The Vowels of Qassimi Dialect

This paper describes the vowels of the Qassimi dialect and explores the characteristic features of those vowels. To achieve this goal, the researcher has compiled a list of Qassimi words. Each word represents a major allophone of each vowel phoneme. These words were then repeated by Qassimi female speakers from Buraidah and recorded by the researcher. The data was subjected to acoustic analysis, and the results were compared to the acoustic results of English vowels. The analysis showed many similarities in the characteristics of both Qassimi and English vowels. However, it also showed some significant differences that distinguish the vowel system of Qassimi from the English vowel system as well as other Saudi dialects. This study sheds light on those differences, however it is left to future studies to investigate further and possibly compare other aspects of these dialects. This study contributes to the theoretical description of Saudi dialects, an area that needs many more contributions. In addition, this paper could be a part of the contrastive studies of Arabic and English, second language acquisition studies, or various other applied studies.

among the different Arabic dialects. As a qualitative study, this study will only focus on the major allophones of the vowel phonemes and the characteristic features for each one. No attention will be given to how frequent these vowels are used.

Research Questions
The current research answers the following questions: 1) How is the Qassimi Vowel system different from the English vowel system? 2) How is the Qassimi vowel system different from other Saudi and Arabic dialects?
3) Are the Qassimi vowels found in this study phonemes or allophones?

Literature Review
There have been a number of studies describing the different aspects and dialects of Arabic in general. Of course, not all of these studies are directly related to the main objective of the current study, but as we know, vowels are an essential part of any study that aims to provide a proper description of a language or dialect. Therefore, this section will show how the Arabic vowel inventories have been described in different studies.

Modern Standard Arabic
Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) vowel inventory consists of six vowel phonemes: three "short" and three "long": / i:/, /i/, /u:/, /u/, /a:/ and /a/. The difference in length is in the time that the vowel is held and is not a difference in the vowel quality. Therefore, the long vowels are held approximately double the time of the short vowels (Ryding, 2005). These are the basic Arabic vowels; however, Alotaibi and Hussain (2010) have stated that they may vary across different dialects. For example, the Egyptian dialect is said to have extra vowels. Heintz (2010) discussed the differences in phonology between MSA and Levantine Conversational Arabic (LCA) in both their vowel inventories and the use of some consonants. He stated that LCA exhibits a greater variety of short and long vowels, adding /e/ and /o/ to MSA's /a/, /i/ and /u/. He also clarified that LCA is a dialect that is mainly spoken and not written, and it has no standard alphabet. Therefore, those who want to write in the colloquial form often use the MSA script.
Alghamdi (1998) carried out a spectrographic analysis of Arabic vowels based on a cross-dialect study. He stated that (MSA) possesses only six vowels: /a/, /a:/, /i/, /i:/, /u/ and /u:/. He described Arabic as a quantitative language where the sound duration is phonemic. In addition, he investigated whether Arabic vowels are the same at the phonetic level when spoken by speakers of different Arabic dialects, namely Saudi, Sudanese and Egyptian dialects. The researcher found that the phonetic implementation of the standard Arabic vowel system differs according to dialects. Watson (2002) investigated the phonology of Arabic. She described Classical Arabic as a language with a very rich consonantal system and a relatively impoverished vocalic system with three short vowel phonemes: two close vowels, /i/ and /u/, and one open vowel, /a/. Watson stated that the three long vowels: /i:/, /u:/ and /a:/ are an essential part of almost all modern dialects of Arabic.

Arabic Dialects Other than Saudi
Alameri (2009), in her study of the phonology of Emirati Arabic, stated that not all of the Arabic vowels have clear representation when it comes to the written form. Only long vowels are transcribed in Arabic orthography. On the other hand, short vowels cannot usually be seen in written forms as they are diacritics that are added to the words. She stated that the Emirati vowel system consists of eleven vowels: /i/, /i:/, /u/, /u:/, /a/, /a:/, /e/, /e:/, /o/, /o:/ and /ə/. Al-aghbari (2001), in his study on Omani Arabic (OA), stated that in addition to the three fundamental vowels of Arabic (/a/, /u/ and /i/), Omani Arabic has long mid phonemic vowels, such as /e:/ and /o:/. Therefore, the phonemic vowel inventory of Omani Arabic consists of eight vowels, and the phonemic short vowels in OA contrast for length.
Al-Sughayer (1990) described Jordanian Arabic (JA) as similar to MSA in its vowel inventory. Jordanian Arabic has three long and three short vowels: /i/, /i:/, /a/, /a:/, /u/ and /u:/. In addition to the vowels of MSA, JA has two long mid vowels: /o:/ and /e:/. Vowel length is contrastive in JA, and long and short vowels share the same vowel quality and differ only in duration. Abdul-Karim (1980) investigated the differences between Lebanese Arabic (LA) and other Arabic dialects. One of the major areas of difference is in the vowel inventory of these dialects. He stated that in the Lebanese dialect, the inventory of short vowels has three basic elements: /a/, /i/ and /u/. Among the long vowels, five elements appear in the Lebanese speech: /a:/, /i:/, /u:/, /e:/ and /o:/.
Another study of Lebanese Arabic was done by Haddad (1984). He reduced the phonemic vowel inventory of LA into five vowels: /i/, /i:/, /a/, /a:/ and /u:/. He believes that /u/ is actually derived from /i/ by rule.

Saudi Dialects
One of the dialects spoken in Saudi Arabia is the Hijazi dialect, which is spoken in the west and southwest of Medina. It has three short vowels: /i/, /a/ and /u/. In addition, Al-mozainy (1981) provided different examples on the clear contrast in the relationship between the /i/ and the /u/.

Studies on English Vowels
Peterson and Barney (1952) conduced a detailed investigation of American English vowels. They presented the acoustic measurements of fundamental frequency (F0) and the first three formant frequencies (F1−F3). In addition, they conducted an experiment where listeners were asked to identify words, so they tested both the production and the perception of vowels.
Through the classic study of American English vowels by Peterson and Barney (1952), we learn that most English vowels can be identified acoustically by the frequencies of their first two formants. A recent replication of the study by Peterson and Barney was a study by Hillenbrand, Getty, Clark and Weeler (1995). In their study, Hillenbrand et al. (1995) do not completely agree with the average values that Peterson and Barney found. This disagreement may be due to differences in measurement methods or because vowels have shifted slightly in the last 40 years, or perhaps other factors are involved.
The F1 and F2 values of the English vowels presented in both studies will be used in the current study to compare with the F1 and F2 values of the Qassimi vowels. Through this comparison, significant similarities and differences between the Qassimi and English vowels will be highlighted.

Participants
This study is confined to Qassimi female speakers from Buraidah, the regional capital of Al-Qassim province. It is gender-oriented because of the research convenience and to reach a level of consistency in the results. The participants of the study are twenty female speakers, and their age range is between 20 to 28 years old. The age mean of the participants is 23.6 and the standard deviation is 2.32. All speakers volunteered to participate in the recording sessions, which lasted between 15 and 30 minutes. None of the subjects claimed to be limited by visual or hearing impairment. The study investigates only the major allophones of the vowel phonemes of this dialect. ijel.ccsenet.

Sampli
The study community

Data E
The data w took place by Mark H The speec cards one as to how their norm

Data A
Generally, backness a phonemic this study The initia excessive version 6. the most w quantizatio

In this sec previous li
This study discussion Barney (19 is a study b

The Ch
By analyz vowels tha /i:/, /u/ an dialect fro asleep," ar The final v is not a co phonemes The researcher collected six minimal pairs, which represent evidence that those vowels are phonemes and not allophones. As we know, vowels are described in terms of two phonetic parameters: vowel quality and vowel quantity. Quality refers to differences in the place of articulation of the vowel, including the position of the tongue in the vocal tract, the shape of the lips and whether the vowel is nasalized or not. On the other hand, vowel quantity refers to the duration of the vowel. Simply put, the vowels are described as short versus long (Saddah, 2011).
English and Arabic are languages with phonological contrasts based on vowel quality and quantity. English is a 12-vowel system that contrasts tense long vowels and lax short vowels; whereas Arabic is a 6-vowel system that contrasts long and short vowels. Therefore, English and Arabic, in general, are not only differentiated in terms of the size of their vowel systems, but also in the phonetic qualities of their vowels (Saddah, 2011).

Vowel Duration
The vowels of English and Qassimi can be divided into two major groups on the basis of their phonological behaviors, which largely correspond with phonetically short (and lax) versus long (and tense) vowels. In both English and Qassimi, examples of pairs of short and long vowels show that vowel duration plays an important role in marking the contrast next to vowel quality differences. Words like "heed" /hid/, "hid" /hɪd/, "hood" /hUd/ and "who'd" /hud/ are great examples of vowel contrasts in English as presented by Peterson and Barney (1952).

Tense and Lax Vowels
Hongyan (2007) represented the state of the tongue and lips in regard to muscular tension as an element considered by some to be of importance in determining vowel quality. Those who consider that vowels may be differentiated by degrees of muscular tension distinguish two classes: tense vowels and lax vowels. Tense vowels are supposed to require considerable muscular tension on the part of the tongue; in lax vowels, the tongue is supposed to be held loosely. For example, the difference in quality between the English vowels seat and sit is described as a difference in tenseness: the vowel sound in seat is considered tense while the vowel sound in sit is lax.
Comparing the locations of the common vowels across English and Qassimi, namely the main peripheral high vowels /i/, /i:/, /u/ and /u:/, results in many similarities and some significant differences. In the case of the high back rounded vowels /u:/ and /u/, the range of the average values of F1 and F2 is very close for both English and Qassimi vowels (Figure 2). In both cases, the long vowels have less F1 value than their short counterpart, which makes /u:/ higher in quality and appear more peripherally in the vowel space.

Conclusion
The phonological description of the vowel system of any language or dialect is a very wide area of study. This study took a more direct and basic approach, which was to determine the vowel sounds found in the Qassimi dialect, and to spot some of the general differences between the Qassimi and English vowels. The Qassimi vowel system consists of nine vowel phonemes and comparing it to other systems may give us a proof of language variation. For example, the Emirati is said to have eleven vowels, the Omani dialect has eight vowels, and the Jordanian Arabic has only six vowels. In addition to number of vowel phonemes in each dialect, the Qassimi dialect has the mid vowel /ɘ/ which is not found in other dialects. So, the results of this analysis not only highlighted the differences between Arabic and English, but also showed great variation within Arabic.
The analysis of the Qassimi and English vowels in this paper showed how the state of phonemes could affect the overall vowel space of a language or a dialect. For example, the Qassimi vowels are lower in number and more centralized than the English vowels, and this led to the assumption that the Qassimi vowel space is narrower than the English vowel space.
The study of vowels is one of the most complex areas of study. This study aimed to shed light on some of the major aspects of the Qassimi dialect and, more specifically, the Qassimi vowel system. It is not meant to provide any conclusive results or provide definite rules of how the Qassimi vowel system works. However, this study contributes to the studies of Arabic in general and paves the way for more detailed studies.