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This study investigates the acquisition and representation of geminate plosives and geminate liquids in the speech of Ammani Arabic (AA) children aged from 2;6 (year; month) to 5 years, at six months intervals. Although gemination is perceived properly by AA children at an early stage, in which they produce words including geminates significantly longer than words with singletons, the acoustic measurements indicate that the children’s phonetic/acoustic representations start to be noticeable (in comparison with adults) at the age-stage of 3;7-4, and much closer to that of the adults by the age-stage 4;7-5. In terms of phonological representation, it is found that gemination is implemented as a main strategy by AA children for word-medial clusters at syllable boundaries. Interestingly, if the medial cluster is not pronounced faithfully, it will be pronounced as a geminate consonant where the second member of the cluster compensates for the deleted consonant to rescue the moraic weight and the segmental length that would be achieved by producing the target of two distinct consonantal gestures. This strategy offers an intriguing piece of evidence for the two-root node composite modal which combines moraic representation of geminates (by preserving weight to the syllable) and prosodic representation (by preserving segmental length to the geminate consonant).

The aim of this research was to investigate the early word syllable structure and notable phonological processes in the speech of Jordanian Arabic (JA)-speaking children. Methods: Elicited and spontaneous speech productions of 20 children were transcribed and analyzed by syllable structure. The ages of the participants ranged from 1 to 3 years, divided into four age groups: 1;0-1;6, 1;7-2;0, 2;1-2;6, and 2;7-3;0. Then, the data was analyzed according to ten phonological processes influencing word syllable structure and number. Results: CVC was found to be the most prevalent syllable structure used across all age groups. In terms of syllable number, disyllabic words were the most frequently used. Onomatopoeia, weak syllable deletion, and closed syllable CVVC reduction to CVV were noticed in the productions of children in the first age group. Cluster reduction and onset/ coda deletion occurred the most with the age group 2;1-2;6, while syllable deletion was evident until age 3. Conclusion: It appears that JA-speaking children use CVC syllable structure heavily in bisyllabic and polysyllabic words in their early speech; they avoid monosyllabic CV or CVC syllables to preserve the minimal bimoraic weight of Arabic phonological words. Onomatopoeia is noticed beyond the age of 1 with syllable deletion in the speech of children up to 3. The results are discussed within the context of the current literature.

This study examines the acquisition of broken plural (BP) patterns generated by child speakers of Jordanian Arabic (JA). Data were collected from 20 Jordanian children via an experimental production test. Children were given pictures of a set of singular entities depicting nouns and pictures containing their plural counterparts, and they were asked to say the names of the items in the pictures in an attempt to provide their corresponding plural forms. The results reveal that the acquisition of correct BP patterns appears critical for children. The feminine sound plural (FSP) was employed as the default pattern by children and thus is acquired before the BP, with the acquired patterns mainly shaped by productivity, predictability (but not familiarity) and overgeneralization (morphological, phonological, and semantic). Based on the oral speech corpus produced by adult JA speakers, published in Semarchive, a rough count of plural pattern frequencies was undertaken. The FSP proved to be less frequent than BPs in tokens and can thus be considered a minority default, a finding that calls into question the validity of Boudelaa and Gaskell’s corpus (2002. A re-examination of the default system for Arabic plurals. Language and Cognitive Processes 17(3). 321–343) on JA. Although 3- to 5-year-old children use the FSP as the most productive pattern, frequency does not significantly contribute to the predictability of the distribution in shaping the correct plural form at this stage of learning BPs.