The interaction of tonal alignment with vowel length and syllable structure in Lebanese Arabic

Abstract

Research on a variety of languages has shown that tonal alignment in pitch accents can be influenced by segmental factors such as syllable structure, onset type, and phonological vowel length (e.g., Ladd et al., 2000; Maddieson, 1997). However, the majority of work on these topics has been on European languages. The current study examines the interaction of these factors in the Beirut dialect of Lebanese Arabic. Disyllabic words with initial, stressed syllables that were either open or closed and contained either a long or a short vowel and had a simple or complex onset were examined when non-focused and in contrastive focus. Contrastive focus was associated with a wider f0 range. The focus pitch accent was H* or L+H*. In terms of segmental effects, neither vowel length nor syllable structure had a significant effect on tonal alignment. Timing of the f0 peak was found to be consistently about 45 msec from vowel onset. This study contributes to the literature on tonal alignment by examining a variety of Arabic that is understudied in terms of intonation.