’Imalaand rounding in a rural Syrian variety: Morpho-phonological and lexical conditioning

Abstract

This study investigates two concurrent phenomena—’imalaand rounding — in the Arabic variety spoken in the Syrian village of Oyoun Al-Wadi.‘Imalarefers to the use of [e] and [e:] in place of the urban vowels [a] and [a:] respectively; rounding refers to the use of [o] and [o:] in place of the urban vowels [a] and [a:] respectively. The use of two different vowels for each urban vowel is explained morpho-phonologically. The study economically proposes two phonological rules to account for‘imalaand rounding and shows that only one rule can apply per word, to the final syllable of a word. In light of Lexical Phonology theory, certain morphological patterns and suffixes explain the presence of‘imalain initial syllables and in environments that induce rounding. That is, it is part of the lexical representation of a morphological pattern or suffix in the lexicon. Hence,‘imalacould occur in the initial syllable as part of the morphological pattern, and rounding could occur in the final syllable of the same word as a result of a post-lexical phonological rule.

Vowel variation and reverse acquisition in rural Syrian child and adolescent language

“…It was established in Habib (2012) that the use of rounding (i.e., [o] and [o:]) and ’imala (i.e., [e] and [e:]) in this village's variety is determined by two phonological rules and some morphological and lexical conditioning. The very few words that show lexical conditioning are excluded from the quantitative analyses.…”

“…Rather, they retain the [a] or [a:] for one of the following reasons: (1) they are borrowings from Standard Arabic, (2) the word has a different meaning from a homonym that exhibits ’imala, or (3) the word belongs to a different part of speech in the variety under investigation. Habib (2012) examined the linguistic environment of the 11,207 tokens in which the village's variants [e, e:, o, o:] occur or can occur. She discovered the following.…”

“…She discovered the following. Round vowels occur in word-final closed syllables in the environment of a preceding or following [r] or emphatic sound [tˁ, dˁ, sˁ, zˁ] and words that contain emphatics and show rightward spread of emphasis to the final syllable (Al-Khatib, 2008; Al-Omar, 2009; Davis, 1995; Habib, 2008, 2010c, 2011b, 2012; Watson, 1999; Zawaydeh, 1998). The common phonetic feature of [r] and emphatics [tˁ, dˁ, sˁ, zˁ] is the low frequency of the second formant (F2), an acoustic feature of emphasis (Bin-Muqbil, 2006; Hoberman, 1995; Shahin, 2002; Yeou, 1997) that is also characteristic of [r] not only in Syrian Arabic but also in other varieties of Arabic (e.g., Card, 1983; Cowell, 1964; Younes, 1994), and hence the use of +LowF2 and –LowF2 in Rules 1 and 2.…”

“…As to the morphological conditioning of the long and short ’imala—[e:] and [e] respectively—the short ’imala vowel [e] occurs in the suffixes -en (indefinite accusative case marker, also considered an adverbial marker, e.g., tˁabʕ-en ‘of course’) and -ek (second-person singular masculine possessive pronoun, e.g., waqt-ek ‘your (M) time’) even when a word ends with an [r] or the emphatic sounds [tˁ, dˁ, sˁ, zˁ] and in the initial syllable of the demonstrative pronouns heda:/heda:ke ‘this/that’. The long ’imala vowel [e:] occurs in the suffixes -e:t (feminine plural marker, e.g., ward-e:t ‘flowers’), -e:h (third-person singular masculine object pronoun, e.g., war-e:h ‘after/behind him’), and -e:k (second-person singular masculine object pronoun, e.g., war-e:k ‘after/behind you’) even when a word ends with an [r] or the emphatic sounds [tˁ, dˁ, sˁ, zˁ], and in the initial syllable of the following morphological patterns: verbal nouns (patterns fe:ʕil and mfe:ʕil , e.g., se:miʕ ‘he has heard/is hearing’ and mse:miħ ‘he has forgiven/is forgiving’, respectively), pattern fʕe:li (e.g., χze:ni ‘cupboard’), and pattern fiʕle:le (e.g., tiħte:ne ‘lower/from the lower’) (Behnstedt, 1997:108–109, 118–119, Maps 54 and 59), and the plural of all these patterns; other broken plurals (patterns mfe:ʕi:l , fʕe:ʕi:l , fʕe:li:l , and fwe:ʕi:l , e.g., mfe:ti:ħ ‘keys’, ske:ki:n ‘knives’, kre:ti:n ‘boxes’, and χwe:ri:f ‘sheep (PL)’ respectively); and the perfective and imperfective of the verb patterns III ( fe:ʕil and yfe:ʕil respectively, e.g., ze:ʕil ‘he got upset with, defriended’ and yze:ʕil ‘he gets upset with/defriends’, respectively) (Habib, 2012:63–65) and VI (Behnstedt, 1997:122–125, Maps 61 and 62) (tfe:ʕil and ytfe:ʕil respectively, e.g., tze:ʕil ‘he got upset with, defriended’ and ytze:ʕil ‘he gets upset with/defriends’ respectively) (see Habib, 2012, for details).…”

“…While in some Syrian dialects, [o:] originated from Aramaic (Arnold & Behnstedt, 1993), the vowels [o], [o:], [e], [e:] may have been brought to Oyoun Al-Wadi around AD 1700 by the father of the village, Sabiq Suleiman Ma‘louf from his hometown, Kafr ‘Oqab, which may have round vowels or emphaticized [a:] like the nearby Lebanese city Tripoli (Al-Nassir, 1993:103). Emphaticized [a:] is assumed to have some similar qualities to the round vowels (Al-Nassir, 1993:103; see Habib, 2012:54–56, on the round and front mid vowels in various Arabic dialects).…”