Acoustics of guttural fricatives in Arabic, Armenian, and Kurdish: A case in remote data collection

Abstract

Gutturals – uvulars, pharyngeals, and laryngeals – are relatively phonetically under-studied, with previous acoustic investigations being limited to a handful of languages (and mainly Arabic). The goal of this paper is twofold: (i) to provide an acoustic documentation of guttural fricatives /χ,ʁ,(ħ,ʕ),h/ in three under-documented languages/dialects – Emirati Arabic, Iraqi Central Kurdish, and Lebanese Western Armenian, and (ii) through this to test the reliability of remote data collection for the analysis of fricatives. Fifty-nine participants residing in United Arab Emirates, Iraq, and Lebanon (18-21 per language) completed an online audio-recording experiment. Word-initial, -medial, and -final fricatives in real words, embedded in carrier phrases, were measured for four spectral moments, relative intensity, and duration. The results showed consistent place and voicing differences in all three languages. Specifically, center of gravity and standard deviation of fricative noise were higher for uvulars and lower for pharyngeals and /h/. Voicing was consistently distinguished by duration, among other variables. Some positional and gender differences were also observed. Overall, the results obtained for fricatives in three languages are remarkably similar to those previously reported for Arabic and other languages, providing evidence for shared acoustic properties of gutturals, as well as confirming the validity of the remote audio recording method.