arabic phonology0

The Semitic Languages, 2nd ed., 2019

Unpublished PhD dissertation, SOAS, University of …, 2008

This thesis investigates the role of emphatics within the Semitic sound system as the basis for a typology of Semitic emphatics. In seeking to define the term ‘emphatic’, since emphatics are realised in some Semitic languages as ejectives, and in others as ‘pharyngealised’, or ‘backed’, the phonetic aspects of both are investigated. I present acoustic analyses of Tigrinya and Arabic (Peninsula Arabian and Iraqi) emphatics, paying particular attention to perceptual salience. Firstly, the notions of ‘noise-lag’ and ‘stop-lag’ are discussed and exemplified in relation to ejectives; secondly, I present and evaluate analyses of VOT in Arabic, showing that there is dialectal variation in the voicing series (i.e. two-way vs three-way). Further to this, I discuss the phonological composition of the various emphatics and gutturals, proposing structural representations broadly within an element-theoretic framework. I then take a diachronic angle, looking at Proto-Semitic and the development of the sound systems of the Semitic languages, in particular the Semitic triads, and the development of ‘backed’ emphatics as a product of changing sound systems. I argue that Proto-Semitic laterals were not part of the ‘triad’ system and that the voiced lateral fricative was ‘backed’. The emphatic trajectory hypothesis is evaluated and theoretically contextualised, and I show that dialectal variation in the voicing series of Arabic is relevant to the variant phonological systems of the dialect types discussed. A preliminary comparative investigation into Arabic dialect sound systems is then presented. I discuss dialect classification and detail a set of key variables for each dialect group. The thesis then discusses the issue of ‘emphasis spread’, analysing data from four different dialect types. The data is discussed in terms of sound systems, and the traditional analysis of ‘emphasis spread’ is disputed. I show how the various sound systems of Arabic are characterised by resonance patterns, which are a crucial part of what is normally taken to be ‘emphasis spread’, and that there is an active process of ‘fronting’ (im¢ala) which is crucial to an analysis of ‘emphasis’ (tafx³m). The thesis concludes with an evaluation of the research, stressing the need for systematic and consistent cross-dialectal analyses of both the phonetics and the phonology of Semitic emphatics. I outline how this can be used in future work to develop a comprehensive comparative typology, towards which this thesis is a preliminary contribution.

Linguistics and Literature Studies

The present study deals with "A brief description of consonants in Modern Standard Arabic". This study tries to give some information about the production of Arabic sounds, the classification and description of consonants in Standard Arabic, then the definition of the word consonant. In the present study we also investigate the place of articulation in Arabic consonants we describe sounds according to: bilabial, labio-dental, alveolar, palatal, velar, uvular, and glottal. Then the manner of articulation, the characteristics such as phonation, nasal, curved, and trill. The aim of this study is to investigate consonant in MSA taking into consideration that all 28 consonants of Arabic alphabets. As a language Arabic is one of the most important languages in the world, because it is the language of Quran. Each language has its own phonetic system; furthermore to the enlightenment of MSA sound system; giving a comparison between Arabic and English sound considered as similarities and differences between the two systems such as

2021

This paper investigates the phenomenon of emphasis in Semitic from a phonological perspective. It is well known that Semitic emphatics can be realized either as ejectives (Ethiosemitic) or as pharyngealized consonants (Arabic). Recent interest in the Modern South Arabian languages revealed that the emphatics in this group can be realized through an interaction of glottalization and pharyngealization. Starting from a general assessment of glottalization from a cross-linguistic perspective, a focus on Semitic emphatics will be given by using data from the endangered Modern South Arabian language, Baṭḥari. Our goal is to provide a feature analysis of emphasis in Baṭḥari and to correlate it with the rest of Semitic, with special attention to the peculiar phonological patterning of the emphatic /ṭ/. This consonant appears to pattern in Baṭḥari together with the class of breathed consonants (Heselwood and Maghrabi 2015), probably due to its peculiar features. It will be shown that, by adopting Duanmu's (2016) framework of phonological features, it is possible to provide a coherent model for the patterning of Baṭḥari and Modern South Arabian emphatics within Semitic. Furthermore, this paper will provide some tentative parallels between Semitic emphatics and glottalized segments found in the rest of Afroasiatic.

By Ivan Petryshyn *In honor of the Arabs and Jews known, **In memory of the Arabs and Jews killed. (Author).

The Routledge Handbook of Arabic Linguistics, 2018

In this chapter, a general description and discussion of the phonology of Arabic is presented. First, the sound system of Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) is briefly discussed and compared to the sound system of Classical Arabic (CA) as described by Classical Arabic grammarians. Differences, or possible differences, between the two are highlighted. The phonemic inventory of MSA is then compared to those of the other Arabic spoken varieties, conventionally classified into six main dialect groups from East to West: Gulf Arabic (GA), Iraqi Arabic (IA), Levantine Arabic (LA), Yemeni Arabic (YA), Egyptian Arabic (EA), and Maghrebi Arabic (MA). Comparisons among these varieties are drawn in terms of sound system, syllable structure, and stress patterns. Some sound alternations in different dialects are analyzed within an OCP driven framework. Additionally, processes such as assimilation, affrication, lenition, and pharyngealization are discussed. Occasionally, reference is made to specific dialects within the six major groups, and new data are presented from less studied dialects.

Journal of Semitic Studies, supplement no.34, 2014

NB PLEASE CONTACT AUTHOR FOR A COPY OF THE FINAL, PUBLISHED VERSION A triadic system of (obstruent) contrasts is a well-known feature of the prototypical Semitic sound system and involves an opposition of voiced-voiceless-emphatic. The 'emphatic' member of this triad varies across Semitic languages between ejective, pharyngealized / uvularized, and some combination of both. Emphatics in the Ethio-Semitic languages are ejective, while in Arabic they are pharygealized / uvularized. There has been much debate in the literature of the exact nature and behaviour of the emphatics in Arabic, and it is clear that there is considerable dialectal variation in both phonetic realization and phonological behaviour. Further, there is also variation in the exact emphatics that each dialect has, and very often debate over identifying which phones of a given dialect are emphatic ('primary', i.e. lexical, or 'secondary', i.e. phonetically or phonologically conditioned). This paper focuses on a little-investigated aspect of Arabic emphatics, which is that of laryngeal categories. Data is presented to show that Arabic dialects may be classified as either triadic, with a three-way laryngeal contrast, or what I term dyadic, with a two-way laryngeal contrast. The triadic dialects have a voiced-voiceless (emphatic)-voiceless aspirated opposition in the obstruent system, which is akin to the prototypical Semitic triadic system; the dyadic dialects have only a voiced-voiceless obstruent opposition. The paper shows how these categories are measured, exemplifying with a number of triadic and dyadic dialects. These data additionally show that triadic or dyadic systems do not emerge in an entirely arbitrary fashion: there appears to be a strong correlation between the type of laryngeal contrast system and the dialect type according to other classification criteria (e.g. socioeconomic or 'ecological' along a Bedouinite-ruralite-urbanite continuum). The triadic / dyadic laryngeal contrast systems of Arabic provide further evidence for a trajectory of emphatic development from ejective (a purely laryngeal contrast) to pharyngealized / uvularized (a resonance contrast). The paper presents and exemplifies a model of this trajectory and discusses the changing role of 'emphatic' within Semitic. Having shown how laryngeal contrasts in Arabic are an important part of the typology of emphatics, the paper then discusses how other, related features of the sound system are also relevant. The final part of the paper therefore outlines how the retention or loss of (historical) interdentals may be incorporated into such a typology. The hypothesis is that this variant, too, will show a strong correlation with triadic / dyadic laryngeal contrast systems; while exceptions are predicted to be found, representing 'mixed' dialect types, preliminary observations indicate that there may indeed be a good correlation. 0 Introduction There is much discussion in the literature of the Arabic emphatics, with a wide range of studies focusing on the phonetic correlates (both articulatory and acoustic) of 'emphatic' and a wide range of studies focusing on the phonological representation and behaviour of 'emphasis'. This paper shows how Arabic emphatics are an important part of a historical rearrangement within Arabic dialect sound systems that is ongoing. To this end, the paper focuses on a little-discussed aspect of emphatics, that of laryngeal categories.

1996

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The Semitic languages have been considered an extremely interesting field in phonology since the works of Jakobson (1957) and Jakobson (1963). In this thesis we discuss some major topics in Semitic phonology, considering in parallel the most recent developments in phonological theory. The goal is to achieve interesting conclusions about these topics relying on results of formal phonology, showing the strong interface between theory and analysis. The introduction (chapter 1) contains the theorical background of this entire work, generative phonology, a synthetic overview on the Semitic languages taken into account (Hebrew, Arabic, Tigre), and a brief exposition of some descriptive problems in Semitic phonetics and phonology. Chapter 2 presents the principles and the necessity for phonological theory in linguistics, following its historical development from the origins (Trubetzkoy) to the `Generative Revolution'. Then, we explain the importance of phonological rules and the way they interact/conflict with constraints. An example application of rules and constraints to Tiberian Hebrew is included too. Chapter 3 focuses on one major problem in contemporary phonology, namely opacity. After presenting the phenomenon 'per se' and in its manifestation in various non-Semitic langugages, we deal with the particular case of Tiberian Hebrew spirantization, comparing various theorical proposals and considering possible solutions. We discuss various formal approaches, namely derivational, stratal, and ``morphological''. We refuse the hypothesis that opacity is not a real phonological problem, because empirical data show phonological opacity is well attested across the languages of the world and, probably not being always solvable in terms of morphological uniformity principles, a neat morphological approach is clearly uneconomical and inadequate. Chapter 4 offers a description of Semitic `gutturals', mainly from an articulatory point of view. Then, the discussion focuses on the proposal of describing the gutturals as a `universal' natural class. This proposal is in contrast with others, like that which considers the gutturals not a natural class as intended by McCarthy, but as a series of patternings specific to Semitic and some non-Semitic languages, ruled out not by universal availability, but according to phonetic feature and parameters. After a discussion on some theorical and descriptive problems of the first proposal, we conclude that formalization of gutturals-related and gutturals-induced processes, although descriptively accurate to a great extent, cannot justify the existence of the guttural as a universal natural class, but rather as a series of language-specific patternings partly due to phonetic properties of the gutturals. Chapter 5 is a research proposal on a recently detected problem in Semitic phonology, namely the occurrence of [tħ-] and [th-] in Tigre. Since this language generally does not allow initial clusters, it is problematic, both at a theorical and at a typological level, to explain those forms (mainly in the imperfect inflection) which present the initial clusters mentioned above. We think the adoption of a uniform model to explain all the phenomena common to Tigre and the other Semitic languages taken in consideration is necessary for an effective further research.