Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-4rdpn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-17T16:12:15.976Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

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
Get access

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

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Abdalla, A. (1960). An Instrumental Study of the Intonation of Egyptian Colloquial Arabic. Doctoral dissertation, University of Michigan.Google Scholar
Ahmad, K. (1987). Intonation of a Gulf Arabic Dialect: Zubairi. Doctoral dissertation, University of Reading.Google Scholar
Ahmed, Y. A. (1979). A Study of Focus in the Arabic Dialect of Kuwait. Doctoral dissertation, School of Oriental and African Studies University of London.Google Scholar
Al Faruqi, L. I. (1978). Accentuation in Qur’ānic chant: A study in musical Tawāzun. Yearbook of the International Folk Music Council, 10, 53–68.Google Scholar
Al Ghamdi, A. (2006). Preliminary Analysis of the Intonation of Riyadh Saudi Arabic. Paper, Rutgers University. http://roa.rutgers.edu/files/812-0306/812-AL_GHAMDI-0-0.PDF; last accessed 30 November 2020.Google Scholar
Alharbi, L. M. (1991). Formal Analysis of Intonation: The Case of the Kuwaiti Dialect of Arabic. Doctoral dissertation, Heriot-Watt University.Google Scholar
Al-Watban, A. (1998). Psychoacoustic Analysis of Intonation as a Carrier of Emotion in Arabic and English. Dissertation, APA Psychinfo. https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1998-95023-155; last accessed 30 November 2020.Google Scholar
Alzaidi, M. (2014). Information Structure and Intonation in Hijazi Arabic. Doctoral dissertation, University of Essex.Google Scholar
Angoujard, J. (1990). Metrical Structure of Arabic. Dordrecht: Foris.Google Scholar
Badawi, M. M. (1965). An Intonational Study of Riyadhi Arabic. Doctoral dissertation, London University.Google Scholar
Benabbou, A., Chenfour, N., and Mouradi, A. (2002). Study and quantification of the declination for the Arabic speech synthesis system PARADIS. In Proceedings of International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation, https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/2990/972dcd999be2f2fb9d997ee67798f2ff8bc5.pdf; last accesssed 30 November 2020.Google Scholar
Benkirane, T. (1998). Intonation in Western Arabic (Morocco). In Hirst, D. and Di Cristo, A., eds., Intonation Systems: A Survey of Twenty Languages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 345–59.Google Scholar
Birkeland, H. (1952). Growth and Structure of the Egyptian Arabic Dialect. Oslo: I Kommisjon hos Jacob Dybwad.Google Scholar
Blodgett, A., Owens, J., and Rockwood, T. (2007). An initial account of the intonation of Emirati Arabic. In Proceedings of the 16th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, Saarland University, Saarbrücken, Germany, vol. 10, 1137–40.Google Scholar
Bolinger, D. (1985). The inherent iconism of intonation. In Haiman, J., ed., Iconicity in Syntax. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 97–108.Google Scholar
Cangemi, F., El Zarka, D., Wehrle, S., Baumann, S., and Grice, M. (2016). Speaker-specific intonational marking of narrow focus in Egyptian Arabic. In Proceedings of Speech Prosody 2016, 335–39.Google Scholar
Chahal, D. (1999). A preliminary analysis of Lebanese Arabic intonation. In Proceedings of the Conference of the Australian Linguistic Society, 1–17.Google Scholar
Chahal, D. (2001). Modeling the Intonation of Lebanese Arabic Using the Autosegmental-Metrical Framework: A Comparison with English. Doctoral dissertation, University of Melbourne.Google Scholar
Chahal, D. (2003). Phonetic cues to prominence levels in Lebanese Arabic. In Proceedings of the Fifteenth International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, Barcelona, 2067–70.Google Scholar
Chahal, D. (2006). Intonation. In Versteegh, K., Eid, M., Elgibali, A., Woidich, M., and Zaborski, A., eds., Encyclopedia of Arabic Language and Linguistics, vol. 2. The Netherlands: Brill Academic, 395–401.Google Scholar
Chahal, D. and Hellmuth, S. (2014). The intonation of Lebanese and Egyptian Arabic. In Jun, S.-A., ed., Prosodic Typology, vol. II. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 365–404.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Connell, B. and Ladd, D. R. (1990). Aspects of pitch realization in Yoruba. Phonology, 7(1), 1–29.Google Scholar
di Corvetto, I. L. (1982). L’intonazione nell’arabo siriano [The Intonation of Syrian Arabic]. Lingua E Stile, 17, 371–93.Google Scholar
Cruttenden, A. (1970). On the so-called grammatical function of intonation. Phonetica, 21(3), 182–92.Google Scholar
El Zarka, D. (2011). Leading, linking, and closing tones and tunes in Egyptian Arabic – what a simple intonation system tells us about the nature of intonation. Amsterdam Studies in the Theory and History of Linguistic Science. Series Iv, Current Issues in Linguistic Theory, 317, 57–76.Google Scholar
El Zarka, D. (2013a). On the Interaction of Information Structure and Prosody: the Case of Egyptian Arabic. Doctoral dissertation, habilitation thesis, Dept. of Linguistics, Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz.Google Scholar
El Zarka, D. (2013b). Pragmatic functions and the biological codes: Evidence from the prosody of sentence topic. In Hancil, S. and Hirst, D., eds., Prosody and Iconicity. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 109–26.Google Scholar
El Zarka, D. (2013c). The myth of nuclei and focus exponents. A paper presented at the Workshop on Information Structure in Spoken Language Corpora (ISSLaC), Universtät Bielefeld. www.uni-bielefeld.de/lili/tagung/ISSLaC/files/ElZarka_ISSLaC_pres.pdf; last accessed 18 October 2017.Google Scholar
El Zarka, D. and Hellmuth, S. (2009). Variation in the intonation of Egyptian Formal and Colloquial Arabic. Langues et Linguistique, 22, 73–92.Google Scholar
El-Dalee, M. (1999). Fundamental problems of Intonation in Arabic (in Arabic). Arab Journal for the Humanities, 67, 9–32.Google Scholar
El-Imam, Y. A. (2008). Synthesis of the intonation of neutrally spoken Modern Standard Arabic speech. Signal Processing, 88(9), 2206–21.Google Scholar
El-Isa, S. (1982). A Study of Dynamic Features in Irta:hi Spoken Arabic with Particular Reference to Stress, Rhythm and Intonation. Doctoral dissertation, University of Glasgow.Google Scholar
Fónagy, I. (1989). On status and functions of intonation. Acta Linguistica Hungarica, 39(1–4), 53–92.Google Scholar
Ghazali, S., Hamidi, R., and Knis, K. (2007). Intonation and rhythmic patterns across the Arabic dialects continuum. In Benmamoun, E., ed., PAL: Papers from the Annual Symposium on Arabic Linguistics, vol. XIX. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 97–122.Google Scholar
Golston, C. and Riad, T. (1997). The phonology of Classical Arabic meter. Linguistics, 35(1), 111–32.Google Scholar
Grice, M., Ladd, D. R., and Arvaniti, A. (2000). On the place of phrase accents in intonational phonology. Phonology, 17(2), 143–85.Google Scholar
Gussenhoven, C. (2002). Intonation and interpretation: Phonetics and phonology. In Proceedings of Speech Prosody 2002, Aix-en-Provence, 47–57.Google Scholar
Gussenhoven, C. (2006). Between stress and tone in Nubi word prosody. Phonology, 23(02), 192–223.Google Scholar
Hellmuth, S. (2004). Prosodic weight and phonological phrasing in Cairene Arabic. In Proceedings from the Annual Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society, vol. 40, No. 1. Chicago, IL: Chicago Linguistic Society, 97–111.Google Scholar
Hellmuth, S. (2005). No de-accenting in (or of) phrases: Evidence from Arabic for cross-linguistic and cross-dialectal prosodic variation. In Frota, S., Vigario, M., and Freitas, M. J., eds., Prosodies (with special reference to Iberian languages). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 99–121.Google Scholar
Hellmuth, S. (2006a). Focus-related pitch range manipulation (and peak alignment effects) in Egyptian Arabic. In Proceedings of Speech Prosody 2006, Dresden, Germany, PS4-12–164.Google Scholar
Hellmuth, S. (2006b). Intonational Pitch Accent Distribution in Egyptian Arabic. Doctoral dissertation, School of Oriental and African Studies University of London.Google Scholar
Hellmuth, S. (2007a). The foot as the domain of tonal alignment of intonational pitch accents. In Proceedings of the XVIth International Conference on Phonetic Sciences, August 6–10, 2007, Saarbrücken, Germany, 969–72.Google Scholar
Hellmuth, S. (2007b). The relationship between prosodic structure and pitch accent distribution: evidence from Egyptian Arabic. The Linguistic Review, 24, 291–316.Google Scholar
Hellmuth, S. (2009). The (absence of) prosodic reflexes of given /new information status in Egyptian Arabic. In Owens, J. and Elgibali, A., eds., Information Structure in Spoken Arabic. Oxford: Routledge, 165–88.Google Scholar
Hellmuth, S. (2010). Functional complementarity is only skin deep: Evidence from Egyptian Arabic for the autonomy of syntax and phonology in the expression of focus. In Erteschik-Shir, N. and Rochman, L., eds., The Sound Patterns of Syntax. Cambridge, MA: Oxford University Press, 247–70.Google Scholar
Hellmuth, S. (2011a). Acoustic cues to focus and givenness in Egyptian Arabic. In Hassan, Z. M. and Heselwood, B., eds., Instrumental Studies in Arabic Phonetics [CILT319]. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 301–23.Google Scholar
Hellmuth, S. (2011b). How many levels of phrasing? Empirical questions and typological implications. In Washburn, M. B., ed., West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press, 258–66.Google Scholar
Hellmuth, S. (2011c). Variable cues to phrasing: Finding edges in Egyptian Arabic. In Borowsky, T., Kawahara, S., and Sugahara, M., eds., Prosody Matters: Essays in Honor of Lisa Selkirk. London: Equinox Publications, 237–79.Google Scholar
Hellmuth, S. J. (2014). Investigating variation in Arabic intonation. In Farwaneh, S. and Ouali, H., eds., Perspectives on Arabic Linguistics XXIV–XXV: Papers from the Annual Symposia on Arabic Linguistics. Texas, 2010 and Arizona, 2011, vol. 1. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 63–90.Google Scholar
Hellmuth, S. and El Zarka, D. (2007). Variation in phonetic realization or in phonological categories? Intonational pitch accents in Egyptian Colloquial Arabic and Egyptian Formal Arabic. In Proceedings of the 16th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences. Saarbrücken, 147–53.Google Scholar
Hirst, D. and Di Cristo, A. (eds.) (1998). Intonation Systems: A Survey of Twenty Languages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Ibrahim, O. A. G., El-Ramly, S. H., and Abdel-Kader, N. S. (2001). A model of F0 contour for Arabic affirmative and interrogative sentences. In Proceedings of the 18th National Radio Science Conference. Mansoura University, Egypt, 517–25.Google Scholar
Kalaldeh, R. (2009). Peak alignment in Jordanian Formal and Colloquial Arabic. Paper presented at the Intonation Variation in Arabic Conference held at the University of York, UK. www-users.york.ac.uk/~sh581/kalaldeh_talk.pdf; last accessed 30 November 2020.Google Scholar
Kharrat, M. Y. (1994). A Descriptive Analysis of Standard Arabic Intonation with Implications for Teaching English as a Second Language. Doctoral dissertation, University of Kansas, Curriculum and Instruction.Google Scholar
Kohler, K. J. (2013). From communicative functions to prosodic forms. Phonetica, 70(1–2), 24–65.Google Scholar
Ladd, D. R. (1984). Declination: A review and some hypotheses. Phonology, 1, 53–74.Google Scholar
Ladd, D. R. (2008). Intonational Phonology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Lambrecht, K. (1994). Information Structure and Sentence Form: Topic, Focus, and the Mental Representations of Discourse Referents. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Mahaden, R. and Jardat, A. (2011). The pragmatic function of intonation in Irbid dialect: Acoustic analysis of some speech acts. International Journal of Humanities and Social Science, 9(1), 243–51.Google Scholar
Mahjani, B. (2003). An Instrumental Study of Prosodic Features and Intonation in Modern Farsi (Persian). Master’s thesis, University of Edinburgh. www.timasearch.com/bm/edinburgh/behzad_mahjani.pdf; last accessed 30 November 2020.Google Scholar
Maling, J. M. (1973). The Theory of Classical Arabic Metrics. Doctoral dissertation, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.Google Scholar
Manfredi, S. and Tosco, M. (2014). The morphosyntax and prosody of topic and focus in Juba Arabic. Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages, 29(2), 319–51.Google Scholar
Nagwa, I. Y. (2010). The role of intonation in the information structure of Arabic declarative sentence (in Arabic). https://search.mandumah.com/Record/664289; last accessed 20 November 2020.Google Scholar
Nakao, S. (2013). The prosody of Juba Arabic: Split prosody, morphophonology and slang. In Lafkioui, M., ed., African Arabic: Approaches to Dialectology. Berlin: De Gruyter, 95–120.Google Scholar
Nawwaf, M. and Mohamed-Basil, K. (2013). The intonation of negation in Modern Standard Arabic with reference to English. Journal of Tikrit University for the Humanities, 20(9), 571–97.Google Scholar
Norlin, K. (1989). A preliminary description of Cairo Arabic intonation of statements and questions. Speech Transmission Quarterly Progress and Status Report, 1, 47–9.Google Scholar
Rammuny, R. M. (1989). Instrumental and auditory analysis of colloquial Jordanian Arabic: An update. Zeitschrift für Arabische Linguistik, (20), 23–42.Google Scholar
Ramsay, A. and Mansour, H. (2008). Towards including prosody in a text-to-speech system for modern standard Arabic. Computer Speech and Language, 22(1), 84–103.Google Scholar
Rastegar-El Zarka, D. (1997). Prosodische Phonologie des Arabischen. PhD dissertation, University of Graz.Google Scholar
Rifaat, K. (1991). The Intonation of Arabic: An Experimental Study. Doctoral dissertation, University of Alexandria.Google Scholar
Rifaat, K. (2005). The structure of Arabic intonation: a preliminary investigation. In Perspectives on Arabic Linguistics XVII–XVIII: Papers from the seventeenth and eighteenth annual symposia on Arabic linguistics, 49–67.Google Scholar
Rifaat, K. (2010). Towards a theory of Egyptian Arabic intonation. Paper presented at the 4th International Symposium on Arabic Linguistics held at the University of Alexandria, Egypt from 11–12 December.Google Scholar
Rosenhouse, J. (1995). Features of intonation in Bedouin Arabic narratives of the Galilée (northern Israel). Dialectologia Arabica, a Collection of Articles in Honor of Professor Heikki Palva, 75, 193–215.Google Scholar
Sadat-Tehrani, N. (2008). Persian prosodic structure. In Proceedings of the 2008 Annual Conference of the Canadian Linguistic Association, 1–15.Google Scholar
Soraya, H. A. I. (1966). An Intonational Study of Egyptian Colloquial Arabic. PhD dissertation, University of London.Google Scholar
Watson, J. (2011). Word stress in Arabic. In The Blackwell Companion to Phonology. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2990–3019.Google Scholar
Yeou, M. (2004). Effects of focus, position and syllable structure on F0 alignment patterns in Arabic. In Bel, B. and Marlien, I., eds., Actes des XXVes Journées d’Étude sur la Parole, Arabic Language Processing, Fez, 360–74.Google Scholar
Yeou, M., Embarki, M., and Al-Maqtari, S. (2007). Contrastive focus and F0 patterns in three Arabic dialects. Nouveaux cahiers de linguistique Française, 28, 317–26.Google Scholar
Zaki, A., Rajouani, A., Luxey, Z., and Najim, M. (2002). Rules based model for automatic synthesis of F0 variation for declarative Arabic sentences. In Bel, B. and Marlien, I., eds., Proceedings of the First International Conference on Speech Prosody, Aix-en-Provence, France.Google Scholar
Ziadeh, F. (1986). Prosody and the initial formation of Classical Arabic. Journal of the American Oriental Society, 106(2), 333–8. doi:10.2307/601598.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×