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Gemination within English loanwords in Ammani Arabic: An Optimality-theoretic analysis

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 June 2020

MOHAMMED NOUR ABU GUBA Open the ORCID record for MOHAMMED NOUR ABU GUBA [Opens in a new window]
MOHAMMED NOUR ABU GUBA*
Affiliation:
Sharjah University
*
Author’s address: University of Sharjah, P.O. Box 27272, Sharjah, UAEmabu-gub@sharjah.ac.ae
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Abstract

Adopting an Optimality-theoretic approach, this paper examines gemination in English loanwords in Ammani Arabic (AA). Data come from a corpus of 1200 loanwords as produced by 12 AA monolingual native speakers. Results show that gemination, which is not attested in the source input, is induced to satisfy AA structural constraints and to render the output better well-formed. Of particular interest, results show that the introduction of English loanwords into AA highlights the activity of a constraint that requires prosodic words in AA, and probably many Arabic dialects, to be left-aligned with a foot. This constraint enhances our understanding of many aspects of Arabic phonology such as stress assignment and foot formation. The study has important implications for Arabic phonology, loanword phonology and second language acquisition.

Keywords

Arabicgeminationloanword phonologyOptimality Theory
Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Linguistics , Volume 57 , Issue 1 , February 2021 , pp. 3 - 40
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Copyright
© The Author(s) 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

I am indebted to Professors Janet Watson from Leeds University and Stuart Davis from Indiana University for their feedback and comments on an earlier version of this paper. I am also thankful to three anonymous Journal of Linguistics referees for their helpful comments and suggestions on previous versions of this paper. Thanks are also due to the participants for providing me with the data and to my colleagues for verifying the pronunciation.

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