Differentiation of plain and pharyngal fricatives in Lybian Arabic

Abstract

The considerable inventory of contrasting Arabic fricatives presents some hitherto unanswered questions to phonetic investigators: the acoustic cues differentiating the contrasts have only been partially specified [e.g., al‐Ani, Arabic Phonology (The Hague, 1970)]; it has not been satisfactorily demonstrated whether fricative noise itself or only the surrounding vowels differentiate between corresponding pairs of pharyngalized (“emphatic”) and nonpharyngalized fricatives [e.g., Jakobson, ‘“Mufaxxama” …,’ Selected Writings 1, 510–522 (1962)], Bonnot [“Recherche experimentale sur la nature des consonnes emphatiques de l'arabe classique,” Trav. Inst. Phonet. Strasbourg 9, 47–88 (1977)]. A dialect of Lybian Arabic which contrasts an unusually large number of plain versus pharyngalized fricatives is recorded; measurement is made of time‐domain variables such as VOT, rise time, and relative amplitude of the fricative. Spectral information is averaged together to provide representative spectra of each of the con...