Intonational pitch accent distribution in Egyptian Arabic Samantha Jane Hellmuth

358 Pages·2006·4.35 MB·English

Intonational pitch accent distribution in Egyptian Arabic

Samantha Jane Hellmuth

Submitted to the Department of Linguistics in partial fulfilment of the
requirements for the degree of

Doctor of Philosophy in Linguistics and Phonetics

School of Oriental and African Studies
University of London
March 2006
Abstract
Egyptian Arabic (EA) is a stress-accent language with postlexical intonational pitch
accents. This thesis investigates EA pitch accents within the autosegmental-metrical
(AM) framework (Ladd 1996). The goal of the study is to identify the place of EA in the
spectrum of cross-linguistic prosodic variation, and to resolve the challenge it presents
to existing phonological accounts of pitch accent distribution.

In a corpus of read and (semi-)spontaneous EA speech a pitch accent was found on
(almost) every content word, and in the overwhelming majority of cases the same pitch
accent type is observed on every word. The typological implications of EA pitch accent
distribution are explored in the context of the typology of word-prosodic variation
(Hyman 2001) and variation in the domain of pitch accent distribution is proposed as a
new parameter of prosodic variation.

A survey of EA prosodic phrasing and of the relative accentuation of function words
and content words shows that the correct generalisation for EA is that there is a pitch
accent on every Prosodic Word (PWd). A phonological analysis is proposed within
Optimality Theory (Prince & Smolensky 1993), formalising the two-way relation
between tone and prosodic prominence at all levels of the Prosodic Hierarchy.

An experimental study suggests that alignment of the H peak in EA pitch accents varies
with stressed syllable type (cf. Ladd et al 2000), and is analysed as phonological
association of the pitch accent to the foot. A final experiment quantifies the prosodic
reflexes of information and contrastive focus. Even when post-focal and ‘given’ EA
words still bear a pitch accent, but there are gradient effects of focus in the form of pitch
range manipulation. Independence of pitch accent distribution from information
structure supports the formal analysis of EA pitch accent distribution within the
phonological part of the grammar.

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Table of Contents
Abstract 2
Table of contents 3
Transliteration scheme used in the thesis for Egyptian Arabic 7
Acknowledgements 8

1 Outline summary of the thesis 10

2 Literature review 17
2.0 Outline of the chapter 17
2.1 An autosegmental-metrical theory of intonation 18
2.1.1 Pitch accents and boundary tones 19
2.1.2 Autosegmental postlexical tone 20
2.1.3 Pitch targets analysed as level tones 22
2.1.4 Transcription of intonation 22
2.1.5 Metrical structure as target of association of postlexical tone 24
2.2 A theory of ranked violable constraints 31
2.2.1 Modelling interaction of conflicting constraints on prosodic structure 31
2.2.2 Constraints on prosodic structure 32
2.2.3 Bringing tone and prosodic structure together 38
2.3 The prosody of Egyptian Arabic 39
2.3.1 The metrical phonology of EA 39
2.3.2 The intonation of spoken Arabic dialects 44
2.3.3 Prior work on the intonation of EA 45
2.3.4 Background to the research question of the thesis 47
2.4 Issues in data collection 48
2.5 Summary and conclusion 50

3 Pitch accent distribution in Egyptian Arabic 51
3.0 Outline and aims 51
3.1 Background: what is known about EA pitch accent distribution 52
3.2 Methodology: corpus survey 55
3.2.1 Materials 55
3.2.2 Transcription system 60
3.2.3 Research questions during transcription 62
3.3 Pitch accent distribution in EA - corpus survey results 63
3.3.1 Treatment of content words 63
3.3.2 Instances of unaccented content words in EA 66
3.3.3 Summary 69
3.4 A model of EA intonation 70
3.4.1 EA global pitch contours observed in the corpus survey 70
3.4.2 EA pitch accent types observed in the corpus survey 76
3.4.3 An AM model of EA intonation based on the corpus survey 82
3.4.4 Summary 86
3.5 Discussion: intonational typology 87
3.6 Conclusion 90

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4 Word level prominence in Egyptian Arabic 91
4.0 Outline and aims 91
4.1 Theoretical Background 92
4.1.1 Assumptions in the literature that EA is a stress-accent language 92
4.1.2 Word level prominence and intonational typology 93
4.1.3 Word level prominence and word prosodic typology 95
4.1.4 Phonetic correlates of word stress in EA and other Arabic dialects 96
4.1.5 Methods used to investigate stress vs. non-stress accent 100
4.2 Word-level prominence in EA: edge marking or accentual marking? 102
4.2.1 Rationale 102
4.2.2 Methodology 103
4.2.3 Results 104
4.3 Investigating the phonetic correlates of word-level prominence in EA 108
4.3.1 Rationale 108
4.3.2 Methodology 109
4.3.3 Results: acoustic correlates of word level prominence in EA 111
4.4 Discussion: word-prosodic typology 113
4.5 Conclusion 116

5 The domain of pitch accent distribution in Egyptian Arabic 117
5.0 Outline and aims 117
5.1 Pitch accent distribution: where do pitch accents come from? 118
5.1.1 Accentuation and focus 118
5.1.2 The distribution of pitch accents 128
5.2 Pitch accent distribution as a reflex of prosodic structure 131
5.2.1 The (major) phonological phrase as domain of pitch accent distribution 132
5.2.2 The (minor) phonological phrase as domain of pitch accent distribution 136
5.2.3 Summary: pitch accent distribution as a reflex of prosodic structure 140
5.3 Evidence from prosodic phrasing in EA 140
5.3.1 Pitch accent distribution within a phrase-level constituent in EA? 142
5.3.2 Evidence that the PWd is not co-extensive with MaP in EA. 149
5.3.3 Evidence that the PWd is not co-extensive with MiP in EA. 154
5.3.4 Phrasing evidence from the narratives corpus 155
5.4 Pitch accent distribution within the Prosodic Word in EA? 158
5.4.1 Treatment of function words in the corpus. 158
5.4.2 The prosodic realisation of function words 162
5.4.3 Analysis of the accentuation of function words in EA. 167
5.4.4 The prosodic realisation of function words in EA. 168
5.4.5 Summary 173
5.5 Discussion 174
5.6 Summary 175

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6 EA pitch accent distribution as a tone-prominence relation 177
6.0 Outline and aims 177
6.1 Tone-prominence relations 178
6.1.1 Tone-prominence: a two-way relationship 178
6.1.2 Tone-prominence: variation in the target of tonal association 183
6.1.3 A theory of tone(cid:1)prominence relations 188
6.1.4 Testing the tone~prominence theory against EA 192
6.1.5 Summary 193
6.2 Analysing EA pitch accent distribution: formal analysis 194
6.2.1 The distribution of phonological tone in EA 194
6.2.2 Pitch accent distribution & the mapping of lexical words to PWds 196
6.2.3 Variation in accentuation of function words 201
6.2.4 Direction of cliticisation in EA 208
6.2.5 Summary 210
6.3 Discussion: a cross-linguistic theory of tone~prominence relations 211
6.3.1 Tone(cid:1)prominence theory and word-prosodic typology 211
6.3.2 Tone(cid:1)prominence theory and intonational typology 212
6.3.3 Insertion vs. spreading of intonational pitch accents 213
6.3.4 Pitch accent distribution: independent parameter of prosodic variation 215
6.4 Summary 216

7 Pitch accent alignment in Egyptian Arabic 219
7.0 Outline and aims 219
7.1 Background 220
7.1.1 Pitch accent alignment in autosegmental-metrical (AM) theory 220
7.1.2 Surface alignment and the phonological representation of pitch accents 226
7.1.3 Pitch accent alignment in Egyptian Arabic (EA) 229
7.2 Methodology 230
7.2.1 Materials and data collection 230
7.2.2 Data processing and analysis 232
7.2.3 Experimental hypotheses 233
7.3 Results 234
7.3.1 Choice of variables for comparison 234
7.3.2 Potential effects of factors external to the experimental design 236
7.3.3 The descriptive facts of EA alignment 239
7.3.4 Hypothesis testing 241
7.3.5 Explaining the fixed slope effects 246
7.3.6 Comparison with pitch accent alignment in other languages 247
7.4 Discussion 249
7.4.1 Pitch accent alignment patterns across different syllable types in EA 249
7.4.2 Towards a phonological representation of the EA pitch accent 250
7.4.3 Intonational TBUs and tone~prominence relations 252
7.5 Summary 254

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8 Prosodic reflexes of focus in Egyptian Arabic 256
8.0 Outline and aims 256
8.1 Focus in EA and other languages 257
8.1.1 Types of focus 257
8.1.2 Focus in Egyptian Arabic 262
8.1.3 Categorical vs. gradient marking of focus in EA: focus in-situ 266
8.1.4 Categorical vs. gradient marking of focus in EA: syntactic focus 268
8.1.5 Rationale of the experimental focus investigation 269
8.2 Methodology - data collection and analysis 270
8.2.1 Materials 270
8.2.2 Data collection and analysis 273
8.3 Results 277
8.3.1 Results of categorical analysis (presence or absence of pitch accents) 277
8.3.2 [SVO] results: gradient effects in in-situ focus sentences 280
8.3.3 [SVO+] results: gradient effects in syntactic focus sentences 284
8.3.4 Alignment and focus in EA 289
8.3.5 Summary of results 290
8.4 Discussion: the prosodic reflexes of contrastive focus in EA 291
8.4.1 Categorical vs. gradient linguistic use of extrinsic prosodic properties 291
8.4.2 Pitch range manipulation in EA: is it part of the grammar? 294
8.4.3 Conclusion: gradient effects of contrastive focus in EA 296
8.5 Discussion: the prosodic reflexes of information focus in EA 298
8.5.1 Explaining the lack of prosodic reflexes of information focus in EA. 298
8.5.2 Grammaticalisation of information focus in EA 299
8.6 Conclusion 302

9 Pitch accent distribution and the typology of prosodic variation 304
9.1 Summary of the thesis 304
9.2 Contributions of the thesis 306
9.3 Future investigation 307

Appendices 309
Appendix A (relates to chapter 3) 309
Appendix B (relates to chapter 4) 335
Appendix C (relates to chapter 7) 339
Appendix D (relates to chapter 8) 342

References 345

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Transliteration scheme used in the thesis for Egyptian Arabic

Arabic script IPA symbol Symbol used here
(cid:2) (cid:1)(cid:1) ?
(cid:3) (cid:2)(cid:1) b
(cid:4) (cid:3)(cid:1) t
(cid:5) (cid:4)(cid:1)(cid:5)(cid:1)(cid:3)(cid:1)(cid:5)(cid:1)(cid:6)(cid:1) (cid:2) / t /s
(cid:6) (cid:7)(cid:1) g
(cid:7) (cid:3)(cid:1) H
(cid:8) (cid:8)(cid:1) x
(cid:9) (cid:9)(cid:1) d
(cid:10) (cid:10)(cid:1) (cid:4)
(cid:11) (cid:11)(cid:1) r
(cid:12) (cid:12)(cid:1) z
(cid:13) (cid:6)(cid:1) s
(cid:14) (cid:13)(cid:1) š
(cid:15) (cid:6)(cid:14)(cid:1) S
(cid:16) (cid:9)(cid:14)(cid:1) D
(cid:17) (cid:3)(cid:14)(cid:1) T
(cid:18) (cid:10)(cid:14)(cid:1) Z
(cid:19) (cid:15)(cid:1) 9
(cid:20) (cid:5)(cid:1) G
(cid:21) (cid:16)(cid:1) f
(cid:22) (cid:17)(cid:1) q
(cid:23) (cid:18)(cid:1) k
(cid:24) (cid:19)(cid:1) l
(cid:25) (cid:20)(cid:1) m
(cid:26) (cid:21)(cid:1) n
(cid:27) (cid:22)(cid:1) h
(cid:28) (cid:23)(cid:1) w
(cid:29) (cid:24)(cid:1) y

(cid:30) (cid:25)(cid:6)(cid:1) aa
(cid:31) (cid:26)(cid:6)(cid:1) ii
(cid:28) (cid:27)(cid:6)(cid:1) uu
(cid:25)(cid:1) a
! (cid:26)(cid:1) i
" (cid:27)(cid:1) u

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Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the members of my PhD committee for their very generous
support throughout the last four years - Monik Charette, Bruce Ingham, Andrew
Simpson and Justin Watkins. I would particularly like to thank Justin Watkins and
Laura Downing for their help in the final stages of the project and for their investment
of time in giving comments on drafts of this thesis.

I am grateful to Lisa Selkirk for extending an invitation to me as an academic visitor to
the Department of Linguistics, UMass (Amherst) during the Spring of 2004 and for her
advice and encouragement during my stay. I am also grateful to the Department of
Linguistics at Amherst for providing me with access to their LDC corpus during my
stay and for use of recording facilities for one of the pilot studies.

Thanks are due to Bernard Howard and to the staff of the SOAS AV department for
help with recording facilities for the pilot studies, and loan of recording equipment for
my trip to Egypt, and to Janet Watson for the loan of Sanaani Arabic speech data.

This research would be nothing without the patience and goodwill of the speakers of
Egyptian Arabic who assisted me, first in London for the pilot studies, and then in
Egypt. Special thanks are due therefore to the staff and students of the English Training
Centre, Maadi, Cairo, for welcoming me during July 2004 while I was collecting the
experimental data, and especially to the core group of speakers who participated in both
experiments, and who were a delight to work with. It was a special privilege to work
alongside gifted Egyptian colleagues who were patient and generous in sharing their
insights on and incredulity at the style and content of my experimental stimuli.

I am grateful to Professor Khaled Rifaat (University of Alexandria) & Dr Dina El Zarka
(University of Graz) for their time and insights as native speaker linguists and for their
welcome extended to me as a xawaaga working on their language. I have also been very
much helped in the last four years by the wider intonation and prosody research
community, particularly Sonia Frota, Carlos Gussenhoven and Pilar Prieto.

This work was supported by the UK Arts & Humanities Research Council
(Postgraduate Award 59198), who also provided additional funding for my academic
visit to UMass (Amherst). I would like to thank my godmother Barbara Pope whose
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generous financial gift at the start of my PhD bought the computer on which this entire
study was recorded, analysed and written.

Thanks to my peers and colleagues, especially Carlo Colella, Birgit Hellwig, Friederike
Lüpke, Sabine Zerbian and Ihab Shabana, for invaluable moral support as well as a
wealth of practical help. Thanks also to my former teaching colleagues in Sanaa, Yemen,
who encouraged me to take up serious study of linguistics. On a personal level I would
like to thank the following for their friendship, humour and good company during the
last four years: Jo & Jeannie, Gill, Helena, Sarah, Patrick and (latterly) Arthur B.
Finally, I could not have carried this project through to completion without the
unconditional support and love of my family: Lynn, Nikki, Dad - thank you. What
follows is testament to my Mum from whom I learned the value of not giving up on
trying to do what you really want to do.

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1 Outline summary of the thesis

1.1 Aims of the study
Egyptian Arabic (EA) is the dialect of Arabic spoken in Cairo and by educated speakers
throughout Egypt. The sentence phonology of EA is relatively under-researched and
thus a descriptive goal of this thesis is to establish the phonological properties of EA
words, phrases and sentences, by investigating their intonational properties.

The investigation reveals that in EA there is an intonational pitch movement (a ‘pitch
accent’) associated with almost every content word, and this is argued to generalise to
the association of a pitch accent with every Prosodic Word (PWd). The theoretical goal
of the thesis is thus to identify the position of EA (and other languages which can be
argued to share the property of having a pitch accent on every word) in the spectrum of
cross-linguistic variation, with respect to both intonational typology and the typology of
word prosodic types.

In pursuit of these goals a series of experimental investigations are reported in which the
properties of EA pitch accents above and below the level of the word are explored.
These are designed along the lines of ‘laboratory phonology’ (Ohala & Jaeger 1986) in
which phonological theory informs the experimental hypotheses to be tested.

The thesis is couched in the framework of autosegmental-metrical theory (Ladd 1996)
in which patterns of behaviour of phonological tones (pitch) are seen as a reflex of their
autosegmental association to metrical/prosodic constituents in a hierarchy of prosodic
structure. Working within Optimality Theory, a constraint-based theory of phonology
(Prince & Smolensky 1993), the thesis argues that in fact all of the properties of EA
pitch accents can be formalised within a particular notion of the relation between
phonological tone and prosodic prominence (Selkirk 2004b).

1.2 Chapter 2
A key assumption of autosegmental-metrical theory (AM) and of the present work is the
autosegmental nature of tone. This was argued for by Goldsmith (1976) in relation to
lexical tones, which are said to be autosegmentally associated to elements of the
metrical structure of the word (such as the mora or syllable). A key insight of
Pierrehumbert (1980) was that the intonational pitch contour, that is, ‘postlexical’ tones,
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