Diadochokinetic rate in Saudi and Bahraini Arabic speakers: Dialect and the influence of syllable type

Abstract

Arabic is spoken by more than 420 million people worldwide and still there are a limited number of studies on dialects of the Gulf Arabic regions where most selected respondents are male speakers. This study aimed to explore and establish normative data for the Diadochokinetic Rate (DDK) for two dialects (Saudi Arabia’s Najdi and Bahrain’s Bahraini) speakers. Furthermore, it aimed to investigate whether there are differences between the two dialects and whether sex differences are evident. In addition, it investigated syllable type differences. The study used the monosyllables /ba, da, ga/ and the multisyllabic sequence /badaga/ to analyse the DDK rates. Acoustic analysis was carried out to obtain DDK rates for the syllables. A mixed model ANOVA was performed to investigate dialect and sex differences, in addition, to syllable type. The study included 40 males and 40 female speakers from each of the two dialects. Results showed that for DDK, Saudi speakers had faster DDK rates for the monosyllables /ba/, /da/, /ga/, than Bahrainis, while, no significant differences were observed for the multisyllabic sequences. However, there were no differences between male and female speakers with regard to the DDK rates. The syllable /ga/ showed the slowest DDK rate among the monosyllables while the multisyllabic sequences displayed the slowest DDK rates. In brief, normative data for DDK rates for clinic were determined for the Arabic Nadji and Bahrain’s Bahraini dialects. DDK rate was shown to be more sensitive to dialect differences for the monosyllable tasks. However, no sex differences were observed for the Arabic dialects in this study across all DDK tasks.

Diadochokinetic rates in healthy young and elderly Greek‐speaking adults: The effect of types of stimuli

“…In Greek, the voiceless consonants /p/, /t/ are in free variation and can be produced as aspirated or not by Greek speakers, depending on the phonetic context and the speaker, while the speech sound /k/ shows allophonic variations, that is, the phones [k] and [c] which are in complementary distribution, with their distribution modulated by the vowel following the phoneme /k/ (i.e., /ka/, /ko/, /ku/-not middle/back vowels but /ci/, /ce/-front vowels (Arvaniti, 1999;Bernthal et al, 2017:11). In a recent study, Alshahwan et al (2020) found that Saudi adult speakers produced the monosyllables /ba/, /da/, /ga/ significantly faster than Bahraini adult speakers, thus proposing the establishment of separate norms for each Arabic population. Furthermore, the frequency of separate phonemes, and place of articulation, varies in each language and may affect the speed of production (Ben-David & Icht, 2016).…”

The Syllable And Word In Diadochokinetic Javanese - Indonesia Speakers

“…Age and language are two variable affecting diadochokinetic activity significantly (Kent, 2021). Studies on diadochokinetic performance have been conducted in some languages other than English like Arabic (Alshahwan et al, 2020); Hebrew (Ben-David & Icht, 2017); Thai (Prathanee et al, 2003a); Malayan (Yang et al, 2011); and Greek (Tafiadis et al, 2021). Those researches revealed diadochinetic data on syllable and word levels.…”

Diadochokinetic Rate Quantification in 5 to 14 Year Old Children

“…The search on data on DDK quantification at single and double syllables and word level is very important (Alshahwan et al, 2020). In addition to providing syllable-and word-based information, the fulfilment of information on DKK in syllables with voiced and voiceless consonant becomes important.…”

“…Word and material choices in ethnocultural-based DDK activity play an important role in handling speech disorder related to motor-speech process. Studies have been conducted to see DDK across languages (Alshahwan et al, 2020;Icht & Ben-David, 2014), but none to see DDK ability in Indonesian language speakers.…”