Interference of L in the acquisition of H in diglossia: The case of Arabic dental/interdental and emphatic/non-emphatic oppositions

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of L in the acquisition of two H phonological aspects: the dental/interdental and the emphatic/non-emphatic contrasts. For this purpose, six classes were selected from three fundamental levels: the 4th, the 6th and the 8th levels from Morocco, with two classes from each level. A task was administered to them to measure their proficiency in recognizing which CA/MSA words have a dental phoneme and which have an interdental one, and which have an emphatic phoneme and which have a non-emphatic one. A MANOVA test was run and the effect of grade on the variables was found statistically significant. A post hoc procedure, however, indicated that none of the differences between the 6th and the 8th grades was significant. This fact was interpreted as an early fossilization which will necessarily be responsible for some variation in Mixed Arabic. The difference between the public and the private groups was also found to be significant, a fact which points to the crucial role of the teaching environment. On the basis of these results, the psycholinguistic effects of interference from L were stressed; thus, indicating that not all variation in Mixed Arabic is sociolinguistically significant.