An Acoustic Study of Voice Onset Time in Libyan Arabic

Abstract

Abstract: This acoustic study is dedicated to investigating the voice onset time (VOT) of stop consonants in Alkhomy Libyan Arabic (KLA). This paper aims to provide a better insight into the phonological and phonetic features of plosives in KLA. The results show that KLA stops have short lags and voicing leads for voiceless and voiced plosives respectively. The data for voiceless stops supports previous findings that VOT values increase as the point of constriction goes backwards from the lips to the velum. Data for voiced stops contradicts this notion as labials and alveolars have longer leads than velars. The voiceless and voiced emphatic stops have the shortest and the longest VOT values respectively. The factorial analysis shows that stops are affected differently by the vocalic context. The findings also indicate that vowel height significantly affects VOT temporal duration (most stops have their highest VOT values before high vowels and their lowest values when preceding low vowels). Vowel frontness, however, shows no significance correlation with the VOT durations