Acoustic Cues to Fricatives Place of Articulation Produced in Moroccan Dialect.

The aim of the present study is to examine acoustic characteristics of Moroccan fricatives in order to find invariant cues that classify fricatives into their place of articulation. Fricative consonants of Moroccan Arabic dialect were elicited from 8 adult speakers (4 male and 4 female) in 3 vowel contexts (/i, a, u/). The cues investigated included temporal measurement (duration of fricative consonant) and formant information at fricative-vowel transition (F1 and F2 at vowel onset and locus equation). The effects of voicing, speaker’s gender and post-fricative vowel on both formants onset values and locus equations were investigated. The results obtained showed that F1 onset values differentiated voiceless from voiced fricatives. F2 onset values distinguished fricatives in term of place of articulation. The locus equation slope and intercept differentiated voiceless from voiced fricative and distinguished clearly palatal fricatives from the other places of articulation.