Arabic phonetics in the beginning of the third millenium

Arabic phonetics has been part of the study of Arabic language since the 7 th century CE. The great works by Al-Khali:l, "Kita:b al-'Ayn", and Si:bawayh, author of the first Arabic grammar book "al-kita:b" (i.e., "The Book") are the two cornerstones of this field. The early Arab grammarians knew phonetics quite well, although they mixed it with phonology, but interest in phonetics has remained fairly marginal until the middle of the 20 th century. Modern phonetics in the West, computerized innovations and other factors enhanced also Arabic phonetics especially in the last two decades. This introduction reviews five major schools which developed Arabic phonetics in the (Classical) past: dictionary, grammar, Koran reading, philosophy, and rhetoric. These are compared with modern trends in Arabic phonetic studies: dialect descriptions, sociolinguistic studies, pure phonetic features, language acquisition and teaching and new phonetic areas: prosody and suprasegmentals. The basic differences between the two periods lie in research motivation and methodology. The talks in this session exemplify salient features of segments and suprasegments in colloquial dialects and Literary Arabic: pausal forms, glottalization, gemination, emphatics (coarticulation), and intonation. The studies were performed by modern analysis techniques.