Arab World English Journal (AWEJ).Vol.6 No.1.2015 Pp.335-358
DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.24093/awej/vol6no1.26
The Impact of Geminates on the Duration of the Preceding and Following
Vowels in Ta’zi Dialect
Nadhim Abdulamalek Aldubai
Department of Languages & Translation
Taibah University, Saudi Arabia
Abstract:
This paper is a spectrographic analysis of the duration of geminate consonants and their impacts on the preceding and the following vowels in Ta’zi Dialect (TD), a prominent dialect of the Yemeni Arabic. More than fifty words comprising minimal words are collected from the TD to find out the difference in length between the geminated and the non-geminated consonants in words and the consequences of this process. It has been reached to the conclusion that the duration of the geminate consonant in TD is generally twice as much as that of the non-geminates. When geminated, the trill has been found to be the longest among all other consonants; pharyngeals and semivowels have been found to be the shortest. The voiceless consonants prove to be longer than their voiced counterparts. It is also observed that the geminated consonants affected the preceding and the following vowels. The adjacent vowels to the geminates are generally shortened. It seems that there is no proof that the secondary articulation affects the length of the geminated words in case of gutturals.
Keywords: Duration, geminates, spectrographic analysis, Ta’izi Dialect, vowels,
Cite as: Aldubai, N. A. (2015). The Impact of Geminates on the Duration of the Preceding and Following Vowels in Ta’zi Dialect.
Arab World English Journal, 8 (1).
DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.24093/awej/vol6no1.26