14th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS-14) San Francisco, CA, USA August 1-7, 1999

Stress, Phonological Focus, Quantity, and Voicing Effects on Vowel Duration in Ammani Arabic

Bushra Adnan Zawaydeh, Kenneth de Jong

Indiana University, IN, USA

This paper examines vowel duration interactions between quantity, voicing of a neighboring obstruent, and stress in Arabic. We found that quantity effects are the strongest, while voicing effects are the weakest. Stress interacts with quantity, such that long vowels are lengthened more with stress, but stress and voicing do not interact consistently. Similarly, phonological focus on voicing contrasts has no effect on voicing lengthening, while phonological focus on quantity contrasts showed a trend towards expanding quantity differences. These results suggest that quantity lengthening is phonologically salient, while voicing lengthening is not. Also, focus and stress, while similar are not entirely identical in phonetic effect.

Full Paper

Bibliographic reference.  Zawaydeh, Bushra Adnan / Jong, Kenneth de (1999): "Stress, phonological focus, quantity, and voicing effects on vowel duration in Ammani Arabic", In ICPhS-14, 451-454.