Experimental Research Of The Intonation Of Arabic Declarative,interrogative,and Focus Sentences

Allah said,"And of His signs is the creation of the heavens and the earth and the diversity of your languages and your colors.Indeed in that are signs for those of knowledge "①Upuntil now,much research has been done on the intonation of Chinese,English,Korean,Japanese,and other languages.However,currently,research on Arabic has focused mainly on syntax and vocabulary,putting very little emphasis on phonetics.The core phonetic aspect of Arabic’s intonation has been especially neglected.This paper makes use of recording software,Cool Edit Pro,and phonetic analysis software,Mini Speech Lab,based on Professor Shi Feng’s "Intonation Pattern" theory and pitch fluctuation methodology,to analyze the intonation of statements and special questions(wh-questions)in Dari Farsi,examining the characteristics of sentence pitch range,intonation unit pitch range,and intonation unit pitch fluctuation for every sentence。This paper is divided into seven chapters.The first chapter provides an introduction,the second through sixth chapters investigate the intonation of Arabic phonetics producing statements,special questions(wh-questions),yes/no questions and narrow focus sentences in Arabic,and the seventh chapter provides a summary and conclusion.Chapter 1 reviews the research on Mandarin intonation that has already been done and introduces the theoretical framework and research methods used for this paper.Chapters 2 looking ahead to the study of similarities and differences between Arabic and Chinese phonetics in order to make a comparative study of phonetics in both Arabic and Chinese languages,of which will be a great help to the Arab student in learning Chinese.Chapters 3 through 6 successively investigate the intonation of Arabic phonetics producing statements,special questions(wh-questions),yes/no questions and narrow focus sentences in Arabic.The contents of our investigation include sentence pitch range,word pitch range,pitch fluctuation,and the manifestation of words within the context of intonation.The manifestation of pitch in interrogative and narrow focus sentences is also compared with that of statements,providing a description of the prosodic features of these three sentence types.Chapter 7 summarizes the phonetics manifestation of Arab students’intonation,looking ahead of similarities and differences between Arabic and Chinese’s intonation in order to make a comparative study of intonation in both discussing the challenges that may be encountered by Arab students arid Chinese students when studying both Chinese and Arabic language’s intonation as well as providing some suggestions for teaching strategies.The author hopes that other researchers will continue to expand Arabic’s intonation research to include other moods such as imperative and exclamatory,and other factors such as prosody and syntax.