Intonational variation in Arabic Corpus 2011-2017

The Intonational Variation in Arabic corpus employed a multi-layered set of data collection instruments, following in the footsteps of the Intonational Variation in English (IViE) project. A range of different tools are used to collect speech recordings, to systematically vary certain variables of interest, and control others, and in a range of styles, from scripted to spontaneous speech.<p>Twenty five countries have Arabic as an official language, but the dialects spoken vary greatly, and even within one country different accents are heard. Many features create the impression of 'a different accent', including how particular sounds are pronounced, where stress falls in a word, and what intonation pattern is used. There is extensive prior research on the first two of these for Arabic, but few descriptions of the intonation of individual dialects, and what is known is based on different data types so direct comparisons cannot be made.

The Intonational Variation in Arabic project is hosted by the Department of Language and Linguistic Science at the University of York, a leading centre for sociophonetic research. Adapting methodology from earlier ESRC funded work on English (see Related Resources) the project will generate a public-access corpus of Arabic speech, using a parallel set of sentences, stories and conversations, recorded with 18-30 year olds in eight regions of the Arab world. Additional data from older speakers (aged 40-60) will reveal changes in progress and local variation. Detailed prosodic analysis will yield intonational descriptions of individual dialects and cross-dialectal comparisons, for use by linguists, learners and teachers of Arabic and other users.</p>