Adaptation of stops

Adaptation of stops is generally faithful with over 90% of cases are mapped onto their AA phonemic counterparts except for /p/, which AA lacks. This is almost always mapped onto its phonological AA counterpart and never imported due to its phonetic marked status, as will be shown below. In the majority of the rest of unfaithful cases, voiced segments devoice and render the output less marked.

3.1.1.1.1 Adaptation of the voiceless bilabial stop /p/

[p], which is attested in AA as an allophone only, appears 831 times in different contexts. It is almost always (90.3%) realised as the voiced counterpart of /p/. This is expected given that changing the voice value of the segment is the least perceptible trait (cf. Steriade 2001; Adler 2006; among others). Steriade (2001: 4) demonstrates that a change in [voice] is minimal in that it does not affect the phonotactics of the variety in question while any other change would render the input and the output less

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similar. Phonologically, a change in [voice] affects a terminal feature that is lowest in the feature geometry.

Also, /p/ is realised as the labial nasal /m/ in one loanword, namely ‗pick up‘ by the twelve informants yielding bikam. Two features are affected: voicing and nasality are added, which suggests that a nasal is a better coda than a plosive (see adaptation of liquids below for more details on nasal codas). It suffices here to say that this is in line with a cross-linguistic preference for more sonorous codas (Prince & Smolensky 1993/2004).

Unlike the labiodental voiced phoneme /v/, /p/ is not imported at all into AA. It seems that this is phonetically motivated as the size of the oral chamber renders the production of this sound very difficult. Also, the voiceless bilabial stop is among the most difficult to perceive (cf. Hayes 1995; Gussenhoven & Jacobs 2005).2 Therefore, its phonetic inefficiency, as pointed out by Hayes (2004) and Gussenhoven & Jacobs (2005), overrides the fact that its importation into AA would make the phoneme inventory of AA more symmetrical (see §3.1.1.2.2).3

3.1.1.1.2 Adaptation of the voiced bilabial stop /b/

Of the 634 tokens of /b/, /b/ is realised as a single voiced bilabial plosive except for one word, where it is geminated, namely ‗night club‘. (See §5.2 on gemination).

3.1.1.1.3 Adaptation of the voiceless alveolar stop /t/

The alveolar voiceless stop appears 1620 times. In 1467 cases it is realised as [t]. This is not surprising as this phoneme is cross-linguistically the least marked coronal (cf. Paradis & LaCharite 2001) and it is the lexical default segment in Arabic dialects (cf. Watson 1989 for Sana‘ni Arabic). In the remaining cases, it undergoes gemination, emphasis or it is deleted, which will be discussed later.

2 _{Gussenhoven & Jacobs (2005: 31), explaining system gaps, maintain that the voiceless plosive [p] is}

difficult to hear so it is not efficient for listeners ―because the stop burst, which is one of the major cues to the presence of a plosive, is of much lower intensity in the case of [p] than in the case of other plosives, due to the lack of a resonating cavity in front of the point of release where the burst is created.‖

3

Historically, /p/ was adapted as /f/ in CA, e.g. Greek ‗paradhisos‘ > firdaws and Persian ‗pelpel‘ >

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3.1.1.1.4 Adaptation of the voiced alveolar stop /d/

As expected, because this phoneme is a legitimate phoneme in AA, it is realised as [d] in all but 8% of cases where it is devoiced as in (1) below.

(1) English source AA pronunciation

a) headphone hitfon/hitifon4

b) manifold manavult

c) spade sbaati5

d) vodka vootka/vutika

Devoicing here is generally expected as it is consistent with universal markedness constraints where obstruents tend to devoice in coda position or word-finally (cf. Iverson & Salmons 2011; among others). Moreover, devoicing is considered a universal repair strategy in loanword adaptation (Kenstowicz 2007). Cases (1a) and (1d) represent a well-established AA constraint that requires obstruent clusters to agree in voicing where the second consonant determines the voice value of the cluster (for more details see §3.1.2.2.1).

3.1.1.1.5 Adaptation of the voiceless velar stop /k/

The voiceless velar stop /k/ appears 1727 times. It is not affected in about 94% of cases as /k/ forms part of the phoneme inventory of AA. However, it is realised as [ʃ] in one form, namely ‗archive‘. It seems that this word has entered the dialect from French via Egyptian or Syrian Arabic as it is the only case where /k/ is palatalised. This may also result from spelling as the grapheme sequence ‗ch‘ is usually pronounced [tʃ] in English. Therefore, it could be the case that AA bilinguals, who have different L2 abilities, mistakenly thought it was realised as an affricate (cf. the adaptation of /tʃ/ below). Its gemination will be discussed in Chapter five.

4 _{Note that some loanwords have more than one pronunciation. This will be accounted for if it is}

attested by more than one participant.

74 3.1.1.1.6 Adaptation of the voiced velar stop /g/

There are 292 cases of the voiced velar stop /g/. It is retained in 88% of cases, while it undergoes devoicing in about 10% of cases, as shown in (2).

(2) a) airbag ʔerbaak

b) geyser kiizar

c) grapefruit karafoot

d) spaghetti sbaakitti

These cases of devoicing along with other similar cases might represent cases of TETU where the default value of obstruents manifests itself in the adaptation process despite the fact that voiced obstruents are legitimate in AA (cf. Becker & Potts 2011). Recall that the unmarked value of obstruents is voiceless for phonetic factors (Blevins 2004; Hayes 2004; Silverman 2006; among others). Note that in ‗airbag‘, devoicing is completely natural and unmarked according to the aerodynamic consequence where velars are the most expected to devoice word-finally as voicing is most difficult to maintain the backer the sound is (cf. Ohala 1983, cited in Blevins 2004). Note here that intervocalic voicing is overridden by devoicing in (d), which is attested also as sbaagitti.