The phenomenon of substitution in the Akkadian and Arabic languages - a comparative study

Abstract

Substitution is a change of consonant by another one for sound purposes for internal and external factors . The substitution occurs the previous or subsequent sounds as a result of the impact of the strongest voice whether the subsequent sound is a pronoun conscience or othe affix. Consequently,some of the sounds near the lettres and this will lead to dropping some of the sounds. If the word contains two stressed. consonnants one of them will be substituted with weak one from the same category. There are also some sounds which have no difference in use such as ( k,q,d and t) both readings are correct. The letter (N) is one of the weak consonants in Akkadian. Therefore, the letter ( N) in initial,medial and final positions of the root is substituted and replaced by the stress.This letter is omitted when preceeding two doubled unstressed letters in the form -tan- .It is the opposite of the letter (r) which is one of the strong letters in Akkadian. For this reason, it is very rare to find some cases in which the letter (r) is changed into another letter in different dialects apart from the Old Babylonian with the assimilation of (r) in all Akkadian dialects with the following letter.