Emphasis spread in Algerian Arabic sounds: an acoustic experimental study on Bordj Bou-Arreridj dialect

Abstract EN

Many studies have been carried out on emphasis in modern standard Arabic (MSA) and Arabic dialects but not Algerian Arabic.

this article is the first account on the acoustic spread of emphasis in Algerian Arabic, Bordj Bou-Arreridj dialect specifically.

PRAAT speech analysis was used to measure the formant frequency F2 of plain/emphatic vowels as articulated by participants.

SPSS, then, was used for statistical analysis.

the findings revealed that emphasis affects vowels by notably lowering their F2 and this lowering is significantly greater for / a / and / a: / than for / u / and / u: /.

also, emphasis spread to adjacent vowels is argued to be bidirectional and symmetric.