قلب النون الساكنة وإخفاءها: مقاربة صواتية معرفية

Abstract

According to traditional Arab linguists, the nasal coronal phoneme is “concealed” before the fifteen non-guttural sounds and converted into /m/ before /b/, while /m/ is “concealed” before /b/. According to the same tradition, the main reason behind such changes is ease of pronunciation. In modern phonology, the change affecting /n/ before coronals is usually interpreted is a case of dissimilation to avoid contiguous places of articulation. But this this interpretation poses a major problem for the Feature Geometry approach in that the feature of nasality would not find an oral node to be attached to. If it is attached to the nearest coronal node, there would be no difference between the change affecting before coronal sounds and that affecting it before /m/. To provide a partial answer to these theoretical issues, this study investigates the cognitive load involved in the different processes affecting the nasal phoneme. 100 primary school pupils were asked to read 8 sentences as fast as they could, but observing correct pronunciation and were recorded on the Audacity software. The results indicate that there is no statistical difference between the articulation of /n/ before coronal sounds and its articulation before the labial nasal. This implies that what is considered as two different processes are probably one and the same.