Acoustical Features of Emphatics in Jibbāli

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to examine the phonetic features of emphatics in Jibbāli, a Semitic languages of Oman. Jibbāli emphatics have been regarded variously as ejective or glottalized in previous research.
 I analyzed recordings of Amharic ejectives (t’, s’) and non-ejectives (t, s) as well as Korean glottalized (t^ʔ, s^ʔ) and non-glottalized consonants (t, s), and contrasted them with Jibbāli emphatics (T, K, S, S̃, Ś, Ṯ) and non-emphatics (t, k, s, s̃, ɫ, θ) recorded during my field research conducted in the Sultanate of Oman July-August, 2008. I examined them in terms of voice-bar, fill, intensity and duration of the adjacent silent period and the release burst, using Kay’s Multi-Speech (ver. 2.5).
 It turns out that all Jibbāli emphatics are unvoiced in terms of the voice-bar. In Amharic, the intensity of word-final t^ʔ is stronger than that of word-final t. In Jibbāli also, the emphatics were strong in comparison to the non-emphatics. The duration of the silent period of both Jibbāli emphatics and Amharic ejectives is longer than that of Korean glottalized consonants. Concerning the duration of release burst, in Amharic, that of fricative ejectives tends to be shorter than that of fricative non-ejectives. That of the Jibbāli emphatics likewise is shorter than that of the non-emphatic counterpart. However, in Korean, the release burst of the glottal s^ʔ has almost the same duration as that of the non-glottal s.
 In conslusion, judging from their intensity and duration, Jibbāli emphatics have been confirmed to be ejectives.