters that if you pause at them, a puff of air accompanies those letters and are not subjected to pressure like the first, i.e., the sounds of the qalqalah; Because they come through the chest, such as: (Zay, Dhaal, Dhal, and Dhad (as described by previous scholars), if these letters come out of the chest, the end of it will slip, because there is an outlet, and the outlet of the dhad is from between the teeth, so you hear the puff. So these letters are blended with a puff because of the weakening at the end of the sound between the folds.

3-: Respiratory or Pulmonary blending

It is evident from what Sibawayh stated that all the whispered letters are characterized by blending, and the weakness of reliance in the position of these whispered sounds led to the disappearance and fading of pressure in these sounds.

The second: What you do not hear anything with:  not hearing anything, such as a puff, or a breath.

After the lam and the noon nothing can be heard,end because they rose from the folds, so they did not find the outlet available for (the zay, the zay, the daal, the za’), and the meem as well, it is not possible to hear anything with it due to the closure the lips performing that sound. The aayn, ghayn, and the hamza are also cannot accompany a puff.

As the dhad is different from the rest of its group of sounds due to the fact that the puff accompanying it is not from the folds, but rather from the teeth, the /r/ as well is performed from its position by multiple blows of the tongue on the gums. However, in the case of pausing, it can be noted that the last movement of the tongue is the attachment to the gums, and therefore there is no way for leakage of what can be heard after the /r/ ".

Click here to download the article