This exploratory study of Jordanian and Moroccan Arabic (JA and MA) aims to evaluate whether pharyngealization is associated with an epilaryngeal constriction which causes 'retraction' and tense voice quality in surrounding vowels, following the Laryngeal Articulator Model (LAM) (Esling, 2005). Twenty male speakers (10 per dialect) produced vowels preceded by /d or dˤ/. Thirteen acoustic correlates obtained at the onset and midpoint were used to assess this type of constriction. A predictive modeling approach was used; starting with Bayesian Generalized Linear Mixed Effects modeling followed by Conditional Random Forest for classification. Vowels in the pharyngealized context were more open (higher F1, Z1-Z0), more back (lower F2, higher Z3-Z2), more compact (lower Z2-Z1), and showed spectral divergence (higher Z3-Z2). Voice quality results showed these vowels to be produced with a tense voice. High classification rates of 93.5% for JA and 91.1% for MA were obtained and variable importance score showed formant-based measures outperform voice quality ones. This suggests pharyngealization has 'retraction,' with a back and down gesture, as a primary correlate followed by [+constricted glottis]. The implications of these results provide strong support for LAM, the feature [+cet], and the use of the epilarynx to describe pharyngealization.

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This study investigates medial gemination patterns in Lebanese Arabic (LA). It offers an account of the duration patterns of quantity distinction for vowels and consonants in LA by using the most comprehensive dataset for this variety, and for Arabic in general, so far in terms of the number of speakers (20), the consonant types examined (24), the inspection of vowels preceding and following the consonant in durational analyses, and the inclusion of male and female speakers. The main aim is to show correspondence between phonetic timing in LA and phonological accounts of syllabic structure that are based on moraic weight (Hayes 1989;Broselow 1995;McCarthy and Prince 1995). The study extends predictions of mora-sharing in disyllables with medial clusters that are preceded by a long vowel (e.g., /ˈmaal.ħa/ 'salty-FEM-SG') to comparable syllables with a medial geminate (e.g., /ˈmaal.la/ 'bored-FEM-SG'), which have not been investigated in Arabic before. It shows that vowel shortening preceding medial geminates affects phonologically long but not short vowels, downplaying the commonly referred to closed-syllable shortening effect as the main reason for this phenomenon (Maddieson 1997). Instead, an account based on the interface between phonetic and phonological effects on compensatory vowel shortening offers better predictions.

Apart from Tamil, Malayalam is the only Dravidian language that still retains a fifth liquid in its inventory (denoted as /ʐ/), a sound that can be traced back to Proto-Dravidian. The phonetic and phonological status of this sound has been the subject of considerable debate, both in terms of its rhotic versus lateral status and its phonetic realisation. Studies to date have been impressionistic, so this is the first acoustic study of all five liquids in Malayalam. Production data from 8 male speakers reveal that while /ʐ/ is realised as a central post-alveolar approximant, its ambiguous phonotactic patterning and mixed acoustic profile are contributors to its mixed identity. An understanding of the complex patterning of this sound, which straddles the rhotic/lateral divide, requires an appreciation of the role of secondary acoustic resonance in distinguishing members of a crowded liquid system and in preventing a /ʐ/-/ɭ/ merger.