Throughout the world’s languages, typologies of /l/-darkening systems are often reported as having one of two patterns: those which have an allophonic distinction between a lighter, more coronal variant of /l/ and a darker, more retracted variant, and those that do not. However, comparatively little research has focussed on languages whereby there seems to be allophony conditioned by something other than syllabic structure. The present study is an investigation into lateral variation in Levantine Arabic. Early work by Delattre [1] suggests that, like German, Arabic has a clear ‘flat’ /l/ regardless of its position in the syllable. This is of interest, particularly as onset/coda realisations of /l/ in languages such as English have been argued to be a natural articulatory consequence of the dorsal gesture of the following/preceding vowel and darkness is correlated with duration [2,3]. An acoustic investigation of bilingual children’s lateral productions by Khattab [4] suggests that a dual gestural account may not be appropriate for Arabic, but no instrumental work has so far been carried out to corroborate that. Conversely, conditioning of Arabic laterals has been claimed to be predicted by the presence of an emphatic (i.e. pharyngealised) consonant. /l/s in proximity to an emphatic consonant are said to be pharyngealised themselves, but it is not clear whether this is an allophonic distinction or simply a gradient effect of co-articulation. The present study investigates /l/ patterning in Levantine Arabic in a variety of syllabic and emphatic environments to test the claims in the existing literature.