Tracing Vowel Quality in Iraqi Arabic Dialects: A Typological Study

Abstract

Iraqi Arabic dialects have a range of phoneme inventories, and there is a necessity for tracing the distribution of phonological features of such phonemes within these dialects. Three dialects were investigated to trace variations in vowel quality tracking any distribution patterns or deviations. The first three formants were extracted and analyzed with the application of a number of statistical methods. It is shown that a correlation is evident among the formants of qeltu and gelet dialects with a strong correlation between short and long vowels within and across dialects for two age categories. While the results of ANOVA and MANOVA techniques show a significant interaction of F1 and F2 across dialects. It is crucial to say that a pattern of variation in vowel quality is diagnosed among Iraqi Arabic dialects.