emphatic

Emphatic is an adjective meaning designed to express emphasis or strong feeling. It can describe speech, writing, or behavior that is forceful or clearly intended to persuade or convince. The term also appears in linguistic discussions as a label for a particular class of sounds or constructions used to mark emphasis or distinctiveness. In addition to its descriptive use, emphatic can function as a noun in some linguistic contexts to refer to those sounds or constructions themselves.

In linguistics, emphatics are consonants or related phonetic features associated with a secondary articulation that gives them a stronger or more marked sound. They are found in several language families, most notably among Semitic languages. In those languages, emphatic consonants are often described as pharyngealized or velarized and contrast with non-emphatic consonants. Arabic, for example, traditionally distinguishes a set of emphatic consonants such as ص, ض, ط, and ظ. The exact articulatory realization and phonological status of emphatics can vary by language, and some modern analyses prefer terms like “secondary articulation” to describe the feature rather than the older label of “emphasis.”

In English and many other languages, emphasis is achieved through syntactic, prosodic, and lexical means rather than special phonemic categories. Emphatic construction can involve using auxiliary do for emphasis (as in “I do want to go”), emphatic pronouns (myself, yourself), or adverbial intensifiers. In writing, emphasis can also be conveyed through typographic or rhetorical devices such as stress, repetition, or heightened lexical choice.