University of North Dakota UND Scholarly Commons Theses and Dissertations Theses, Dissertations, and Senior Projects January 2020 The Vowels Of Urban Qatari Arabic Mark Daniel Shockley Follow this and additional works at: https://commons.und.edu/theses Recommended Citation Shockley, Mark Daniel, "The Vowels Of Urban Qatari Arabic" (2020). Theses and Dissertations. 3390. https://commons.und.edu/theses/3390 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Theses, Dissertations, and Senior Projects at UND Scholarly Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of UND Scholarly Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. THE VOWELS OF URBAN QATARI ARABIC by Mark Daniel Shockley Bachelor of Arts, Sam Houston State University, 2009 A Thesis Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the University of North Dakota in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts Linguistics Grand Forks, North Dakota December 2020 This thesis, submitted by Mark Daniel Shockley in partial fulfillment of the require­ ments for the Degree of Master of Arts from the University of North Dakota, has been read by the Faculty Advisory Committee under whom the work has been done and is hereby approved. _______________________________________ Dr. Adam Baker _______________________________________ Dr. John M. Clifton _______________________________________ Dr. Mark E. Karan This thesis is being submitted by the appointed advisory committee as having met all of the requirements of the School of Graduate Studies at the University of North Dakota and is hereby approved. ____________________________________ Chris Nelson Dean of the School of Graduate Studies ____________________________________ Date ii PERMISSION Title The Vowels of Urban Qatari Arabic Department Linguistics Degree Master of Arts In presenting this thesis in partial fulfillment of the requirements for a graduate de­ gree from the University of North Dakota, I agree that the library of this University shall make it freely available for inspection. I further agree that permission for exten­ sive copying for scholarly purposes may be granted by the professor who supervised my thesis work or, in his absence, by the Chairperson of the department or the dean of the School of Graduate Studies. It is understood that any copying or publication or other use of this thesis or part thereof for financial gain shall not be allowed without my written permission. It is also understood that due recognition shall be given to me and to the University of North Dakota in any scholarly use which may be made of any material in my thesis. Mark Daniel Shockley December 14, 2020 iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Many thanks to Dr. Adam Baker, my committee chair, whose patience and scientific acumen made this project possible. Dr. Mark E. Karan and Dr. John M. Clifton provided timely and detailed feedback that greatly improved the quality of this thesis. Dr. Darwish Al­Emadi, Acting Vice President for Research at Qatar University, pro­ vided expert advice in preparing this study. Dr. Eiman Mustafawi, Associate Professor in the Department of English Language and Linguistics at Qatar University, was very generous in suggesting research questions and assisted me with recruiting participants. I am grateful to my Arabic teachers in Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, and Oman, who are too many to name here. Participants in this study included Ali Albader, Muhammad al­Murri, Buthaina Alkhu­ laifi, Abdulla Al­Hajri, and Noora AlAnsari. I remain humbled by their generosity in offering me their time, as well as their insights and intuitions on their language, which certainly exceed the bounds of this study. I owe a special thanks to my wife, Dr. Bethany Shockley, for her unwavering support throughout this project. iv ABSTRACT Urban Qatari Arabic is a variety of Gulf Arabic [afb] spoken by Qataris with tradi­ tionally sedentary tribal backgrounds. This study examines phonetic and phonological aspects of Urban Qatari Arabic vowels using acoustic phonetic data gathered in Qatar. A new phonemic vowel inventory is proposed, including five long vowels and two short vowels. This finding contradicts published studies on Gulf Arabic, which include three or more short vowels; however, it is not unexpected when studies are compared from nearby Arabic varieties, such as Najdi Arabic and Mesopotamian Arabic. The vowel in­ ventory is also investigated using four linear mixed­effects regression models. In Gulf Arabic, variation in short vowel backness is largely accounted for by the point of artic­ ulation of adjacent consonants, as indicated by the statistical results. Word­final vowel raising is found to be conditioned by the preceding vowel in Urban Qatari Arabic. Typ­ ically, in other varieties of Arabic, word­final vowel raising is consonant­conditioned. A nuanced investigation of word stress, including interactions between stress and epenthesis, demonstrates significant microlinguistic variation. Epenthetic vowels gen­ erally can be stressed in Gulf Arabic, but for some speakers, stress assignment also depends on which type of epenthesis occurs. Diachronic variation in Gulf Arabic word stress is tending toward the elimination of stigmatized stress patterns and the introduc­ tion of stress patterns from non­Arabian dialects. Acoustic correlates of word stress, including pitch, duration, intensity, and changes in formants, are examined using the regression models. Pitch, duration and intensity are found to be statistically significant markers of stress. An examination of formants shows that contrasts in vowel quality are maximized in stressed vowels. A phonological analysis of epenthesis shows that it is generally predicted by sonor­ ity. Historical vowel deletion and synchronic epenthesis are demonstrated to be in a counter­feeding relation, which has previously led to conflicting claims about word­ final epenthesis. In three­consonant clusters, epenthesis is expected after the first con­ sonant, but sometimes epenthesis occurs after the second consonant or does not take place. Although stress may be assigned to epenthetic vowels, epenthetic vowels dif­ fer phonetically from other short vowels. Furthermore, post­lexical epenthesis differs phonetically from lexical epenthesis. v vi Contents 1 Introduction 1 1.1 Problem and findings ........................... 1 1.2 The state of Arabic dialectology ..................... 2 1.3 Urban Qatari Arabic in context ...................... 4 1.3.1 Classifying Arabic dialects .................... 4 1.3.2 North Arabian dialects ...................... 5 1.3.3 Language contact in the Gulf ................... 7 1.3.4 Linguistic situation ........................ 8 1.4 Existing research ............................. 9 1.5 Methods .................................. 11 1.5.1 Researcher qualifications ..................... 11 1.5.2 Subjects .............................. 11 1.5.3 Interviews ............................. 12 1.5.4 Stimuli .............................. 12 1.5.5 Measurements .......................... 13 1.5.6 Statistical methods ........................ 16 1.5.7 Supplemental data ........................ 16 2 Vowel inventory 19 2.1 Phonemes ................................. 19 2.1.1 Findings ............................. 19 2.1.2 Long vowels ........................... 24 2.1.3 Short vowels ........................... 25 2.1.4 Diphthongs ............................ 26 2.2 The phonemic status of [u] in Gulf Arabic ................ 27 2.2.1 Primary data ........................... 27 2.2.2 Minimal pairs ........................... 27 2.2.3 Putative minimal pairs ...................... 29 2.2.4 Further evidence from functional load .............. 30 2.2.5 Secondary data .......................... 31 2.3 Allophones ................................ 32 2.3.1 Findings ............................. 32 2.3.2 Consonant­conditioned vowel backing .............. 35 2.3.3 Mutual reinforcing of backing consonants ............ 38 2.4 Word­final vowel raising (ʔimāla) .................... 39 2.4.1 Findings ............................. 39 2.4.2 Discussion ............................ 40 2.5 Conclusion ................................ 44 vii 3 Stress 47 3.1 Stress position ............................... 47 3.2 Epenthesis­stress interaction ....................... 50 3.3 Acoustic correlates of stress ....................... 52 3.3.1 Findings ............................. 52 3.3.2 Duration ............................. 53 3.3.3 Intensity .............................. 54 3.3.4 Fundamental frequency ...................... 55 3.3.5 Formants ............................. 57 3.3.6 Conclusion ............................ 58 4 Epenthesis 59 4.1 Position of epenthesis ........................... 59 4.1.1 Epenthesis in word­final clusters ................. 59 4.1.2 Lexical variants .......................... 61 4.1.3 Epenthesis at morpheme boundaries ............... 62 4.1.4 Consonant reduction and epenthesis ............... 63 4.2 Quality of epenthetic vowels ....................... 65 4.3 Acoustics of epenthetic vowels ...................... 66 4.3.1 Underlying and epenthetic vowels ................ 66 4.3.2 Lexical and post­lexical epenthesis ............... 68 4.4 Conclusion ................................ 70 A Variation in stress assignment 85 B Wordlist 87 C Statistical results 93 C.1 Long vowel model ............................ 93 C.2 Short vowel model ............................ 94 C.3 Vowel raising model