Voice onset time in the Emirati Arabic dialect

Voice Onset Time (VOT) is an essential acoustic parameter that phoneticians use to distinguish between voiced and voiceless stop consonants. This parameter is generally overlooked in Arabic dialects and The Emirati Arabic Dialects (EAD). This study explores the voicing contrast of stop consonants by measuring voice onset time as produced by EAD speakers. This research is based on word-list data comprising 36 words uttered by 16 native speakers (eight males and eight females) of EAD, recorded and acoustically analyzed for 1152 words. VOT duration was coded for several independent variables, including gender, vowel quality, emphasis, place of articulation, and voicing. The results of this study reveal the following findings. First, voiceless stops in EAD have positive VOT, while voiced stops have negative VOT across the board. Second, place of articulation is found to play a role in affecting the value of VOT, eg the velar/k/has the longest VOT duration among the voiceless stops while the bilabial/b/is the shortest among the voiced stops, which is in line with Lisker and Abramson. Third, vowel quality appears to affect the value of VOT, longer before the high vowel/i/and shorter before the low vowel/a/. The results also indicate that females have longer VOT duration than males. Finally, the emphatic consonant/tˤ/has a significantly shorter VOT than its plain counterpart/t/, which shows that emphasis is a robust acoustic correlate when investigating VOT. This study complements the literature on VOT in Arabic dialects by providing new insights and findings drawn from the EAD.