ARCHIVES OF ACOUSTICS Copyright c 2017 by PAN – IPPT Vol. 42, No. 4, pp. 571–578 (2017) DOI: 10.1515/aoa-2017-0061 An Experimental Study of the Gemination in Arabic Language Kamel FERRAT(1), Mhania GUERTI(2) (1) Scientific and Technical Research Centre for the Development of the Arabic Language (CRSTDLA) BP 225 Rostomia Algiers, 16011 Algeria; e-mail: [email protected] (2) National Polytechnic School (ENP) El-Harrach Algiers, 16200 Algeria (received February 20, 2017; accepted May 17, 2017) In this paper, we report the results of an experimental study of the acoustic and articulatory features of the gemination in Modern Arabic language, pronounced by Algerian speakers. To extract the feature characteristics, we have carried out an acoustic analysis by computing the values of frequency formants, energy and durations of the consonants and subsequent vowels in the various [VCV] and [VCgV] utter- ances (Cg: geminate consonant). For the articulatory analysis, a range of kinematics parameters were analyzed from the phoneme productions including movement trajectories, distance, velocity, and dura- tion of tongue movements. Among the most important results, we note a longer duration of the vowel following a geminate consonant, a decreasing in levels of F1 and F2 formants and a rising in level of F3 formant of this vowel. Keywords: Arabic language; gemination; acoustic analysis; articulatory analysis. 1. Introduction The gemination process is very relevant in Ara- bic language. Indeed, the sentence [ a ara eddarsa] Various definitions are given to the gemination phe- ( ) (he attended the lesson) presents a differ- nomenon in Arabic Language. For Sibawayh, one of ent sense, compared to the sentence with gemination the greatest Arab linguists, because of the tiredness [ a ara eddarsa] ( ) (he prepared the lesson). during the successive realisation of two identical artic- Also, the word [naqaba] (to dig) differs from the word ulations, this realisation is rejected in favour of gem- [naqqaba] (to seek) by a gemination of the phoneme [q]. ination of two identical phonemes, in order to have In this paper, we present the results of an experi- only one movement of articulation (Roman, 1983). mental study of acoustic and articulatory properties In addition, Delattre (1971), the articulation of the of geminate consonants in Modern Arabic language geminate consonant achieves itself in two phases and (MA), pronounced by Algerian speakers. The obtained presents two summits of activity. So a geminate se- results are compared to previous studies reported in quence cannot be regarded as a long consonant which the literature on gemination in Arabic and other lan- concerns a single segment having two timing slots. On guages. We have considered the intervocalic context the other hand, Dkhissi-Boff (1983) considers that to study in particular the influence of gemination on the geminate consonant in Arabic language do not the following vowel. For the final position and the in- present two distinct articulatory movements, but only fluence of gemination on the preceding vowel, various one single movement, which differs from that of the studies have been conducted for the Arabic geminate simple consonant, by its important stability of artic- consonants, such as the experimental study presented ulation, and its very significant duration. In contrast, by Al-Tamimi on the Jordanian Arabic final geminates Cantineau (1960) describes consonant gemination in (Al-Tamimi et al., 2010). Arabic language to be equivalent to two identical sin- Phonetic studies in the domain of gemination re- gle consonants, one occurring immediately after the port a lot of controversy from an acoustic and articu- other. To sum up, most authors agree that germina- latory point of view. In many languages, the acoustic tion means the strengthening of a phoneme’s articula- analysis shows that the ratio geminate/non geminate tion which leads in particular to the lengthening of its phoneme duration varies from one language to another: duration. higher in Arabic (Obrecht, 1965; Zeroual et al., 572 Archives of Acoustics – Volume 42, Number 4, 2017 2008), Japanese (Lahiri, Hankamer, 1988) and Ital- in presence of geminate consonants. In Moroccan Ara- ian (Stevens, Hajek, 2004), but lower in Swedish bic, the geminate plosives are produced with a longer (Lofqvist¨ , 2005). Furthermore, the intervocalic gem- period of tongue tip contact (Zeroual et al., 2008). inate plosives are usually produced with a very long Videofluoroscopic data reveal that Jordanian Arabic closure, which constitutes their major acoustic and final geminates are produced with “tighter and larger perceptive cue (Obrecht, 1965; Lahiri, Hankamer, contact extents in comparison to the singleton con- 1988; Zeroual et al., 2008). In Tashlhiyt Berber, Ri- sonants” (Al-Tamimi et al., 2010). In Tarifit Berber, douane (2007) reports that the main correlate which X-ray analysis shows a significant contact of the back distinguishes geminate consonants Cg and non gem- of the tongue with the velar region at the pronunci- inate consonants Cng is the duration. This primary ation of uvular geminate consonants (Bouarourou correlate is enhanced by additional acoustic features et al., 2008). Lofqvist¨ (2007) has studied the tongue (such as preceding vowel shortening). In this language, movement kinematics in long and short Japanese con- the gemination is interpreted as the manifestation of sonants, using a magnetometer system, and has ob- a tense articulation. served a substantial difference in closure duration be- Moreover, recent studies report a shortening of tween the long and short consonants. An X-ray study vowels preceding a geminate consonant in some lan- of French consonants by Vaxelaire (1995) suggests guages like Italian (Stevens, Hajek, 2004; Espos- that the area of tongue palate contact is larger for ito, Di Benedetto, 1999; Smith, 1995), Swedish the long stop consonants than for the short ones. In (Hassan, 2002), Tashlhiyt Berber (Ridouane, 2007), addition, Payne (2006) has presented the results of Indonesian languages (Cohn et al., 1999), Hindi an electropalatographic investigation of Italian gemi- (Shrotriya et al., 1995) and finally Malayalam nate consonants and has suggested a more palatalized (Local, Simpson, 1999). To explain this phenomenon tongue configuration during the production of gemi- of vowel shortening before a geminate consonant, nate coronal sonorants and stops than in their non- Smith (1995) evokes the anticipation of the geminate geminate counterparts. Also, Smith (1995) has exam- gesture in the pronunciation of the preceding vowel ined lip and tongue movements in single and geminate causing its shortening (Smith, 1995). As opposed to consonants in Japanese and Italian, and has reported the works cited above, other studies show that the that the closing movements of the lips were slower for geminate consonants don’t induce shortening of their the geminates compared with their single counterparts. preceding vowel, and are produced without larger an- In the same way, Ishii (1999) has studied the move- ticipation of their gesture in the preceding vowel com- ment of the articulatory organs in Japanese geminate pared to their simple counterparts. For the AL, we production ANX-ray microbeam analysis and reported can mention the studies of Hassan (2002), Khattab, that the movement of the tongue body and dorsum was Al-Tamimi (2008), and Zeroual et al. (2008). We significantly slower and its pattern was more variable can also cite the studies of Lahiri, Hankamer (1988) in the production of Japanese geminate compared with for Japanese, and Arvaniti and Tserdanelis (2000) simple and long vowel production. for Cypriot Greek which considers that the differences between the vowels preceding singleton and the vowels 2. Experimental method preceding geminate consonants were on average 12 ms, and thus unlikely to be of perceptual relevance. In the We have exploited a corpus of the singleton vs. same way, Ghalib (1984) and Hassan (2002) have geminate consonants of Modern Arabic Language, ap- concluded that such vowel duration differences are neg- pearing in the context of the three surrounding vow- ligible. It is useful to note that unlike those studies, els [a, i, u]. This corpus was pronounced by twenty Al-Tamimi et al. (2010) consider the duration of the speakers, students at the University of Algiers II. All preceding vowel as an acoustic and perceptual relevant the speakers were native Arabic speakers from Algeria, cue, with vowels preceding singletons longer by almost with no history of speech or hearing disorders. two milliseconds than those preceding the geminates, For the acoustic analysis, time and frequency re- on average. lated parameters were examined. The time parameters In addition, the acoustic formants are also dis- were all based on durational measurements performed cussed in some papers. According to Arvaniti and within the consonant and surrounding vowels. The Tserdanelis (2000), preliminary data regarding F1 frequency parameters, formants and fundamental fre- and F2 formants of the surrounding vowels in the test quency, were computed at different points all through words of the Cypriot Greek language strongly suggest the analyzed speech. To extract the feature character- that the presence of a geminate do not affect the qual- istics, we carried out an acoustic analysis by extracting ity of the surrounding vowels, either in their steady the values of the frequency formants, energy and du- state or in the transitions to and from the geminate. rations in the various [VCV] and [VCgV] utterances From an articulatory point of view, many papers (Cg: geminate consonant). For that, we used the sona- report a larger and longer period of contact extents graph CSL 4300B of Kay Elemetrics, the Praat speech K. Ferrat, M. Guerti – An Experimental Study of the Gemination in Arabic Language 573 analysis software and the Matlab Software. For the ar- lograph AG100 and corresponding to the various move- ticulatory analysis tool, several techniques were used ments of the tongue tip (TT), the tongue mid (TM) to study the articulatory characteristics. Some authors and the tongue back (TB).