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

Abstract

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.