INTRINSIC VOWEL PITCH IN DUTCH AND ARABIC

Jo Verhoeven1 & Sarah Van Hoof2
1City University London; 2University of Antwerp

ID 1198
[full paper]

This paper examines intrinsic vowel pitch (IF0) in Moroccan Standard Arabic and Belgian Standard Dutch in order to investigate the hypothesis that IF0 may depend on the size of the vowel inventory. The results of a production task with 11 Moroccan native speakers of Standard Arabic and 10 Belgian native speakers of Dutch reveal that IF0 in Arabic is significantly smaller (1.28 ST) than in Dutch (2.78 ST). These results are suggestive of a possible influence on IF0 of the size of the vowel inventory in a language. The effect of speaker sex on IF0 was not significant, while the front-back distinction in the articulation of vowels was significant in Belgian Dutch.