Acoustic differences between lexical and epenthetic vowels in Lebanese Arabic

Abstract

Traditionally, epenthetic vowels in Lebanese Arabic are transcribed [i], and are assumed to be acoustically indistinguishable from lexical [i]. A production experiment finds variation among speakers: some do produce the vowels identically, others produce a schwa-like epenthetic vowel that is categorically distinct from lexical [i], and others produce clouds of epenthetic and lexical vowel tokens that partially overlap.