Suprasegmental emphasis in Neo-Aramaic

This study provides an acoustic analysis of so-called “emphasis” and its spreading in Urmi, a dialect of Neo-Aramaic. In Semitic and neighboring languages, emphasis takes the form of contrastive plain versus emphatic segments. In Urmi, however, emphasis is suprasegmental, resulting in minimal pair distinctions between emphatic and non-emphatic words without a segmental trigger (Garbel, 1964, 1965a/b; Khan, 2008). Previous impressionistic work has been inconclusive as to the phonetic nature of emphasis in the language, with reports of both velarization and pharyngealization, among other articulations. We performed an acoustic analysis of 284 words from a single native speaker (data from another native speaker has also been collected and will be reported). The results show that vowels in emphatic words have a lower F2, while fricatives (particularly /x/ and /s/) have a lower Center of Gravity. The frequency of F1 is not a robust correlate of emphasis. This suggests that the primary phonetic parameter of emphasis in Urmi is velarization. Other analyses will include voice quality measurements over vowels to determine whether the emphatic vowels differ from non-emphatic ones in terms of increased glottal constriction. In sum, Urmi provides evidence for a rare phonological feature: suprasegmental velarization, without a segmental trigger.