On the phonological processes in two varieties of Arabic

Abstract

The current study aims to determine some phonological processes in two varieties of Arabic—Standard and Lebanese Arabic—with focus on Lebanese as a cornerstone of analysis within the theoretical framework of generative phonology, henceforth GP (Chomsky & Halle, 1968). In pursuit of this goal, a number of 160 Lebanese Arabic words were extracted from the audio-visual sources such as sound tracks and video clips which were available on virtual spaces. From among the whole data including 160 words, merely 28 words were selected for tabulation in this article. As the major concern of the research was Lebanese Arabic, first, the Lebanese data were transcribed and then comparisons between the two varieties were made to see which phonological changes take place while moving from Standard Arabic to Lebanese Arabic. Ultimately, the results of the study showed that the words in the Lebanese variety of Arabic were phonemically the same as those in the standard variety of the language; however, they were phonetically different. To put it another way, both the Standard and the Lebanese Arabic language varieties have phonologically identical words which are phonetically distinct. In this paper, such consonants as /q/, /ʤ/, /θ/ and /ð/ were looked into from the GP perspective.