Phrase-final lengthening across segments in Lebanese Arabic

Abstract

The effect of phrase position on duration of words and segments, and its interaction with phonological vowel length, was examined in Lebanese Arabic. Target words (disyllabic, initial stress) with either a phonologically long or short vowel in the stressed syllable were produced by six speakers (n = 472). Words were produced in carrier sentences, where one was sentence-medial and one sentence-final, both under contrastive focus so as to control for that effect. Segment durations were measured. Results showed that stressed vowel duration was longer in phrase-final position but only when the vowel was phonologically long. Unstressed vowels were longer in phrase-final position, and were also longer when the stressed vowel was phonolog-ically short. Onsets were longer in phrase-medial position. These findings show an asymmetric effect of phrase position on vowel length, as well as an overall balancing of word duration by compensation between onsets and unstressed vowels.