The secondary place of articulation for Arabic ‘emphatic’ consonants varies across dialects. This study examines two speakers of Iraqi Arabic, using acoustic evidence, and one speaker of Iraqi Arabic, using direct visual laryngoscopic (articulatory) evidence, to determine the phonetic nature of the secondary feature and the prosodic effect of an emphatic consonant over multisyllabic words. The acoustic and laryngoscopic evidence indicates that the prevailing nature of emphatics in Iraqi Arabic is pharyngealization. Furthermore, the effect of an emphatic spreads to all syllables, forwards or backwards, regardless of its position in the word, although the effect is modified or blocked in certain phonotactic conditions.