Adaptation of Arabic gutturals in Turkish: an optimality theoretic perspective

Resumen

This paper examines the repair strategies for adapting Arabic gutturals in Turkish such as Debuccalization, Uvular Fronting, and Guttural Deletion from an Optimality Theoretic perspective. It concludes that the debuccalization of the Arabic /χ/ and /ħ/ to the Turkish /h/ results from the non-readability of the Retracted Tongue Root (henceforth [RTR]) (i.e. circled [RTR]) and the availability of the Pharyngeal node as well as the [-voice] Laryngeal feature in Turkish (i.e. based on the availability of the Turkish /h/). The Arabic /q/ is adapted as the Turkish velar's /k/ (i.e. Uvular Fronting) to concur with the No Place Node Branching Constraint through the avoidance of the binary place node in the feature representation of /q/. The adaptation of the Arabic /ʁ/ as the Turkish /ɣ/ is to avoid the voiced glottal fricative /ɦ/ as a non-existent consonant in Turkish. The deletion of Arabic /ʕ/ and /ʔ/ is attributed to the Non-Availability of the [+constricted glottis] feature in Turkish, while the Arabic /h/ is preserved in Turkish in the word-initial position only. Optimality Theory (henceforth OT) is successfully utilized to account for the above repair strategies.