Focus prosody in Qassimi Arabic: acoustic analysis and computational modeling

This study investigates focus intonation in Qassimi Arabic (QA) with two aims: to examine focus-related prosodic changes in the focused word and surrounding regions, and to identify the functional factors shaping intonation and their relative contributions. The analysis considers maximum, minimum, and mean F ₀, excursion size, duration, and intensity. The data comprise 1,800 utterances produced by ten native speakers in neutral-focus, information-focus, and contrastive-focus contexts. The acoustic results show that focus is realized primarily through enhancement of the focused word, especially through F ₀-register raising and, in some positions, increased pitch excursion. These effects are strongest in sentence-initial and sentence-penultimate positions, while sentence-final focus shows more limited register raising. The pre-focus region remains largely stable. In the broad post-focus region, information and contrastive focus are followed by significant intensity attenuation but no consistent changes in F ₀, excursion size, or duration. However, localized analysis of the post-focus word following sentence-penultimate focus reveals reduced excursion size after contrastive focus, but not after information focus. The results therefore indicate cue- and position-specific post-focus modification rather than general post-focus F ₀ compression. No consistent acoustic distinction emerges between information and contrastive focus across measures and positions. PENTAtrainer modeling reproduced major properties of the observed F ₀ contours, including on-focus prominence, declination, phrase-final lowering, and condition-dependent post-focus modification. Function-removal analyses showed that prosodic-word structure and discourse focus contributed most strongly, whereas syllable weight contributed least. Overall, the findings support a multi-functional account of Qassimi Arabic focus prosody and the applicability of the PENTA framework to Arabic intonation.