Coda (de)voicing across morpheme boundaries in Rural Jordanian Arabic

ABSTRACT

Much work on phonetic assimilation in Arabic has focused on the assimilation of the definite article. However, assimilation across morpheme boundaries has been less of a target of study. Our research, based on word-list data comprising 57 words uttered by 12 native speakers of RJA, revealed that F1 and vowel duration were robust acoustic correlates in discriminating voiced from voiceless consonants. Results further showed that morpheme boundaries are important loci of assimilation: /t/ undergoes voicing assimilation when followed by a voiced obstruent at a morpheme boundary, whereas voiced obstruents devoice before /h/ at the morpheme boundary as compared to the word boundary. This morpheme-boundary voicing assimilation is notably different from assimilation across word boundaries.

KEYWORDS:

• Assimilation
• voicing
• Jordanian Arabic
• Arabic phonetics
• coda voicing

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

¹ Emphasis is a common feature of Semitic languages (e.g., Arabic and Modern Hebrew). It is a secondary articulation of consonants, involving a constriction of the pharynx (Jongman et al. 2011, 85).

² Jordanian Arabic is divided into three main regional dialects: Rural Jordanian Arabic (RJA), Urban Jordanian Arabic (UJA), and Bedouin Jordanian Arabic (BJA). The rural dialect is spoken by Jordanian villagers or village-born city residents in areas like Al-Ramtha, Bani Kanana, Bani Ebeid, and Al-Koura as well as in the city of Der’aa and its villages in Syria. Jordanians refer to the dialect as Hourani Arabic in reference to the Plains of Houran, which extend along the borderline between Jordan and Syria. For more information about the dialect, see Al-Deaibes (2016, 2021) and Al-Deaibes and Rosen (2019). The Urban dialect, on the other hand, is mainly spoken by city dwellers who came to Jordan from neighboring urban centers; Palestinians, Lebanese, and Syrians make up much of this population living mainly in Amman, Zarqa, and Irbid. This population is educated and upper (middle) class. Finally, members of Jordanian tribes who previously lived a nomadic life in the deserts of northeastern, eastern, and southern Jordan (but now live in settled communities) speak the Bedouin dialect.

³ Stuart Davis (personal communication) suggests that codas are targeted for assimilation, because their perceptual cues are less salient than those of an onset. This is worth considering as a different way of motivating codas as targets of assimilation.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Mutasim Al-Deaibes

Mutasim Al-Deaibes, Assistant Professor of Linguistics.

Nicole Rosen

Nicole Rosen, Professor of Linguistics and Canada Research Chair in Language Interactions.