Articulatory Analysis of Arabic Phonemes [ḍ] and [ḓ] Based on the Ag100 Articulator

Abstract

The Arabic language is often called the language of [ḍad]. This last phoneme exists only in Arabic and moreover, it is considered difficult to pronounce. However, the phoneme [ḍ] used by Standard Arabic (SA) speakers is not the one described by the Ancient Arabic Grammarians. The aim of this work is to remove the ambiguity that exists in the pronunciation of the two Arabic Emphatic Consonants (CE) [ḍ] and [ḓ]. For this, we have developed a corpus including sequences [CV], [ C] [ḍ, ḓ] and [V] [a,u,i]. This corpus was analyzed using the AG100 articulograph in order to determine the articulatory characteristics necessary to identify [ḍ] in relation to [ḓ]. the results we obtained are similar to those proposed by Sibawayh and A. Hadj Salah who speculate that: These two emphatic consonants are characterized, at the articulatory level, by a double articulation: one anterior and another posterior. In the latter case, the root of the tongue is carried back towards the posterior pharyngeal wall and a hollowing of the tongue is observed [9]