Rate of Change in Kermanshahi Kurdish Diphthongs in Word and Sentence Context

Abstract

In order to get a better understanding of diphthongs, as Deterding (2000) and Salbrina (2006) stated, the formant movement can be studied using the rate of change (ROC). Current research has considered the ROC of diphthongs in Kermanshahi Kurdish dialect. In this research, 840 tokens have been considered from speech samples of 20 male/female speakers in word/sentence context. The ROC of the first formant frequency (F1) and the second formant frequency (F2) is studied using Praat version 5.2.34. The results show that F1 has the most formant movement in /au/ and F1 in /ɑu/, /ɑi/ has the least formant movement; also, in F2, the vowels of /ɑu/ and /ɑi/ show the most and least, respectively. Moreover, the ROC values are more in word context than sentence context.