Emphatic variation of the labio-velar /w/ in two Jordanian Arabic dialects

Abstract

Much work on emphatic segments in Arabic dialects has focused on primary emphasis. However, secondary emphasis has been less of a target of study. Our research investigates the emphatic variation of the secondarily emphatic labio-velar /w/ between males and females in two Jordanian Arabic sub-dialects: Rural Jordanian Arabic and Urban Jordanian Arabic. Twenty-four native speakers from the two dialects (equally stratified according to their gender and dialect) were asked to read a carrier phrase that included fifteen tri-syllabic words having the sound /w/ in medial position. Our research confirmed that there is a variation in the degree of emphasis based on gender and dialect. More particularly, males produced stronger emphatic segments than females did, and Urban speakers produced weaker empathic segments than Rural speakers did. Results also revealed that the secondarily emphatic /w/ caused the neighboring vowels to have lowered F2 and raised F1 and F3. These findings suggest that emphasis, whether primary or secondary, tend to have the same acoustic correlates. In closing, the theoretical implications of these finding are discussed.

Keywords

• Acoustic correlates
• Gender
• Emphasis
• Emphatics
• Jordanian Arabic
• Sociophonetics