Inter-consonantal intervals in Tripolitanian Libyan Arabic: Accounting for variable epenthesis

This paper reports on an acoustic investigation of inter-consonantal intervals in plosive sequences in Tripolitanian Libyan Arabic (TLA). TLA permits a wide range of two, three, and four-consonant strings within and across word boundaries. Previous descriptive work has suggested that TLA is characterized by widespread, partly optional vowel epenthesis throughout these sequences. We conducted a production study to investigate the phonetic and phonological properties of inter-consonantal intervals (ICIs) in these sequences, including their durations and voicing characteristics, as well as the voicing of surrounding plosive hold phases. Our aim was to assess the extent of ‘variable epenthesis’ and narrow down the range of possible accounts for it. Unlike many previous studies, we did not rely on native speaker intuitions and made minimal use of manual categorical coding, instead focusing on modelling distributions of continuous acoustic parameters. The central question we address is whether our data contain patterns that can only be explained with reference to phonological vowel insertion—given that variable epenthesis can also be accounted for in terms of vocoid intrusion alone (Hall, 2006). Our study improves our understanding of consonant articulations in Arabic, and of epenthesis and related phenomena

Inter-generational transmission in a minority language setting: Stop consonant production by Bangladeshi heritage children and adults

Aims and objectives: The purpose of this study was to gain a better understanding of speech development across successive generations of heritage language users, examining how cross-linguistic, developmental and socio-cultural factors affect stop consonant production. Design: To this end, we recorded Sylheti and English stop productions of two sets of Bangladeshi heritage families: (1) first-generation adult migrants from Bangladesh and their (second-generation) UK-born children, and (2) second-generation UK-born adult heritage language users and their (third-generation) UK-born children. Data and analysis: The data were analysed auditorily, using whole-word transcription, and acoustically, examining voice onset time. Comparisons were then made in both languages across the four groups of participants, and cross-linguistically. Findings: The results revealed non-native productions of English stops by the first-generation migrants but largely target-like patterns by the remaining sets of participants. The Sylheti stops exhibited incremental changes across successive generations of speakers, with the third-generation children’s productions showing the greatest influence from English. Originality: This is one of few studies to examine both the host and heritage language in an ethnic minority setting, and the first to demonstrate substantial differences in heritage language accent between age-matched second- and third-generation children. The study shows that current theories of bilingual speech learning do not go far enough in explaining how speech develops in heritage language settings. Implications: These findings have important implications for the maintenance, transmission and long-term survival of heritage languages, and show that investigations need to go beyond second-generation speakers, in particular in communities that do not see a steady influx of new migrants

Pre-aspirated sonorants in Shehret, a Modern South Arabian language

This paper examines pre-aspirated sonorants in the Central and Eastern varieties of Shehret, an endangered Modern South Arabian language (MSAL) spoken by c. 50,000 speakers in Dhofar, southern Oman. We assume pre-aspirated sonorants fall in the class of breathy sonorants, acknowledged to be typologically rare [1], [2], and phonotactically tightly restricted [3]. Shehret pre-aspirated sonorants are restricted to the offset of stressed word-final syllables in a closed set of words [4]; they contrast both with non-pre-aspirated sonorants and with strings of /h/ followed by a sonorant (/hS/ realised as [həS] with epenthesis), giving a /hS/ versus /hS/ phonological sequence contrast; pre-aspiration also characterises voiceless obstruents in the language. Western Shehret apparently lacks pre-aspirated sonorants [6]. While related Soqotri exhibits a post-aspirated palatal glide [7], pre-aspirated sonorants appear not to be attested elsewhere within the Semitic language family

Acquiring allophonic structure and phonetic detail in a bilingual community: The production of laterals by Sylheti-English bilingual children

Aims and objectives In this study, we consider the acquisition of allophonic contrast and phonetic detail in lateral consonants by second-generation Sylheti-English bilingual children in London, UK. Design/methodology/approach Acoustic analysis was conducted on productions of /l/ by Sylheti bilingual children, Sylheti monolingual adults and English monolingual children. Data and analysis Tokens of /l/ were elicited across initial, medial and final word positions from 14 bilingual Sylheti-English children, 10 monolingual English children, and 4 monolingual Sylheti adults. Acoustic measurements of F2–F1 were analysed using Bayesian linear mixed-effects modelling. Findings and conclusions Our results show that bilingual children produce monolingual-like positional patterns in Sylheti, producing very clear laterals in all positions. In contrast, bilinguals produce monolingual-like positional allophony in English, but they differ in phonetic detail, with bilinguals producing much clearer laterals than monolingual children across all positions. Originality This study is the first to examine the development of allophonic contrast and phonetic detail in both of a bilingual’s languages in a contact scenario. This provides new insights into how contact varieties adopt aspects of structure and detail from each language. We also report valuable data from Sylheti-English bilinguals, who are an understudied community. Significance/limitations Our study highlights the value of considering structural and detailed aspects of cross-linguistic sound systems, whereby one aspect may show monolingual-like patterns and another aspect may show distinctive patterns. We propose that the results in this study represent the development of a new sound system out of language contact, with second-generation bilingual children producing a hybrid system that combines influences from both heritage and host languages

Epenthetic and excrescent vowels in stop sequences in Tripolitanian Libyan Arabic

We report on an investigation of inter-consonantal intervals (ICIs) in sequences of two, three and four stops within and across word boundaries in Tripolitanian Libyan Arabic (TLA). This variety of Arabic has been described as allowing vowel epenthesis in all consonant clusters [7]. Our investigation was motivated by the question of whether some of the ‘epenthetic vowels’ of TLA are better characterized as ‘excrescent vowels’, following the distinction made by [5]. To answer this question, we analysed ICI durations at normal and fast speaking rates across permissible stop sequences within and across word boundaries. We also investigated the relationship between ICI duration and voicing. Our results are consistent with the observations presented in [7], but show that there is indeed evidence for the existence of both epenthetic and excrescent vowels in TLA

The role of F2 and F3 in the perception of rhoticity: Evidence from listening experiments

This paper reports on two listening experiments which explore the relative contributions of F2 and F3 in the perception of rhoticity. Experiment 1 tests the hypothesis that a low-frequency F3 is a crucial spectral component for a signal to be perceived as rhotic. Its results suggest that the removal of F3 ma y in fact strengthen the rhoticity percept. Experiment 2 manipulates the relative amplitudes of F2 and F3 in a rhotic signal. Its results suggest that F2 and F3 attenuation have opposite effects on rhoticity judgments, with F3 attenuation making the signal sound more rhotic. The paper proposes an account that makes crucial reference to the auditory integration hypothesis

A Verified Arabic-IPA Mapping for Arabic Transcription Technology, Informed by Quranic Recitation, Traditional Arabic Linguistics, and Modern Phonetics

In this paper, we present a detailed mapping from the graphemes of Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) to symbols from the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) for automated transcription of Arabic text. This mapping is distinctive in several ways. First, the corpus used in rule development is the full text of the Qur’ān rendered in fully pointed MSA. Second, we validate our scheme via automaticallygenerated frequency distributions of Arabic letters and diacritics over the whole corpus to anticipate and disambiguate non-trivial, compound grapheme-to-phoneme events, thus reducing the number of letter-to-sound rules. Such difficult cases include: the definite article; the letters alif, wāw, and yāʼ; the variant forms of hamza; the tanwīn case mark; and words with special pronunciations. Finally, our mapping scheme is informed by theory and practice from medieval Arabic linguistics and traditional Quranic recitation or tajwīd; we make a novel contribution with new translations for ancient terms which incorporate concepts familiar to modern phoneticians. Our principal objective in automating Arabic-IPA transcription is to generate phonemic citation forms of Arabic words to enhance Arabic dictionaries, to facilitate Arabic language learning, and for natural language engineering applications