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.