Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-wzw2p Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-05-04T08:04:36.142Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The vowel system of Qatari Arabic: Evidence for peripheral/non-peripheral distinction between long and short vowels

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 May 2023

Aisha Al-Mazrouei ,
Aisha Negm  and
Vladimir Kulikov Open the ORCID record for Vladimir Kulikov [Opens in a new window]
Aisha Al-Mazrouei
Affiliation:
Department of English Literature and Linguistics, Qatar University aishaalmazroui@hotmail.com
Aisha Negm
Affiliation:
Department of English Literature and Linguistics, Qatar University ayeshanegmbf@gmail.com
Vladimir Kulikov
Affiliation:
Department of English Literature and Linguistics, Qatar University vkulikov@qu.edu.qa
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Arabic has a vowel system with three long and three short monophthongs. One of the parameters that accounts for qualitative differences between long and short vowels across languages is tenseness/laxness of vowels located on the peripheral/non-peripheral tracks in the vowel space. The present study investigates acoustical cues (F1, F2, and duration) of vowels using the data obtained from 21 speakers of Qatari Arabic. The vowels were produced in four phonetic contexts: labial, alveolar, uvular, and pharyngeal. The results revealed considerable qualitative differences between long and short vowels. The long vowels were articulated at the periphery of vowel space; the short vowels occupied more centralized positions. The co-articulatory effect of the preceding consonant was more prominent in short vowels. Short high vowels /i u/ were lowered toward the mid position; short low /a/ was fronted; long low /aː/ was retracted and raised. The findings suggest that short vowels in Qatari Arabic are lax and non-peripheral.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of the International Phonetic Association , First View , pp. 1 - 19
Check for updates
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The International Phonetic Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Al-Ani, Salman H. 1970. Arabic phonology: An acoustical and physiological investigation. The Hague & Paris: Mouton.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Al-Ansari, Noora & Kulikov, Vladimir. 2023. Acoustics of Arabic uvulars and emphatic coronals: Evidence for uvularization of emphatics in Qatari Arabic. To appear in Al-‘Arabiya 55–56.Google Scholar
Alghamdi, Mansour M. 1998. A spectrographic analysis of Arabic vowels: A cross-dialect study. Journal of King Saud University 10, 3–24.Google Scholar
Almbark, Rana A. 2012. The perception and production of SSBE vowels by Syrian Arabic learners: The Foreign Language Model. Ph.D. dissertation, University of York.Google Scholar
Aronow, Robin, McHugh, Brian & Molnar, Tessa. 2017. A pilot acoustic study of Modern Persian vowels in colloquial speech. Proceedings of the Linguistic Society of America 2, 17(1–7).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barr, Dale J., Levy, Roger, Scheepers, Christoph & Tily, Harry J.. 2013. Random effects structure for confirmatory hypothesis testing: Keep it maximal. Journal of Memory and Language 68, 255–278.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bates, Douglas, Maechler, Martin, Bolker, Ben & Walker, Steve. 2015. Fitting linear mixed-effects models using lme4 . Journal of Statistical Software 67, 1–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boersma, Paul & Weenink, David. 2021. Praat: Doing phonetics by computer (Version 6.1.40). https://www.praat.org/.Google Scholar
Boyd, Zack, Zuzana Elliott, Josef Fruehwald, Hall-Lew, Lauren & Lawrence, Daniel. 2015. An evaluation of sociolinguistic elicitation methods. In The Scottish Consortium for ICPhS 2015 (ed.), Proceedings of the 18th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS XVIII), Glasgow, UK: The University of Glasgow. Paper # 0800 1–5. Retrieved from https://www.internationalphoneticassociation.org/icphs-proceedings/ICPhS2015/Papers/ICPHS0800.pdf.Google Scholar
Bukshaisha, Fouzia. 1985. An experimental phonetic study of some aspects of Qatari Arabic. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Edinburgh.Google Scholar
Chomsky, Noam & Halle, Morris. 1968. The sound pattern of English. New York: Harper & Row.Google Scholar
Clopper, Cynthia G., Pisoni, David B. & de Jong, Kenneth. 2005. Acoustic characteristics of the vowel systems of six regional varieties of American English. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 118, 1661–1676.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
de Jong, Kenneth & Zawaydeh, Bushra. 2002. Comparing stress, lexical focus, and segmental focus: Patterns of variation in Arabic vowel duration. Journal of Phonetics 30, 53–75.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Diehl, Randy L., Kluender, Keith R., Walsh, Margaret A. & Parker, Ellen M.. 1991. Auditory enhancement in speech perception and phonology. In Hoffman, Robert R. & Palermo, David S. (eds.), Cognition and the symbolic processes: Applied and ecological perspectives, 59–76. New York: Lawrence Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Fathi, Hadeel M. & Qassim, Ziyad R.. 2020. An acoustic study of the production of Iraqi Arabic vowels. Journal of Al-Frahids Arts 12, 692–704.Google Scholar
Flemming, Edward. 2009. The phonetics of schwa vowels. In Minkova, Donka (ed.), Phonological weakness in English: From Old to Present-day English, 78–98. Basingstoke & New York: Palgrave Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Flemming, Edward. 2011. The grammar of coarticulation. In Embarki, Mohamed & Dodane, Christelle (eds.), La coarticulation: Indices, direction et representation, 189–212. Montpellier: Editions L’Harmattan.Google Scholar
Ghazeli, Salem. 1977. Back consonants and backing coarticulation in Arabic. Ph.D. dissertation, The University of Texas at Austin.Google Scholar
Hemmatnia, Shirin Z., Ghazanfari, Mehdi & Nourbakhsh, Mandana. 2019. A fuzzy model for analysing perceptual vowel space: The case of Modern Persian. Language and Linguistics 14, 75–95.Google Scholar
Hillenbrand, James, Clark, Michael J. & Nearey, Terrance M.. 2001. Effects of consonant environment on vowel formant patterns. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 109, 748–763.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hillenbrand, James, Getty, Laura A., Clark, Michael J. & Wheeler, Kimberlee. 1995. Acoustic characteristics of American English vowels. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 97, 3099–3111.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Johnstone, Thomas M. 1967. Eastern Arabian dialect studies. London: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Jongman, Allard, Wendy Herd, Mohammad Al-Masri, Sereno, Joan & Combest, Sonja. 2011. Acoustic and perception of emphasis in Urban Jordanian Arabic. Journal of Phonetics 39, 85–95.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kalaldeh, Raya. 2018. Acoustic analysis of Modern Standard Arabic vowels by Jordanian speakers. International Journal of Arabic-English Studies 18, 23–48.Google Scholar
Kambuziya, Aliyeh K. Z., Ghorbanpour, Amir & Mahdipour, Nader. 2017. Vowel shortening in Persian: A phonological analysis. Poznań Studies in Contemporary Linguistics 53, 373–397.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Khan, Abdul Q. 2014. An acoustic analysis of Pahari oral vowels. Lingua Posnaniensis 56, 29–39.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Klatt, Dennis H. & Stevens, Kenneth N.. 1969. Pharyngeal consonants. MIT Research Laboratory of Electronics Quarterly Progress Report 93, 208–216.Google Scholar
Kulikov, Vladimir, Mohsenzadeh, Fatemeh M. & Syam, Rawand M.. Effects of emphasis spread on VOT in coronal stops in Qatari Arabic. Journal of the International Phonetic Association, doi:10.1017/S0025100321000256. Published online by Cambridge University Press, 2 November 2021.Google Scholar
Kuznetsova, Alexandra, Brockhoff, Per B. & Christensen, Rune H. B.. 2017. lmerTest package: Tests in linear mixed effects models. Journal of Statistical Software 82, 1–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Labov, William. 1994. Principles of linguistic change, vol. I: Internal factors. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Labov, William, Ash, Sharon & Boberg, Charles. 2005. Atlas of North American English: Phonetics, phonology, and sound change. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ladefoged, Peter & Maddieson, Ian. 1990. The vowels of the world’s languages. Journal of Phonetics 18, 93–122.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Laufer, Asher & Baer, Thomas. 1988. The emphatic and pharyngeal sounds in Hebrew and in Arabic. Language and Speech 31, 181–205.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lennig, Matthew. 1978. Acoustic measurement of linguistic change: The modern Paris vowel system. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Pennsylvania.Google Scholar
Lenth, Russel V. 2020. emmeans: Estimated Marginal Means, aka Least-Squares Means (R package version 1.4.7). https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=emmeans.Google Scholar
Lindau, Mona. 1978. Vowel features. Language 54, 541–563.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lobanov, B. M. 1971. Classification of Russian vowels spoken by different speakers. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 49, 606–608.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Maddieson, Ian. 1984. Patterns of sounds. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Matuschek, Hannes, Reinhold Kliegl, Shravan Vasishth, Baayen, Harald & Bates, Douglas. 2017. Balancing Type I error and power in linear mixed models. Journal of Memory and Language 94, 305–315.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Maurer, Dieter, Cook, Norman, Landis, Theodor & d’Heureuse, Christian. 1991. Are measured differences between the formants of men, women and children due to f0 differences? Journal of the International Phonetic Association 21, 66–79.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McCarthy, John J. 1994. The phonetics and phonology of Semitic pharyngeal. In Keating, Patricia A. (ed.), Phonological structure and phonetic form: Papers in Laboratory Phonetics III, 191–233. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Miller, Corey. 2012. Variation in Persian vowel systems. Orientalia Suecana 61, 156–169.Google Scholar
Mokari, Payam G., Werner, Stefan & Talebi, Ali. 2017. An acoustic description of Farsi vowels produced by native speakers of Tehrani dialect. The Phonetician 114, 6–23.Google Scholar
Morrison, Geoffrey S. & Nearey, Terrance M.. 2006. A cross-language vowel normalisation procedure. Canadian Acoustics 34, 94–95.Google Scholar
Newman, Daniel & Verhoeven, Jo. 2002. Frequency analysis of Arabic vowels in connected speech. Antwerp Papers in Linguistics 100, 77–86.Google Scholar
Peterson, Gordon E. & Lehiste, Ilse. 1960. Duration of syllable nuclei in English. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 32, 693–703.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
R Core Team. 2021. R: A language and environment for statistical computing. Vienna: R Foundation for Statistical Computing. https://www.R-project.org/.Google Scholar
Rahbar, Elham R. 2008. A historical study of the Persian vowel system. Kansas Working Papers in Linguistics 30, 233–245.Google Scholar
Saadah, Eman. 2011. The production of Arabic vowels by English L2 learners and heritage speakers of Arabic. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Illinois.Google Scholar
Shosted, Ryan K., Fu, Maojing & Hermes, Zainab. 2018. Arabic pharyngeal and emphatic consonants. In Benmamoun, Elabbas & Bassiouney, Reem (eds.), The Routledge handbook of Arabic linguistics, 48–61. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Stewart, John M. 1967. Tongue root position in Akan vowel harmony. Phonetica 16, 185–204.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Traunmüller, Hartmut. 1988. Paralinguistic variation and invariance in the characteristic frequencies of vowels. Phonetica 45, 1–29.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Yeou, Mohamed. 1997. Locus equations and the degree of coarticulation of Arabic consonants. Phonetica 54, 187–202.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zawaydeh, Bushra & de Jong, Kenneth. 2011. The phonetics of localizing uvularization in Arabic. In Hassan, Zeki & Heselwood, Barry (eds.), Instrumental studies in Arabic phonetics, 257–276. Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Watson, Janet C. E. 2002. The phonology and morphology of Arabic. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar