On Lexical Phonology of Zubairi Arabic

Majid Abdulatif Al-Basri

doi:10.5296/ijl.v13i3.18628

Abstract

As its name implies, Lexical Phonology (LP) is a two-sided discipline which is very much pervasive and of a priority for particular interest. It is basically a matter of the systematic correlation of both morphology and phonology as a preliminary to screening endless items and senses. Once postulated and covered with its linguistically theoretical frames, LP has proved attractive, useful and handful in that it turns up so often in such topics as lexical items with their phonological configurations and words with their stratum-based designs. The present paper is a painstaking scrutiny of how LP is thoroughly worked out to demarcate the lexical and phonological boundaries of Zubairi Arabic lexical items with a special reference to the linguistic behavior of affix attachments. It is no doubt a massive task – it is armed with such and such amount of systematization and provided with certain 'harmless looking terms and expressions that are frequently used. In attempt to focus on this point of interaction between phonology and morphology, the paper adopts the line of reasoning that is primarily based on a tabulated description and analysis of examples so as to serve the purposes of setting some comparisons, showing certain contrasts or governing particular rules of applications as far as Zubairi words and expressions are concerned. Among many results the paper has reached is evidently the one that the structure of Zubairi Arabic lexical items is the empirical "container" in which both phonological and morphological lines of representation are sometimes crossed very sharply or sometimes paralleled very endlessly whereby their blurriness may be relative and variable.

Highlights

What makes most, if not all, of post-generative theories of phonology somewhat idiosyncratic, rather unique and often remarkable is that they have not undermined the basic principles and www.macrothink.org/ijl2021, Vol 13, No 3 the real landmarks of Generative Phonology (GP) whose fully authoritative statement was provided by Chomsky and Halle' The Sound Pattern of English (SPE) in 1968.When being initiated from SPE Phonology, Lexical Phonology (LP), among them, attempts to "beautify" the original mother theory's picture and to re-paint it with the same colors but with a different brush by adding, modifying and even deleting some lines of its theoretical arguments
According to some LP scholars, the phonological theory of SPE model is likely to stand as a "requiem mass" for the field of morphology and this metaphorically expresses that attempts are made on SPE theorists' part to restore, albeit survive, morphology, but they are all in vain
Though tackled eclectically more than comprehensively, the upshot of the above discussion unveils that LP apparently posits various Zubairi dialect-specific operations, concepts and notions in order to elucidate the extent to which morphological and phonological rules and parameters are tightly amalgamated. This "binary" amalgam is the product of asserting that Zubairi morphology and phonology are reliable scales not complete dichotomies used to account for various processes and phenomena taken place in the case of lexical items

Summary

Introduction

If not all, of post-generative theories of phonology somewhat idiosyncratic, rather unique and often remarkable is that they have not undermined the basic principles and www.macrothink.org/ijl. It has been proclaimed that in SPE model of phonology, the morphological dimension is often slipped away from the purely phonological rules when applied to the processes of word-formation, in the realm of affixation This is generally attributed to state of affairs that morphology has traditionally been cleft between the transformation-generative syntax and the phonological theory. LP, in a nutshell, is seen as a two-in-one story in that it refers to half of the events but to the whole events that sequentially reconstruct the lexicon of a language via morphological and phonological realities On this basis, the present paper is intended to plumb the depths of how Zubairi Arabic (Note 1) lexicon is generally treated on LP grounds, and of what morphological/phonological parameters are worked up to tracing morpheme attachment to certain words. What is mostly familiar in phonological studies is that words, lexical items or expressions are phonemically transcribed and translated in order to enable readers read, fully understand and entirely indulge into the paper content

The Morphology-Phonology Integration

Method

Zubairi Stems and Vowel Alternations

The Morphology and Phonology of Zubairi Plural Forms

Conclusion