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14 - The Intonation of Arabic

Review and Hypotheses

from Part III - Theoretical and Descriptive Studies

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 September 2021

By
Khaled Rifaat
Edited by
Karin Ryding  and
David Wilmsen
Karin Ryding
Affiliation:
Georgetown University, Washington DC
David Wilmsen
Affiliation:
American University of Beirut
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Summary

Khaled Rifaat provides a detailed analysis of Arabic intonation including an extensive review of literature, noting from the outset the ‘paucity of research on intonational prosody’ in Arabic linguistics. He describes Arabic intonation as an ‘accidentally dense system’ characterized by ‘structural and functional simplicity’. In particular, he points out problems of eliciting adequate corpora of spontaneous speech, whether in colloquial Arabic or in more formal Standard Arabic. His discussion covers the theoretical framework of Arabic intonational phonology, phrasing and constituents, accent types and distribution, declination, and trendlines.

Keywords

phonologyintonationaccentAutosegmental-Metrical frameworkdeclinationgestural componentprosodic word
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Handbook of Arabic Linguistics , pp. 330 - 352
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

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