A corpus study of durational rhythmic measures in the Kalhori variety of Kurdish

Nafiseh Taghva; Amirsaeid Moloodi; Vahideh Abolhasanizadeh; Roya Tabei

doi:10.3989/loquens.2023.e098

Authors

Nafiseh Taghva Department of Foreign Languages and Linguistics, Shiraz University https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9715-4505
Amirsaeid Moloodi Department of Foreign Languages and Linguistics, Shiraz University https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4682-3160
Vahideh Abolhasanizadeh Department of Foreign Languages, Shahid Bahonar University of Kerman https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5426-9369
Roya Tabei Department of English Language and Literature, Razi University https://orcid.org/0009-0009-4461-7807

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.3989/loquens.2023.e098

Keywords:

durational variability, acoustic correlations, rhythmic measures, Kalhori, Kurdish

Abstract

In order to identify between-sentence and between-speaker variabilities, one of the methods used by phoneticians is studying durational rhythmic features. In the present research, to classify speech rhythm of Kalhori, a variety of Kurdish, and to find out about the most appropriate measures for between-sentence and between-speaker rhythmic variability in Kalhori, durational speech rhythmic measures were analyzed. To this end, two speaking styles (read and spontaneous) were explored. The analysis of the read corpus revealed that Kalhori Kurdish rhythm pattern is between stress-timed and syllable-timed. The results indicated that %V (proportion over which speech is vocalic) was the most significant measure for distinguishing between-sentence rhythmic variability in the read corpus, while %V and rateSyl (syllable rate) were the most efficient measures for identifying the between-speaker rhythmic variability in both the read and spontaneous corpus.

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