On phonological variations in Kafrelsheikh Egyptian Arabic
Abstract
This study attempts a close investigation of areal variation in the major phonological features of the Egyptian Arabic spoken in the agrarian northern region of Kafrelsheikh (KEA): their contexts and patterns. Targeting old, rural speech, a survey of all the localities is conducted through recordings of natural speech and a questionnaire. The instrumentally investigated phonological variables in KEA include major allophonic variants, and some typical instances of assimilation, dissimilation, metathesis, sound addition and sound deletion. Most instances of variation in the present data prove to be linguistically conditioned. Analysis shows that the differences between the dialect areas do not involve all the previous variants. KEA roughly seems to have five speech areas, with each enjoying intra-variation and comprising many relic features. Finally, the findings are interpreted with reference to the phonological system of (Egyptian) Arabic as a whole and various models of language variation patterning.
© 2014 by Walter de Gruyter Berlin/Boston
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Articles in the same Issue
- Masthead
- Articles / Articles / Aufsätze
- Flektierte Familiennamen im Luxemburgischen
- The degree of union resulting from reaction points expressed in a diatopic table. An application to a Catalan verb morphology database
- A note on the words in the Baltic languages for some of the most ancient European grain legume crops
- Variation in the realization of /εi/ by Dutch youngsters: from local urban dialects to emerging ethnolects?
- The Romanian linguistic cartography in the digitizing era: the electronic atlases
- On phonological variations in Kafrelsheikh Egyptian Arabic
- A note on the etymology and lexicology relating to traditional European pulses in the Celtic languages
- Reviews / Comptes rendus / Besprechungen
