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Licensed Unlicensed Requires Authentication Published by De Gruyter Mouton April 24, 2019

Laryngeal Contrast in Qatari Arabic: Effect of Speaking Rate on Voice Onset Time

  • Vladimir Kulikov ORCID logo
From the journal Phonetica

Abstract

Beckman and colleagues claimed in 2011 that Swedish has an overspecified phonological contrast between prevoiced and voiceless aspirated stops. Yet, Swedish is the only language for which this pattern has been reported. The current study describes a similar phonological pattern in the vernacular Arabic dialect of Qatar. Acoustic measurements of main (voice onset time, VOT) and secondary (fundamental frequency, first formant) cues to voicing are based on production data of 8 native speakers of Qatari Arabic, who pronounced 1,380 voiced and voiceless word-initial stops in the slow and fast rate conditions. The results suggest that the VOT pattern found in voiced Qatari Arabic stops b, d, g is consistent with prevoicing in voice languages like Dutch, Russian, or Swedish. The pattern found in voiceless stops t, k is consistent with aspiration in aspirating languages like English, German, or Swedish. Similar to Swedish, both prevoicing and aspiration in Qatari Arabic stops change in response to speaking rate. VOT significantly increased by 19 ms in prevoiced stops and by 12 ms in voiceless stops in the slow speaking rate condition. The findings suggest that phonological overspecification in laryngeal contrasts may not be an uncommon pattern among languages.


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*Vladimir Kulikov, Department of English Literature and Linguistics (DELL), Qatar University, PO box 2713, Doha (Qatar), E-Mail vkulikov@qu.edu.qa

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  1. 1

    Previous studies (e.g. Flege & Port, 1981; Mitleb, 2009) questioned the existence of aspiration in Arabic on the grounds that mean VOT values of Arabic voiceless stops are shorter than mean VOT in other aspirating languages, e.g. English or German. The analysis of VOT in the present study suggests that Arabic voiceless stops are aspirated. In addition, Qatari Arabic demonstrates another phonetic property that is claimed to be a typical feature of aspirating languages: preaspiration, or aspiration before stop closure (Ladefoged & Maddieson, 1996). It is a consequence of gestural overlap, when the glottis is opened earlier than the oral constriction is formed. Preaspiration was reported for English (Foulkes & Docherty, 2006), German (Jessen, 1998), Icelandic (Pind 1995; Silverman, 2003), and Swedish (Helgason & Ringen, 2008). Visual inspection of spectrograms in the Qatari Arabic pool revealed that some word-final voiceless stops were pronounced with preaspiration in both speaking rate conditions. Although the focus of the study is on initial stops, the presence of preaspirated stops in Qatari Arabic provides additional support for the claim that voiceless stops in this language are aspirated.

  2. 2

    An anonymous reviewer suggested using a mixed-effects linear model with talker and word as random factors to evaluate slopes for word duration. This analysis did not reveal important differences from the hierarchical regression analysis. When the model was fit to the overall data, it also revealed significant word × underlying voice (p < 0.0001) and word × rate interactions (p < 0.005). When the model was fitted to the voiced and voiceless sets separately, it revealed significant effects of word duration and word × rate interactions in both categories. The slope for underlying voiced stops (word: β = 0.08, p < 0.01; word × rate: β = –0.103, p < 0.001) was also greater that for underlying voiceless stops (word: β = 0.07, p < 0.0001; word × rate: β = 0.03, p < 0.05).

Received: 2017-09-22
Accepted: 2019-01-28
Published Online: 2019-04-24
Published in Print: 2020-04-01

© 2019 S. Karger AG, Basel

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