Digital processing of stress in Standard Arabic

Abstract

Given that accurate stress assignment rules can help enhance speech technology applications, the present paper provides a digital processing of stress in Standard Arabic. The findings indicate that stress in this language is manifested by a variety of correlates, namely duration, intensity and fundamental frequency. Nevertheless, only duration and intensity have proved to be the most reliable phonetic stress correlates. The digital processing also shows that there is an important interaction between syllable structure and stress assignment.