Habis, Ayman Abdullah Hamid

English

This study deals with the phonetic and phonological performance of expert reciters of
the Quran. Experts constitute a special group of speakers who receive intensive oral
instruction in tajwid, the traditional discipline of correct and ideal recitation of
Classical Arabic.

The study falls into five chapters and a conclusion. The first chapter gives a
general idea about the history of Arabic and tajwid and outlines the basic principles
that underlie the standardization of recitations. The second chapter discusses some
basic rules of tajwid and explores their scope. It sheds some light on the relation
between tajwid and current phonological theory and physiological phonetics. The third
chapter reviews the literature, both traditional and modem, on emphasis in Arabic. The
review discusses the articulatory, acoustic and perceptual properties of emphasis in a
variety of Arabic styles, and discusses the phonology and phonetics of emphatic
coarticulation and the implications it could have for the linguistic grammar of Arabic,
including implications for autosegmentatlh eory.

The fourth chapter reports the results of an acoustic experiment. We consider
the measurement values of the second formant of the vowel /a/, which both tajwid
scholars and modem phoneticians claim it exhibits a greater amount of emphasis than
other vowels. The phonetic environments examined are both emphatic and plain. The
experiment manipulates three main dimensions: (i) expert vs. non-expert reciters, (ii)
Classical vs. Modem Standard Arabic, and (iii) four vowel contexts: plain-to-plain,
emphatic-to-emphatic, emphatic-to-plain and plain-to-emphatic. One main finding is
that emphasis is a unary and gradient feature that has a range over which it can be
phonetically realized. We suggest that plainness is apparently a zero or default value
that is shared by all speakers and styles. Another finding is that the traditional
distinction between experts and non-experts could be objectively verified from their
acoustic data.

The fifth chapter explores the implications of the experiment for current
theories of the phonology-phonetics interface. Emphatic assimilation is discussed
within the framework of theories of phonetic underspecification, coarticulation
resistance and hyperarticulation. We attempt to find out whether the vowel in an
emphatic environment is categorically specified for emphasis or it is rather left
underspecified for this feature. Although some of the acoustic measurements conform
with a phonetic reading of emphasis on the vowel some others could be taken to imply
that emphasis in Classical Arabic does not involve a case of phonetic
underspecification. Finally, the conclusion summaries the main findings of the thesis
in the light of the experimental study, the literature review and the phonological
theories that were considered in the discussion, and it makes recommendations for
future studies

Edinburgh Research Archive

Emphatic assimilation in classical and modern standard Arabic: an experimetal approach to Qur'anic recitation

https://era.ed.ac.uk/bitstream/1842/7393/1/493932.pdf

Emphatic assimilation in classical and modern standard Arabic: An experimetal approach to Qur'anic recitation

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