Cover not available
Part of
Perspectives on Arabic Linguistics XXIV–XXV: Papers from the annual symposia on Arabic Linguistics. Texas, 2010 and Arizona, 2011
Edited by Samira Farwaneh and Hamid Ouali
[Studies in Arabic Linguistics 1] 2014
► pp. 63–90

Investigating variation in Arabic intonation

The case for a multi-level corpus approach

| University of York, UK

This paper provides a first description of the intonational patterns of San‘aani Arabic (sa, the dialect of Arabic spoken in the capital of Yemen) and a comparison of these patterns with those observed in Cairene Arabic (ca), revealing differences between the two varieties which mirror cross-linguistic prosodic variation. The sa analysis is based on qualitative transcription of portions of a multi-level corpus, including read speech sentences, a narrative retold from memory and a sociolinguistic data collection tool which yields free conversation data in the desired variety as well as information that can be used to confirm which variety is being used. The corpus design and methodology serve as a prototype for larger data collection to document intonational variation in Arabic.

Published online: 29 August 2014
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/sal.1.06hel
References
Abdel-Massih, E. T.
(1975)  An introduction to Egyptian Arabic . Ann Arbor: University of Michigan.Google Scholar
Anderson, A., Bader, M., Bard, E. G., Boyle, E., Doherty, G., Garrod, S.
et al. (1991) The HCRC Map Task Corpus. Language and Speech, 34 , 351–366.
Bassiouney, R.
(2009)  Arabic sociolinguistics . Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Baumann, S. & Grice, M.
(2006) The intonation of accessibility. Journal of Pragmatics, 38 , 1636–1657. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Beckman, M., Hirschberg, J., & Shattuck-Hufnagel, S.
(2005) The original ToBI system and the evolution of the ToBI framework. In S.-A.Jun (Ed.), Prosodic Typology: The phonology of intonation and phrasing (pp. 9–54). Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Beckman, M. & Venditti, J.
(2011) Intonation. In J. Goldsmith, J. Riggle, & A. Yu (Eds.), The Handbook of Phonological Theory (pp. 485–532). Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Benkirane, T.
(1998) Intonation in Western Arabic (Morocco). In D. Hirst & A. Di Cristo (Eds.), Intonation systems: a survey of twenty languages (pp. 345–359). Cambridge, MA: CUP.Google Scholar
Blodgett, A., Owens, J., & Rockwood, T.
(2007) An initial account of the intonation of Emirati Arabic. Proceedings of the 16th ICPhS, Saarbruecken, Germany , 1137–1140.
Boersma, P. & Weenink, D.
(2013) Praat: doing phonetics by computer (Version 5.3.49) [[URL]] [Computer software].
Broselow, E.
(1992) Parametric variation in Arabic dialect phonology. In E. Broselow, M. Eid, & J. McCarthy (Eds.), Perspectives on Arabic Linguistics IV: papers from the 4th Annual Symposium on Arabic Linguistics . (pp. 7–45). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Bruce, G.
(1977)  Swedish word accents in sentence perspective . Lund: Gleerup.Google Scholar
Brugos, A., Veilleux, N., Breen, M., & Shattuck-Hufnagel, S.
(2008) The alternatives (Alt) tier for ToBI: advantages of capturing prosodic ambiguity. Speech Prosody 2008 (Campinas, Brazil) , 273–276.
Chahal, D.
(2001)  Modeling the intonation of Lebanese Arabic using the autosegmental-metrical framework: a comparison with English . PhD Unpublished PhD thesis, University of Melbourne.
(2003) Phonetic cues to prominence in Arabic. Proceedings of the 15th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences , 2067–2070.
(2009) Intonation. In K. Versteegh (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Arabic Language and Linguistics . Volume 2. (pp. 395–400). The Netherlands: Brill Academic.Google Scholar
Chahal, D. & Hellmuth, S.
(2013) Comparing the Intonational Phonology of Lebanese and Egyptian Arabic. In S.-A. Jun (Ed.), Prosodic Typology . Volume 2. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
ElZarka, D.
(2011) Leading, linking and closing tones and tunes in Egyptian Arabic - what a simple intonation system tells us about the nature of intonation. In E. Broselow and H. Ouali (Eds.), Perspectives on Arabic Linguistics: Papers from the annual symposia on Arabic Linguistics Volume XXII-XXIII: College Park, Maryland, 2008 & Milwaukee, Wisconsin, 2009 (pp. 57–74). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
ElZarka, D. & Hellmuth, S.
(2009) Variation in the intonation of Egyptian Formal and Colloquial Arabic. Langues et Linguistique, 22 , 73–92.
Gary, J. O. & Gamal-Eldin, S.
(1981)  Cairene Egyptian colloquial Arabic . London: Croom Helm.Google Scholar
Ghazali, S., Hamidi, R., & Knis, K.
(2007) Intonation and rhythmic patterns across the Arabic dialects continuum. In E. Benmamoun (Ed.), Perspectives on Arabic Linguistics: Papers from the annual symposium on Arabic Linguistics Volume XIX: Urbana, Illinois April 2005 (pp. 97–122). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Grabe, E.
(2004) Intonational variation in urban dialects of English spoken in the British Isles. In P. Gilles & J. Peters (Eds.), Regional Variation in Intonation (pp. 9–31). Tuebingen: Niemeyer.Google Scholar
Grabe, E., Nolan, F., & Farrar, K.
(1998) IViE - a comparative transcription system for intonational variation in English. Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Spoken Language Processing (Sydney, Australia). , 1259–1262.
Gussenhoven, C.
(2004)  The phonology of tone and intonation . Cambridge: CUP. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2006) Between stress and tone in Nubi word prosody. Phonology, 23 , 192–223. DOI logo
(2007) The Phonology of Intonation. In P.de Lacy (Ed.), The Cambridge Handbook of Phonology (pp. 253–280). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Hellmuth, S.
(2006)  Intonational pitch accent distribution in Egyptian Arabic . PhD Unpublished PhD thesis, SOAS.
(2007) The foot as the domain of tonal alignment of intonational pitch accents. Proceedings of the 16th ICPhS, Saarbruecken, Germany .
(2007) The relationship between prosodic structure and pitch accent distribution: evidence from Egyptian Arabic. The Linguistic Review, 24 , 289–314.
(2009) The (absence of) prosodic reflexes of given/new information status in Egyptian Arabic. In J. Owens & A. Elgibali (Eds.), Information Structure in Spoken Arabic (pp. 165–188). Oxford: Routledge.Google Scholar
(2011) Acoustic cues to focus and givenness in Egyptian Arabic. In B. Heselwood & Z. M. Hassan (Eds.), Instrumental Studies in Arabic Phonetics. [CILT319] (pp. 299–324). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2013) Phonology. In J. Owens (Ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Arabic Linguistics (pp. 45–70). Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
(2014) Evidence of distinct intonational properties in formal vs. colloquial Arabic? A case study. In E. Delais-Roussarie, M. Avanzi, & S. Herment (Eds.), Prosody and languages in contact: L2 acquisition, attrition, languages in multilingual situations . Berlin: Springer Verlag.Google Scholar
Hoyt, F.
(2014) Prosodic constituency and locality in Levantine Arabic Long-Distance Negative Concord. In R. Khamis-Dakwar & K. Fround (Eds.), Perspective on Arabic Linguistics 26 Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Hyman, L.
(2006) Word-prosodic typology. Phonology, 23 , 225–257. DOI logo
International Phonetic Association
(1999)  Handbook of the International Phonetic Association . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Jun, S.-A
(2005) Prosodic typology. In S.-A.Jun (Ed.), Prosodic Typology: The Phonology of Intonation and Phrasing (pp. 430–458). Oxford: OUP.Google Scholar
Krifka, M.
(2006) Basic notions of information structure. In C. Féry, G. Fanselow, & M. Krifka(Eds.), The notions of information structure . Institutsverlag Universitaet Potsdam.Google Scholar
Kulk, F., Odé, C., & Woidich, M.
(2003) The intonation of colloquial Damascene Arabic: a pilot study. IFA Proceedings, 25 , 15–20.
Ladd, D. R.
(2008)  Intonational Phonology . (Second Edition ed.) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Liberman, M. & Pierrehumbert, J.
(1984) Intonational variance under changes in pitch range and length. In M. Aronoff & R. T. Oehrle (Eds.), Language Sound Structure: Studies in Phonology present to Morris Hallé (pp. 157–233). Cambridge, M.A.: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Llamas, C.
(2007) A new methodology: data elicitation for regional and social language variation studies. York Papers in Linguistics Series 2, 8 , 138–163.
Naïm-Sambar, S.
(1994) Contribution á l'étude de l'accent yéménite: le parler des femmes de l'ancienne génération. Zeitschrift fur arabische Linguistik/Journal of Arabic Linguistics /Journal de Linguistique Arabe , 67–89.Google Scholar
Norlin, K.
(1989) A preliminary description of Cairo Arabic intonation of statements and questions. Speech Transmission Quarterly Progress and Status Report, 1 , 47–49.
Pierrehumbert, J.
(1980)  The phonology and phonetics of English intonation . MIT.Google Scholar
Post, B., D'Imperio, M., & Gussenhoven, C.
(2007) Fine phonetic detail and intonational meaning. Proceedings of the 16th ICPhS, Saarbruecken, Germany , 191–196.
Prieto, P., D'Imperio, M., & Gili Fivela, B.
(2005) Pitch accent alignment in Romance: primary and secondary associations with metrical structure. Language and Speech, 48 , 359–396. DOI logo
Prieto, P. & Frota, S.
(2014)  Transcription of Intonation in the Romance Languages . Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Prieto, P. & Roseano, P.
(2010)  Transcription of Intonation of the Spanish Language . Muenchen: LINCOM.Google Scholar
Prieto, P., van Santen, J., & Hirschberg, J.
(1995) Tonal alignment patterns in Spanish. Journal of Phonetics, 23 , 429–451. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Rastegar-ElZarka, D.
(1997)  Prosodische Phonologie des Arabischen . PhD Unpublished PhD thesis, Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz.
Rifaat, K.
(1991)  The intonation of Arabic: an experimental study . Unpublished PhD thesis, University of Alexandria..
(2005) The structure of Arabic intonation: a preliminary investigation. In M.T. Alhawary & E. Benmamoun (Eds.), Perspectives on Arabic Linguistics XVII-XVIII: Papers from the seventeenth and eighteenth annual symposia on Arabic linguistics . (pp. 49–67). Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Rooth, M.
(1996) Focus. In S. Lappin (Ed.), The Handbook of Contemporary Semantic Theory (pp. 271–297). Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Selkirk, E. O.
(2000) The interaction of constraints on prosodic phrasing. In M. Horne (Ed.), Prosody: theory and experiment (pp. 231–262). Dordrecht: Kluwer. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2011) The Syntax-Phonology Interface. In J. Goldsmith, J. Riggle, & A. Yu (Eds.), The Handbook of Phonological Theory (Second Edition ed., pp. 435–484). DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Siemund, R., Heuft, B., Choukri, K., Emam, O., Maragoudakis, E., Tropf, H.
et al. (2002) OrienTel - Arabic speech resources for the IT market. Proceedings of LREC 2002 (Arabic workshop) .
Skopeteas, S., Fiedler, I., Hellmuth, S., Schwarz, A., Stoel, R., Fanselow, G.
et al. (2006) Questionnaire on Information Structure (QUIS). Interdisciplinary Studies on Information Structure (ISIS): Working Papers of SFB632 University of Potsdam., 4 .
van der Hulst, H. & Hellmuth, S.
(2010) Word accent systems in the Middle East. In R. Goedmans & H. van der Hulst (Eds.), A Survey of Word Accentual Patterns in the Languages of the World (pp. 615–646). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Watson, J. C. E.
(1993)  A syntax of San'ani Arabic . Wiesbaden: Harrossowitz Verlag.Google Scholar
(1996)  Sbahtu! A course in Sana'ani Arabic . Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag.Google Scholar
(2002)  The phonology and morphology of Arabic . Oxford: OUP.Google Scholar
(2011) Word stress in Arabic. In M. Oostendorp, C. Ewen, E. Hume, & K. Rice (Eds.), The Blackwell Companion to Phonology. Volume 5 (pp. 2990–3018). Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Watson, J. C. E. & Asiri, Y.
(2009) Pre-pausal devoicing and glottalisation in varieties of the south-western Arabian Peninsula. Langues et Linguistique, 22 , 17–38.
Watson, J. C. E. & Bellem, A.
(2011) Glottalisation and neutralisation in Yemeni Arabic and Mehri: An acoustic study. In Z.M. Hassan & B. Heselwood (Eds.), Instrumental Studies in Arabic Phonetics (pp. 235–256). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wellens, I.
(2005)  The Nubi language of Uganda: an Arabic creole in Africa . Amsterdam: BRILL.Google Scholar
Yeou, M.
(2004) Effects of focus, position and syllable structure on F0 alignment patterns in Arabic. Proceedings of JEP-TALN 2004 .
Yeou, M., Embarki, M., AlMaqtari, S., & Dodane, C.
(2007) F0 alignment patterns in Arabic dialects. Proceedings of the 16th ICPhS, Saarbruecken, Germany , 1493–1496.
Cited by

Cited by 2 other publications

Alabdalla, Nada
2018. Formation of Arabic Theatrical Speech Culture in the Context of Language Situation. Observatory of Culture 15:4 ► pp. 436 ff. DOI logo
El Zarka, Dina
2017. Arabic Intonation. In Oxford Handbook Topics in Linguistics, DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 12 april 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.