Formants of distorted /r/ in adult Arabs’ speech: an analytical and comparative study

Abstract

This research is concerned with studying the acoustic features of the four Formants [F1 - F4] of the phoneme /r/ that has a distorted pronunciation in Arabic and focused on the most widespread forms of distortion among adults including retroflex approximant /ɻ /, uvular trill /ʀ/ and uvular approximant /ʁ/. The experiments were conducted based on the average frequency of formants taken from 40 adults, where 10 adults participated in each pronunciation form. The sample was recorded by CSL device and then analyzed using Praat software. Also, formants of the normal pronunciation of phoneme /r/ were studied in the same sample to be compared with the distorted /r/ in the context of the three Arabic vowels; /a/, /u/, and /i/. The results show that the formants were clearly affected by factors such as, the location of the distortion, the manner of articulation, and in the shape of the tip of the tongue. The location of the distortion could begin at the front of the mouth “front distortion” or at the back of the mouth “backward distortion” while the manner of articulation could be in trilling, flapping, or approximation. The form of the tip of the tongue would be regressive towards the back of the mouth or not. The results also show the effect of the vocal context on the Formants; F1, F2 and F3 where the value of F1 decreased with /u/ and /i/ while the value of F2 and F3 increased with /i/ and decreased with /u/ compared to /a/ for both the normal and the distorted /r/.