The emission of radiation from a spatially extended amplifying medium is shown to exhibit new coherence effects when the medium is modeled by inverted atoms which possess a degeneracy allowing Q ( J) transitions. In particular, it is predicted that media of this type for which J=2 can emit leading pulses which are doubly peaked or asymmetric within both the regimes of superfluorescence and oscillating fluorescence. Dissipative processes can radically alter the character of the emission; an output consisting of two well-separated pulses appears feasible, but the precise behavior in the present model depends upon the magnitude of the field losses and the initiation statistics. fore the nonlinear behavior appears. It is therefore permissible to "linearize" Eqs. (6a) and (6b) by setting N; =1.It is also clear that a single polarization variable J J p= gpA, ;p; gp;A. ;