Analyzing the Seventh Vowel of Classical Arabic

Abstract

In general, any language sounds are classified into two categories: vowels that contain no major air restriction through the vocal tract, and consonants that involve a significant restriction and are therefore weaker in amplitude and often "noisier" than vowels. Modern standard Arabic contains six basic vowels, but there has been disagreement between linguists and researchers on the exact number of Arabic vowels that exist in the classical Arabic. We believe that classical and Quranic Arabic contains an extra vowel in addition to the basic ones. This study is specifically concerned with analyzing this extra vowel that exists in a specific verse in The Holly Quran. We called this intended vowel as ldquothe 7th vowel in classical Arabicrdquo. The first, second, third, and fourth formant values in this vowel are investigated by using more than one Quranic recitation and more than one narrator among those people who recited The Holly Quran perfectly. This vowel is analyzed in both time and frequency domains and acoustically compared with basic Arabic vowels. The result of this analysis and investigation will facilitate Arabic speech processing tasks such as vowel and speech recognition and classification.