Yasser Albaty
Department of English Language and Literature, College of Languages and Humanities, Qassim University, Buraydah 52571, Saudi Arabia
The aim of the paper was to analyze affricates in Qassimi Arabic, and to examine their temporal features in comparison with other related obstruents. The target sounds were /ts/, /dz/, /t/, /s/, /d/, /z/, /k/, /g/. Various measurements were made to provide a thorough acoustic analysis of target sounds: The durations of closure, the duration of the friction phase, and the duration of affricates. In addition, the duration of the preceding vowel was also measured, as it was suggested in previous cross-linguistics studies to play a crucial role in affricate. The participants were native speakers of QA, with ages ranging from 20 to 28. The results showed that QA data conform with cross-linguistic features of affricates; the duration of affricate and friction of the voiceless affricate /ts/ were longer than the voiced counterpart /dz/. The duration of closure portion of affricate also showed a difference between the voiced and voiceless affricates, where the latter was longer than the former. Further, the duration of the preceding vowel showed a compensation with the following affricate duration. In particular, the voiceless affricate, which was longer than the voiced one, had shorter preceding vowels. The study provides preliminary and interesting results of affricates in Qassimi Arabic and contributes in filling a gap of the investigation of affricates in Arabic varieties in general.
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