Towards a Phonological Model of Intonation in Qassimi Arabic: An Acoustic Study

This study investigates the intonational patterns of Qassimi Arabic (QA), a dialect spoken in central Saudi Arabia, using the Autosegmental–Metrical (AM) framework. It identifies characteristic intonational contours in declarative and yes/no questions and compares these with patterns found in other Arabic dialects. Twenty native QA speakers (10 male, 10 female) participated by reading structured stimuli designed to elicit natural declarative and interrogative prosody. Acoustic analysis was conducted using Praat to examine fundamental frequency (F0) contours and boundary tones. Results indicate that declarative sentences in QA typically end with low boundary tones (L-L%, L%), while yes/no questions display rising contours (L-H%, H-H%). Statistical analysis confirmed that F0 values in interrogative sentences were significantly higher than those in declaratives across all speakers, regardless of gender. These findings align broadly with patterns observed in other Arabic dialects such as Hijazi, Egyptian, and Lebanese Arabic, while also revealing dialect-specific nuances in QA. This research contributes to the theoretical phonology of Arabic by expanding empirical coverage to a previously undocumented variety and supports the applicability of the AM framework in describing Arabic prosody.