A Contrastive Study on Noun Diminutive Formation in Tafili Spoken Arabic and Jijilian Spoken Arabic

The present study aims at contrasting the patterns governing noun diminutive formation between Tafili Spoken Arabic (TSA), a dialect in Jordanian Arabic (JA), and Jijilian Spoken Arabic (JSA), a dialect in Algerian Arabic, and then accounting for that within the framework of Optimality Theory (OT). Throughout the analysis of the collected data, it is found that the diminutive forms in both dialects are based on a change in the phonological processes of a word by insertion, deletion or changing of some phonological segments. However, the present study has disclosed that noun diminutive forms in TSA result from the application of the following phonological processes: vowel epenthesis, vowel shortening, glide insertion, vowel syncope, and the insertion of the glottal stop at the beginning of words. Whereas noun diminutive forms in JSA result from the application of the following phonological processes: vowel syncope, vowel epenthesis, vowel shortening, glide insertion, degemination and metathesis. The application of OT to account for those phonological processes indicates that they happen from a continual conflict between some markedness constraints and faithfulness constraints. The researchers recommend for another study to be applied investigating and contrasting the patterns governing noun diminutive formation between other two dialects by accounting for that within the framework of OT.


Introduction
Generally, the analysis of diminutive is considered as one of the phenomena of morphology which has had some attention in Classical Arabic (CA) and Modern Standard Arabic (MSA). Interestingly, CA is 51 www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/lecr Language, Education and Culture Research Vol. 1, No. 1, 2021 one of the Semitic languages and it has been as the one found in the Holy Quran and in standard poetic language. It is based on medieval Arabic dialects spoken by Arab tribes which were eventually standardized (Khrisat & Alharthy, 2015, p. 255). Prophet Mohammad (peace be upon him) was from Quraish tribe. Interestingly, the Arabic dialect in Quraish was the closest to CA (ibid). Sibawayh was the first to write a comprehensive description of Arabic in his book "Al-Kita:b" (The Book ‫)اﻟﻜﺘﺎب‬ based on the Holy Quran, poetry and reliable Bedouin speakers of Arabic.
On the other hand, MSA has not changed in its spoken and written form. As a matter of fact, it is the language of media and literature. Moreover, it is the language that is taught in all levels of education and it has no local variety. It is used in its exact form all over the Arab world, right from the way it developed from CA. The latter was used for scholastic, administrative, cultural and religious purposes.
Its use made it possible for Arab people of different nationalities to fully understand one another and thus avoid misunderstandings and ambiguities due to differences in dialects (Al-Huri, 2015, p. 32).
The diminutive is generally defined as "a term used in morphology to refer to an affix with the general meaning of 'little', used literally or metaphorically (as a term of endearment). The term is usually contrasted with augmentative" (Crystal, 2008, p. 145). In a similar vein, Hamid and Faiq (2009, p. 2) maintain that the diminutive is a word-formation used to express some meanings that can be translated as "little" and it can also be formed literally or metaphorically as a term of endearment. Also, this term is used to express a degree of the root meaning slightly, smallness of the object or quality named encapsulation, intimacy, or endearment. In accordance with this line of thought, the diminutive is a suffix or an ending that is added to a word to express smallness in general, and affection or scorn in particular. For instance, when the suffix "ling" is added to the word "duck", it becomes "duckling".
Moreover, many languages apply the grammatical diminutive to nouns, a few also utilize it for adjectives and even other parts of speech.
It is claimed that diminutive formation exists in many languages such as English, Arabic, and Hebrew, among other languages. It is well known that the diminutive is considered as one of the figurative language components (Al-Rashid, 2010, p. 123). Basically, diminutive forms in English have different suffixes that can be attached to a word to convey the meaning of smallness, i.e., minimizing things or belittling someone or endearment such as (-ie, -i, -y, -ette, -kin, -et, -let, etc). For example, the suffixes /y/ and /i/ are commonly used to attach to personal names as in Johnny, puppy, Jackie and sweetie (Hamid & Faiq, 2009, p. 2).
Some Arab grammarians such as Siibawaih (as cited in Fayez, 1991, p. 4) state that diminutive forms in CA express smallness in size (kita:b "book"-kutayib "small book"), in distances as in (fawq "over"fuwayq "little over") or nearing time (qabel "before"-qubayl "shortly before"). They agree that diminutive forms can be formed throughout specific templates that are used in the process of diminutive formation. At this juncture, it is of paramount importance to mention that diminutive formation in TSA and JSA could be explained under the banner of the Optimality Theory (OT).
www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/lecr Language, Education and Culture Research Vol. 1, No. 1, 2021 Briefly, OT is a linguistic model that deals with surface forms of languages which are caused by the conflict between faithfulness constraints and markedness constraints which are always in conflict. The conflict of these two constraints creates different constraints rankings, and thus different types of grammar of different languages. OT is also considered as a development of generative grammar, which focuses on the investigation of universal principles (Prince & Smolensky, 1993). This theory was introduced by the two linguists Alan Prince andPaul Smolensky in 1991 (McCarthy, 2002, p. 1).
OT subsumes three main components namely: the generator (GEN) is responsible for producing a set of candidates when applied to some input, the evaluator (EVAL) is responsible for selecting an optimal candidate based on the constraints ranking of a given grammar when applied to a set of output candidates and the constraint set (CON) which consists of two basic types of constraints (markedness and faithfulness constraints). Consider Figure 1 below about the schematic of OT. The example that is used is from Yawelmani, /xat.en/ to show how OT works (Archangeli, 1997, p. 14).

Literature Review
There are many studies which examine and explain Arabic diminutive forms and the change in the morphological form of a word. For instance, Watson (2006) stated that the word formation in Arabic contains a consonantal root and there are relationships between the diminutive verbs and the roots of the verbs and the diminutive nouns and the roots of the nouns in terms of patterns and functions in San'ani Arabic (SA), which is a dialect that is spoken by the Yemenis who live in San'a the capital of Yemen. Moreover, she pointed out that there is a relationship between roots and the outputs. Alongside, she indicated that one of the most productive and important patterns of the verbs is (tCayCaC) in San'ani dialect, and the forms of verb (CayCaC) is considered less common than the form which begins with segment /t/ as in (tkabbar/tkaybar) which means "being proud" (ibid).
In a similar vein, Abu-Joudeh (2012)  conflicting preferences. By doing so, she employed the Correspondence Theory which was developed within the framework of OT so that, for example, the optimal output for [kalb] is /ku.lajb/ because it violates a lower ranked constraint: DEP-BO: Every element in the output has a correspondent in the base.
Following similar lines of inquiry, Azieb and Mahadin (2015) examined the patterns governing noun diminutive formation in Jijilian Spoken Arabic (JSA), a dialect of Algerian Arabic, and accounted for that within the framework of OT. After analyzing the data, the researchers concluded that diminutivization in JSA is based on the patterns /CCi:jVC/ and /CCi:CV/ for tri-consonantal noun stems. Whereas /CCi:CVC/ and /CCi:CCV/ for quadri-consonantal noun stems. Those patterns resulted from applying some phonological processes including vowel syncope, vowel epenthesis, vowel shortening, glide insertion, degemination and metathesis. The application of OT so as to account for the phonological processes that are responsible for the linguistic phenomenon of noun diminution in JSA.
Padar (2019) investigated diminutive forms in Kurdish morphology as concerns form, morphological process and parts of speech. Materials and data are taken from the southern dialect of the Kurdish language and mainly taken out from the (Kurdistan) dictionary written by Gîw Mukriyanî. The morphological process goes through adding a suffix or suffixes at the end of a specified word. He concluded that the word-formation in Kurdish takes place externally, i.e., affixing. However, such a process is not random, but it follows some fixed patterns totally in accordance with the morphological structure of any given form to be diminutive.
After reviewing the literature, it has become clear that diminutive formation in TSA, a dialect of Jordanian Arabic used in Tafila governorate which is located in the South of Jordan, was not dealt within the light of the OT. Therefore, the present study aims at filling the gap by using the OT with the hope of accounting for the phonological processes that account for diminutives in TSA and contrasting these patterns governing noun diminutive formation with Jijelian Spoken Arabic (JSA) by depending on the framework of Optimality Theory (OT).

Research Questions
This study seeks to answer the following questions: 1) What are the phonological processes which appear in noun diminution in (TSA)?
2) What are the phonological processes which appear in noun diminution in (JSA)?
3) What are the similarities and differences of phonological processes which appear in noun diminution in (TSA) and (JSA)?

Method
The researchers concentrated on contrasting patterns governing noun diminutive formation between Tafili Spoken Arabic (TSA), a dialect in Jordanian Arabic (JA), and Jijilian Spoken Arabic (JSA), a dialect in Algerian Arabic, and then accounting for that within the framework of Optimality Theory

Data Collection
Regarding Tafili Spoken Arabic (TSA), the fundamental informants of the data were two of the researchers of this study. One of them is a native speaker of (TSA), and the other is a native speaker of Karki Spoken Arabic; both dialects are spoken in the south of Jordan. The researchers were also helped by some other native speakers such as relatives, friends, and teachers by The researchers also consulted other native speakers of that dialect in order to collect more data.

Results and Discussion
In this section, the researchers discuss the data in both TSA and JSA systematically and carefully within the framework of OT. The data are classified and divided depending on two main areas which include diminutive patterns namely: tri-consonantal stem nouns, quadri-consonantal stem nouns.
According to Fayez (1991, p. 27), the major patterns /fuʕayl/ and /fuʕayʕil/ are used for deriving the diminutive forms, which have been presented by Siibawaih. Many Arabic grammarians agree that deriving diminutive forms is based on the number of consonants in the stem of the nouns. The first pattern /fuʕayl/ is used for three-consonantal stem nouns and the second pattern /fuʕayʕil/ is used for four-consonantal stem nouns.

Diminutive Forms in TSA within the Framework of OT
The following subtitles discuss in details the formation of diminutive in TSA, the phonological and morphological changes that occur and the analysis within the OT. To take in the consideration that the optimal candidate is indicated by (☞), violation is indicated by asterisk (*), but the fatal violation of constraints is indicated by asterisk and the exclamation mark (*!).

Diminutive Forms for Tri-Consonantal Stem Nouns
The analysis of the diminutive formation for tri-consonantal stem nouns in TSA results from identifying the diminutive forms which have this pattern /ʔiCCajiC/. This surface pattern is a result of some phonological processes that can be accounted for in terms of the interaction between such markedness constraints and faithfulness constraints. Interestingly, in TSA, the tri-consonantal nouns which take the main forms (CVCC) or (CVCVC) can be changed into diminutive forms by using the template (ʔiCCajiC). That is to say, short vowel /i/ is inserted to avoid tri-consonantal at the beginning of the word in all diminutives in TSA. Such an insertion violates the anti-epenthesis faithfulness constraint DEP-IO which means that "every segment of the output has a correspondent in the input", (Prohibits phonological epenthesis).
Based on what mentioned in the previous paragraph, to avoid having a vowel at the beginning of the word, the glottal stop /ʔ/ is added at the beginning of the word in all diminutives in TSA. So, this violates the complex constraint which indicates (Complex ONS C (CC): onsets must be bi-consonantal (mono-consonantal and tri-consonantal onsets are prohibited) i.e., Complex ONSC (CC) will be the lowest one.
However, the first vowel (V) which constitutes the nucleus of the first syllable like in /nahr/ and /radʒul/ is deleted in the diminutive forms. Therefore, such a deletion violates the faithfulness constraint of MAX-V-IO which states that "Input vowels must have output correspondents" (no vowel deletion). For example, the noun (radʒul) "man" which consists of three consonants can be diminuted as (ʔirdʒajil).
Intriguingly, the glide /j/ is inserted in order to satisfy the markedness constraint ONSET which suggests that "syllables must have onsets", glide insertion here is a repair strategy to avoid vowel hiatus, which is formulated in the markedness constraint NO HIATUS. Short vowel /i/ is inserted in the coda.
Such an insertion violates the anti-epenthesis faithfulness constraint DEP-IO which means that "every segment of the output has a correspondent in the input". (Prohibits phonological epenthesis). So, the constraint ranking accounts for these phonological processes: Tableau 1 demonstrates that the markedness constraint ONSET outranks the faithfulness constraints

MAX-V-IO, NO HIATUS, DEP-IO, and Complex ONS C(C). This is the reason why (c) is the
winning candidate in the sense that it violates only the two lower-ranked constraints by lacking some input segment and inserting some other segments in the output.

Diminutive Forms for Quadri-Consonantal Stem Nouns
Basically, in CA, the pattern (fuʕajʕil) can be derived the diminutive forms from the nouns which consist of four consonants. It takes the main template (CVCCVC) when changing to the diminutive forms, i.e., when changing the nouns into diminutive forms which consist of four consonants, the following template (CuCajiC) is used. For instance, the word (maktab) "an office", can be derived as (mukajtib). As a matter of fact, in TSA in particular, the quadri-consonantal nouns which take the template (CVCCVC) can be changed into diminutive forms by using the template (ʔiCCjaCiC). The following table provides some examples in diminutive in TSA: It is cleared that the high front vowel /i/ is inserted to avoid tri-consonantal at the beginning of the word in all diminutives in TSA. Similar to what mentioned in (4.1.1) above, the insertion violates the anti-epenthesis faithfulness constraint DEP-IO. Thus, it prohibits phonological epenthesis. For this reason, the glottal stop /ʔ/ which violates the complex constraint which indicates (Complex ONS C (CC), i.e., (mono-consonantal and tri-consonantal onsets are prohibited) is added at the beginning of the word in all diminutives. This indicates that the phonological rules which can be applied through adding the glottal stop/ʔ/ and short vowel /i/ in all diminutives in TSA will be as follows: Moreover, as in /minbar/, the first vowel (V) which constitutes the nucleus of the first syllable is omitted in all diminutive forms. Therefore, it violates the faithfulness constraint of MAX-V-IO which states that there is no vowel deletion. For example, the noun (markiz) "a center", which consists of four consonants, can be diminuted as (ʔimrajkiz). In addition, the glide /j/ is inserted in order to satisfy the markedness constraint ONSET which suggests that "syllables must have onsets", such an insertion is a repair strategy to avoid vowel hiatus, which is formulated in the markedness constraint NO HIATUS.

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Published by SCHOLINK INC. Short vowel /i/ is inserted in the coda, such an insertion violates the anti-epenthesis faithfulness constraint DEP-IO which means every segment of the output has a correspondent in the input (phonological epenthesis is prohibited). So, the constraint ranking accounts for these phonological processes: ONSET

Diminutive Forms in JSA within the Framework of OT
In this section, the researchers discuss the data in JSA systematically and carefully within the framework of OT. The data are classified and divided depending on the number of consonants in the stem nouns into two main areas which include diminutive patterns for tri-consonantal stem nouns and quadri-consonantal stem nouns.

Diminutive Forms for Tri-Consonantal Stem Nouns
The analysis of the diminutive forms for tri-consonantal nouns results in two diminutives forms: the /CCi: CV/ pattern and the /CCi: jVC/ pattern. The assumption in the present section is that /i:/ insertion is treated as an important indicator for diminutives in JSA. Moreover, the derivation of diminutives nouns by identifying the phonological processes: vowel syncope, glide epenthesis, and vowel epenthesis. Table 3, show the vowel which constitutes the nucleus of the first syllable like in /ḥu:ta/ is deleted in the diminutive forms. Therefore, it violates the faithfulness constraint of MAX-V-IO which states that "Input vowels must have output correspondents" (no vowel deletion). www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/lecr Language, Education and Culture Research Vol. 1, No. 1, 2021 Such vowel is motivated by the need for the glide /w/ insertion, which is necessary to satisfy the requirement that the first syllable in all of the diminutives in JSA must be tri-consonantal. The reason why it is /w/ that is inserted, is because it is part of the underlying forms of these words and is deleted as a result of a glide elision rule.

So, as the examples in
Such an insertion violates the anti-epenthesis faithfulness constraint DEP-IO which means that "every segment of the output has a correspondent in the input, (Prohibits phonological epenthesis)". However, there is a markedness constraint, which prohibits complex onsets of all types: *Complex ONS.
Therefore, it could be parameterized to meet the needs of the JSA.
In addition, the vowel /i: / is inserted in all of the forms of diminutive formation in JSA. Hence, it violates DEP-IO (no epenthesis). Therefore, the markedness constraint *Complex ONS C(CC) dominates both faithfulness constraints: MAX-V-IO and DEP-IO.
Regarding to the word "mwi:jas", the insertion of the vowel /a/ hence violating the faithfulness constraint DEP-IO. The glide /j/ is inserted in order to satisfy the markedness constraint ONSET which suggests that "syllables must have onsets" glide insertion here is a repair strategy to avoid vowel hiatus, which is formulated in the markedness constraint NO HIATUS.  The phonological process vowel deletion /a/ is to help satisfying the markedness constraint *Complex ONS C (CC). This is done at the expense of the faithfulness constraint MAX-V-IO (no Deletion). In addition, there is a vowel insertion /i:/ which violates DEP-IO.
The word /marmi:Ta/, witnesses vowel deletion: /a/ (violation of MAX-V-IO), and metathesis between the vowel /i:/ and the consonant, both of which aim at satisfying *Complex ONS CCC because if metathesis is not there, incorrect diminutive forms will be inevitable. Therefore, the faithfulness constraint LINEARITY-IO which militates against metathesis is required: "the output reflects the precedence structure of the input and vice versa". And since both MAX-V-IO and LINEARITY-IO lead to satisfying *Complex ONS C(CC), they are left unranked with regard to each other in JSA.

Conclusions
This study aimed at contrasting noun diminutive forms between TSA and JSA by depending on the framework of Optimality Theory (OT). The diminutive forms in TSA and JSA are based on a change in the phonological processes of a word by insertion, deletion or changing of some phonological segments.
However, the present research work has disclosed that noun diminutive forms in TSA result from the application of the following phonological processes: vowel epenthesis, vowel shortening, glide insertion, vowel syncope, and the insertion of the glottal stop at the beginning of words. Whereas noun diminutive forms in JSA result from the application of the following phonological processes: vowel syncope, vowel epenthesis, vowel shortening, glide insertion, degemination and metathesis. The application of OT to account for those phonological processes indicates that they happen from a continual conflict between some markedness constraints and faithfulness constraints. The researchers recommend for a further study to be conducted on other different dialects in the Arab World to investigate and contrast the patterns governing noun diminutive formation by accounting for that within the framework of OT.