Phonetic realizations of focus in declarative intonation in Iraqi Arabic

Abstract

This study investigates how both information and contrastive focus in the Iraq Arabic dialect are prosodically realized, contributing to the ongoing debate on focus-marking across languages and within Arabic dialects. Using a question-answer paradigm, we elicited information focus, contrastive focus and neutral-focus in sentence-initial, sentence-penultimate and sentence-final positions. Systematic analyses were done through investigating the continuous f₀ trajectories and specific acoustic measurements including maximum f₀, mean f₀, minimum f₀, excursion size, intensity and duration. The results reveal that prosodic patterns are significantly influenced by the type of focus (information focus vs. contrastive focus) and its position within the sentence. Both information and contrastive focus lead to distinct prosodic patterns compared to neutral focus, with specific features being more sensitive to focus type depending on their sentential position. In particular, contrastive focus tends to have a stronger intensity than information focus, especially in sentence-final positions. Additionally, the presence of focus, especially when sentence-initial, significantly reduces the pitch (mean f₀ and minimum f₀) and intensity of post-focus words, with contrastive focus having a more pronounced effect on lowering the minimum f₀ of subsequent words compared to information focus. The findings further indicate that sentence-penultimate focus generally reduces f₀ and duration of pre-focus words more comprehensively, while contrastive focus exerts a stronger influence on f₀ reduction in sentence-final positions. These results (a) underscore the nuanced role of focus in shaping the prosodic structure of sentences, (b) demonstrate that PFC occurs in Iraqi Arabic, making it similar to Egyptian, Emirati, Hijazi, Jizani, Lebanese and Najdi Arabic but different from Makkan Arabic. These results have implications for prosodic typology.