ISCA Archive Eurospeech 1989
ISCA Archive Eurospeech 1989

A study of subglottal pressure for emphatic and non-emphatic sounds in Arabic

Yousef El-Halees

The Phonetic feature of "emphasis" in Arabic involves (1) a narrowing in the back cavity caused by retracting and lowering the rest of the tongue and the epiglottis and an inward movement of the lateral walls of the pharynx, (2) a widening in the front cavity caused by lowering the body of the tongue in the mouth. Acoustically this results in F1 raising and F2 lowering; F0 has been found to be lower for the emphatic items than for the non-emphatic counterparts.