VoicingcontrastinNajdiArabicinitialstops

NiefAL-Gamdi,NewcastleUniversity,n.a.a.al-gamdi2@ncl.ac.uk

JalalAl-Tamimi,NewcastleUniversity,jalal.al-tamimi@ncl.ac.uk

GhadaKhattab,NewcastleUniversity,ghada.khattab@ncl.ac.uk

Voicing contrast has been investigated to clarify its phonetic realisation and address theprecise articulatory and acoustic correlates that are used in identifying the distinctionbetweenphonologicallyvoicedandvoicelessobstruents.Ithasbeenfoundthattheacousticcorrelatesforvoicingcontrastdifferfromonelanguagetoanother(StevensandKlatt1974,FlegeandPort1981,Keatingetal.1983,Yeni-Komshianetal.1977),andtheyareaffectedbyvariouslinguisticfactorswhichindicatethatthephoneticrealisationofvoicingiscomplexandrequiresaccurateexplanation.Thiscomplexityraisedquestionsaboutthesufficiencyoftheabstract phonological description of voiced and voiceless obstruents which is based ontraditionaldistinctivefeatures([+voice][-voice]).

Thepresentstudyaimstocontributetothefieldbyexaminingvoicingcontrast instopsinNajdi Arabic. Voicing contrast in stops was investigated word-initially in sentencemedialposition inmonosyllabic CVC/CVCC realwords. The testwords include all short and longvowels that exist in Najdi Arabic, and they were embedded in a sentence context andprecededbythecarrierphrase[ʔanaʔagool]‘Isay….’.TheParticipantswere12monolingualnativespeakersofNajdidialect(6males,6females)whosetheirageswerefrom25-35.Theywere instructed to read the sentences in their nativedialect and their pronunciationwasrecorded. All the tokenswere investigated using Praat (Boersma andWeenink 2012) andvariousacousticcorrelateswereexaminedincludingVOT,closureduration,thedurationofvoicing intheclosure,thefollowingvoweldurationandthefrequencyofF1andF0 intheonsetofthefollowingvowel.

TheresultsrevealedthatstopsinNajdiArabiccontrastprevoicingwithlonglagVOT,whichmayindicatethatvoicingcontrastinphonologicallyvoicedandvoicelessstopsinNajdiArabicis specifiedby the twophonological features [voice] and [spread glottis]. The results alsoshowed that thestrongacoustic correlatesacross speakersand linguistic factors (placeofarticulation,thequalityofthefollowingvowel)wereVOTandF0onset.

References

Boersma,P.andWeenink,D.2012.Praat:doingphoneticsbycomputer[Computerprogram],Version4.5.14,retrievedfromhttp://www.praat.org/.

Flege, J.E. and Port, R., 1981. Cross-language phonetic interference: Arabic toEnglish.Languageandspeech,24(2),125-146.

Keating,P.,Linker,W.andHuffman,M.,1983.Closuredurationofstopconsonants.JournalofPhonetics,11,277-290.

Stevens, K.N. and Klatt, D.H., 1974. Role of formant transitions in the voiced-voicelessdistinctionforstops.TheJournaloftheAcousticalSocietyofAmerica,55(3),653-659.

Yeni-Komshian,G.H.,Caramazza,A.andPreston,M.S.,1977.AstudyofvoicinginLebaneseArabic.JournalofPhonetics,5(1),35-48.