An acoustic analysis of the rhythm of Yemeni Arabic
List of Authors
  • Nada Mohammed Salem , Pillai, Stefanie

Keyword
  • rhythm,stress-timed, syllable-timed, Yemeni Arabic,Arabic dialect

Abstract
  • Previous studies have found that different Arabic dialects display different degrees of stress-timingfeatures forming a continuum that ranges from more stress-timed to less stress-timed Arabic dialects. This study investigatedthe vocalic durational intervals of speakers from two groups of speakers, Yemeni younger generation (YYG) and Yemeni older generation (YOG),both in reading and spontaneous speech by means of two indexes, namely, nPVI and Varco V. The results revealed that Yemeni speakers displayed stress-timingfeatures in both the read passage and spontaneous speechcontexts.However, whereas the rhythmic patterns in their read speech appeared to be comparable for both YYG and YOG speakers, significant differences were found in their spontaneous speech. Thiswas in terms of the nPVI and VarcoV measurementswhere the rhythmic output of YYG speakers appeared to be more stress-timed than their older counterparts. The high values obtained by both indexes in the study show that YA patterns with prototypical stress-timedlanguages such asEnglish, Dutch, Thaiand the highly stress-timed western Arabic dialects.

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