Revisiting distinctive phonetic features from applied computing perspective: unifying views and analyzing modern Arabic speech varieties

Distinctive phonetic features (DPFs) provide the description of phonemes’ places and manners of articulation. Several, sometimes contradictory, views and definitions of the DPF elements of Modern Standard Arabic have been proposed in the phonology literature. This contrast in views is a significant barrier against utilizing the advantages of DPFs in digital speech processing applications because computer systems do not deliver correct results under vague rules and models. This is a review paper that presents background on Arabic DPFs and in addition to highlighting the historical and geographical verities. It also addresses the problem of ambiguous definitions between classical and modern phonology that may introduce significant challenge to computer scientists and engineers when developing computer systems. Another contribution of this work is to investigate the deviations in phonemes and DPF elements across dialects of Arabic. This is important to provide engineers with better understanding when designing computer software targeting a wide spectrum of Arabic speaking users.