Prominence Assignment in Saudi Arabic

Languages differ in how they convey prominence and information structure (IS). In Modern Standard Arabic (MSA), a flexible word order language, new information focus is marked by accent, and contrastive focus by word order displacement (Moutaouakil, 1989). Traditionally, rigid word order languages rely on prosody, while flexible word order languages employ syntactic movement (Donati & Nespor, 2003; Cole, 2015). However, the combined use of word order and prosody to mark prominence in flexible-word order languages has not been well studied. This study investigates the interaction between syntactic and prosodic strategies in two Saudi Arabic varieties (Hijazi and Najdi) to determine whether prosody complements or merely replicates the function of word order. A production task with 12 Saudi speakers elicited responses that varied in word order, focus type, and prosodic marking. Acoustic analysis revealed that focused elements exhibited longer vowel durations and wider F0 ranges than non-focused elements, while maximum intensity also varied, though it was influenced by domain-initial strengthening. These results suggest that Saudi speakers use both word order and prosody to mark focus, indicating that prosodic cues are complementary rather than redundant. In addition, the findings contribute to the broader theoretical debate on the syntax-prosody interface and imply the need for a revised typology of focus-marking strategies that integrates both prosodic and syntactic methods

Arabic · Business · Linguistics · Natural language processing · Speech recognition · Word order · Computer Science · Linguistic Variation and Morphology · Philosophy · Phonetics and Phonology Research · Psychology · Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation · Artificial Intelligence