CIRI-CIRI AKUSTIK KONTRAS PENYUARAAN BUNYI FRIKATIF ARAB BERASASKAN PARAMETER TEMPOH FRIKASI

Latar Belakang dan Tujuan: Makalah ini bertujuan menyerlahkan perbezaan penyuaraan bunyi frikatif Arab bersuara dan tak bersuara yang dihasilkan oleh penutur Melayu. Kajian lepas membuktikan bahawa penutur Melayu sering melakukan kesalahan pertuturan faringealisasi Arab. Metodologi: Analisis ciri-ciri akustik bunyi frikatif Melayu dan Arab di awal kata menggunakan parameter tempoh frikasi, justeru, dilaksanakan bagi menyerlahkan persamaan dan perbezaan bunyi konsonan berkenaan. Kaedah analisis spektrograf menerusi perisian Praat dimanfaatkan bagi membolehkan pengkaji memindahkan data rakaman ujaran dalam bentuk spektrogram dan melakukan penelitian akustik. Hasil dapatan analisis akustik dimanipulasikan menerusi SPSS (Statistical Package for Social Sciences). Data spektogram sebanyak 2960 diperoleh daripada rakaman ujaran subjek kajian seramai 24 orang pelajar ijazah Sarjana Muda Pengajian Bahasa Arab dan Tamadun Islam Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia. Proses rakaman terlebih dahulu dijalankan di studio rakaman Fakulti Sains Sosial dan Kemanusiaan, UKM menggunakan alat perakam TASCAM MP3/WAV. Senarai perkataan mengandungi bunyi frikatif di awal kata bagi kedua-dua bahasa dibaca oleh subjek kajian dengan keadaan tahap pertuturan yang selesa, iaitu tidak terlalu perlahan dan tidak terlalu laju. Subjek diminta mengulangi perkataan tersebut sebanyak lima kali. Dapatan Kajian: Hasil kajian ini mendapati bahawa bunyi frikatif tak bersuara /s/ adalah lebih panjang berbanding bunyi bersuara /z/. Dapatan kajian juga menunjukkan bahawa tiada hubungan signifikan antara bunyi /س/ dan /sˤ/ dan /ز/ dan /zˤ/. Secara khususnya, kajian ini mengesahkan bahawa tidak semua bunyi faringealisasi Arab dipengaruhi bahasa ibunda. Bunyi ini mampu juga dikuasai oleh bukan penutur natif Arab. Implikasi: Kajian ini memberi implikasi signifikan terhadap pembelajaran bahasa Arab sebagai bahasa kedua di Malaysia serta perkembangan ilmu fonetik akustik di Malaysia khususnya bagi menambah baik sebutan frikatif Arab dalam kalangan penutur natif Melayu. Kata kunci: Akustik, bahasa Arab, gangguan bahasa, pemindahan bahasa, tempoh frikasi. Abstract Background and Purpose: This paper aims to highlight the voicing contrast of Arabic and Malay fricatives produced by Malay native speakers. Previous studies show that Malay speakers often make mistakes on Arabic pharyngealisation. Methodology: This study, thus, analysed the frication duration characteristics of Malay and Arabic fricatives in initial word position and highlight their similarities and differences. The spectrographic analysis method via Praat software was utilized to enable the researcher to transfer speech recording data into a spectrogram and analysed acoustically. A total of 2960 spectrograms was obtained from the recording of 24 subjects’ utterences. The subjects are undergraduate students of Arabic Studies and Islamic Civilization of the Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia. The recording process was performed in the Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities, UKM recording studio using TASCAM MP3 / WAV recorder. A word list that contains the fricative sound at the beginning of each word in both languages was ​​read by subjects with comfortable speech level, i.e. neither slow nor too fast. Subjects were asked to repeat the word five times. Findings: The result of the acoustic analysis was manipulated using Statistical Package for Social Sciences. This study found that the fricative sound / s / is longer than the sound / z / for both languages. The findings also show that there is no significant relationship between sound / س / and / sˤ / and / ز / and / zˤ /. In particular, this study confirms that not all Arabic pharyngealisation are influenced by their native language. It can be mastered also by non-native speakers of Arabic. Contributions: This study provides significant implications for learning Arabic as a second language in Malaysia as well as the development of acoustic phonetics, particularly, in improving the fricative pronunciation of Arabic among native speakers of Malay. Keywords: Acoustic, Arabic, frication duration, language interference, language transfer. Cite as: Shahidi A. H., Radzi, M. P., Aman, R., CheLaeh, M., & Anwar, O. D. (2020). Ciri-ciri akustik kontras penyuaraan bunyi frikatif Arab berasaskan parameter tempoh frikasi [The acoustic properties of Arabic fricative voicing contrast based on the frication duration parameter]. Journal of Nusantara Studies, 5(1), 143-168. http://dx.doi.org/10.24200/jonus.vol5iss1pp143-168

Variable stem-final fricative voicing in American English plurals: Different pa[ð ~ θ]s of change

This paper investigates analogical leveling in a small set of English nouns that have irregular plural forms. In these nouns, all of which end in a voiceless fricative, the fricative standardly voices in the plural (e.g., wolf–wol[v]es, path–pa[ð]s, house–hou[z]es). Using audio data from three large spoken corpora of American English, I demonstrate that this stem-final fricative voicing is variable and conditioned by a number of factors, most notably the identity of the stem-final fricative—with /f/-final lexemes (e.g., wolf), /θ/-final lexemes (e.g., path), and the /s/-final lexeme house all patterning differently in apparent time—and the frequency of a lexeme in its plural form. I argue that the way these two factors affect the variation is reminiscent of the patterns seen in children's first language acquisition errors, providing a potential source for the variation and underscoring the importance of considering morphophonological factors when accounting for patterns of change.

Emergência de sândi consonântico em Português Europeu: uma abordagem prosódica

In European Portuguese, the domain for sandhi phenomena is the intonational phrase. Unlike the intonational phrase, the phonological phrase has been shown to be only relevant for rhythm and prominence-related phenomena (Frota, 2000, 2014). Fricative voicing between words (casa[ʒb]rancas, casa[ʃp]retas) and ressylabification before vowel-initial words (casa[zɐ]marelas) occur within the intonational phrase. In this study, we considered spontaneous productions of a Portuguese child (Luma), aged 2;04-4;00, to examine the acquisition of external consonantal sandhi. The data show that sandhi production varies according to the segmental (C#C, C#V, CFric, CVib, CLat) and prosodic context (clitic, prosodic word, position in prosodic structure). The data further confirm that sandhi occurs within the intonational phrase, supporting the analysis proposed for the adult grammar. This study contributes to the understanding of the relationship between the acquisition of the prosodic structure and the acquisition of sandhi phenomena.

Segmental noun/verb phonotactic differences are productive too

Not all statistical patterns in a speaker’s lexicon are acquired productively, and it has been proposed that distinguishing between those patterns that are productive and those that are not serves as a source of evidence for the existence of learning biases in the grammar (Becker et al. 2011). A cross-linguistic survey of categorical noun/verb phonotactic differences finds that most of them involve prosodic patterns, such as stress or tone, not segmental ones—but does this typological asymmetry actually result from a learning bias against segmental noun/verb differences? English provides a testing ground for this question, as the lexicon has statistical differences between noun and verb phonotactics involving not only stress, a prosodic property, but also fricative voicing and vowel backness, which are segmental properties. A nonce-word noun/verb categorization experiment finds that adult English speakers apply all three patterns productively, even the segmental ones. Moreover, evidence for productive knowledge is found even when the effect of existing morphological alternations (such as the stress alternation seen in pérmitN/permítV) is controlled for. These results contribute to a growing body of evidence that gaps in language typology do not necessarily correspond to patterns that are unlearnable.

The bilingual advantage in phonetic learning

Numerous factors are thought to be advantageous for non-native language learning although they are typically investigated in isolation, and the interaction between them is not understood. Firstly, bilinguals are claimed to acquire a third language easier than monolinguals acquire a second. Secondly, closely related languages may be easier to learn. Thirdly, certain phonetic features could be universally more difficult to acquire. We tested these hypotheses used as explanations by having adults learn vocabularies that differentiated words using foreign phonetic contrasts. In Experiment 1, Mandarin–English bilinguals outlearned English monolinguals, and the Mandarin-like (retroflex) artificial language was better learned than the English-like (fricative voicing). In Experiment 2, bilinguals again outlearned English monolinguals for the Mandarin-like artificial language. However, only Korean–English bilinguals showed an advantage for the more difficult Korean-like (lenition) language. Bilinguals, relative to monolinguals, show a general advantage when learning ‘easy’ contrasts, but phonetic similarity to the native language is useful for learning universally ‘difficult’ contrasts.