Doctoral Dissertation Research: Plain, Emphatic, and Pharyngeal Consonants in Palestinian Arabic

语言依赖于相似声音之间的声学差异（对比）来区分具有不同含义的单词，例如“pen”和“Ben”中的/p/和/B/。阿拉伯语有三种不同的发音：普通的齿音、辅音和咽音。对于牙齿，舌尖接触上齿，而咽部在喉咙处有收缩。强辅音联合收割机结合了牙齿和咽部的收缩，对于那些不会说阿拉伯语的人来说，听起来类似于普通的牙齿。说话者必须认识到这些辅音之间的差异，以区分具有重要含义差异的单词（例如阿拉伯语中的“成员”和“敌人”）。这些辅音的声学特征还不太清楚。本研究验证了一个假设，即听者通过对同一个词中相邻和非相邻元音的影响来识别这些辅音。这个项目将探讨说话者如何产生和识别巴勒斯坦阿拉伯语中的普通辅音，辅音和咽辅音。该项目的成果可以改善语言识别程序，为阿拉伯语学习者开发教材，并告知我们对人类语言处理的理解。将通过生产和感知实验收集数据。在产生实验中，母语使用者将记录包含普通的牙齿、牙齿或咽部辅音的单词。研究者将测量这些辅音以及相邻和非相邻元音的声学特征，以探索这些辅音类别如何不同，它们如何影响相邻元音，如果它们影响不同的元音，以及它们的影响是否扩展到整个单词或仅相邻元音。生产实验的结果将被用来进行感知实验，测试扬声器如何使用这些声学线索来区分不同类别的辅音。实验的结合将确定哪些效应对区分这些类别至关重要，与咽音的比较可能会提供有关辅音发音的线索。该项目将进一步扩大我们对语音和语音过程的理解，以解释阿拉伯语中的非本地语音过程，从而促进语言学领域的发展。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并被认为值得通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估来支持。

Languages rely on acoustic differences (contrasts) between similar sounds to distinguish words with different meanings, such as between /p/ and /b/ in 'pen' and 'Ben'. Arabic contrasts three types of sounds: plain dental, emphatic, and pharyngeal consonants. For dentals, the tongue tip touches the upper teeth, while pharyngeals have a constriction in the throat. Emphatic consonants combine the dental and pharyngeal constrictions and sound similar to plain dentals to those who do not speak Arabic. Speakers must recognize the differences between these consonants to distinguish words with important meaning differences (such as between the Arabic words for 'member' and 'enemy'). The acoustic characteristics of these consonants are not well understood. This research tests the hypothesis that listeners identify these consonants through their effects on adjacent and non-adjacent vowels within the same word. This project will explore how speakers produce and identify plain, emphatic, and pharyngeal consonants in Palestinian Arabic. The outcomes of this project can improve language recognition programs, develop teaching materials for learners of Arabic, and inform our understanding of human language processing. Data will be collected through production and perception experiments. For the production experiments, native speakers will record words containing plain dental, emphatic, or pharyngeal consonants. The investigator will measure acoustic characteristics of these consonants and of adjacent and non-adjacent vowels to explore how these consonant classes differ, how they affect adjacent vowels, if they affect different vowels, and whether their effects extend to the whole word or only the adjacent vowel. The findings of the production experiments will be used to conduct a perception experiment that tests how speakers use these acoustic cues to distinguish the different classes of consonants. The combination of experiments will identify which effects are crucial to distinguish these classes, and the comparison to pharyngeals may provide clues about the articulation of emphatic consonants. This project will further the field of linguistics by expanding our understanding of phonological and phonetic processes to account for non-local phonological processes in Arabic.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.