On Morphology-Phonology Interface: Insights From Diminutives in Jordanian Arabic
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.17507/tpls.1206.21Keywords:
diminutive, Jordanian Arabic, Trochaic, Iambic, transfer effectsAbstract
This study explores the morphology-phonology interface to be found in the formation of diminutives in Jordanian Arabic (JA). As evident in a corpus of diminutives in Bedouin and urban varieties, the results demonstrate that JA mainly depends on a non-concatenative (discontinuous) patterning of diminutive structures. Intriguingly, diminutives in JA not only are derived from nouns and adjectives, but also from perfective verbs. The diminutive verb adheres to the C1VC2VC3-eet template and is produced by children and by adults addressing children. Based on a rough frequency test, the most frequently used diminutive pattern in urban JA is C1aC2C2uuC3 whereas Bedouin JA enjoys a variety of diminutive structures. It is also reported that JA dialects vary in stress assignment with diminutive structures: urban JA mainly prefers the iambic CVC.'CVVC structure, while the Bedouin dialect demonstrates a variety of trochaic and iambic patterns. More importantly, although residues of transfer effects on diminutives were reported in Bedouin JA, no significant transfer effects have been found between diminutive and non-diminutive structures in urban JA. As such, it is concluded that diminutive formation in urban JA supports the root-based approach over the stem-based one.
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