Hejazi Saudi Arabic pharyngeal approximant 'Ayn involves 4 of 5 correlates of creak, but not positive H1-H2 spectral tilt

Abstract

Five correlates of creaky phonation in the Arabic pharyngeal approximant 'Ayn—/ʕ/—were compared in speech samples of five male native speakers of the Hejazi dialect of Saudi Arabic to determine the degree to which creaky phonation could be a phonetic feature of 'Ayn. Jitter, shimmer, harmonics-to-noise ratio (HNR), F0 lowering, and positive H1-H2 spectral tilt were compared in 360 (total) speech tokens of /a/, /aa/, and /aʕa/ vowel sequences. Acoustic analysis indicated significantly increased jitter, increased shimmer, lower HNR, and lower F0 values in 'Ayn sequences compared to non-'Ayn sequences, yielding strong evidence of creaky phonation. There was, however, no significant increase in degree of positive H1-H2 spectral tilt in 'Ayn sequences compared to non-'Ayn sequences. Positive tilt appeared to occur in free variation across vowel sequence types with many non-'Ayn sequences displaying the positive H1-H2 spectral tilt traditionally associated with creak. If increased jitter, increased shimmer, lower HNR, and local F0 lowering are correlates of creak in these realizations of 'Ayn, we must consider that creak is a key phonetic feature of 'Ayn for these Arabic speakers and that positive H1-H2 spectral tilt may not be a reliable indicator of creak in Hejazi Arabic.