The formal notation of some phonological processes in the Holy Quran

الملخص EN

Speech, as is well known, represents a continuous stream of sounds with articulating parameters overlapping and hence with sounds blending with each other.

As a result of this coarticulatory pro¬cess.

sounds tend to exert mutual influence on each other when ad¬jacent in time so as to share their phonetic features.

A consonant can copy one feature of the preceding/following consonant such as voicing or place of articulation {i.e.

partial assimilation) or can fuse completely into the preceding/following consonant (i.e.

complete assimilation).

The present study, after examining the articulatory characteristics of Arabic vowels and consonants as they occur in isolation in Modern Standard Arabic (MSA), will attempt to investigate the varying de¬grees of assimilation in Quranic recitation.

We will attempt to analyze each type of assimilation and account for the changes that a segment undergoes under certain conditions, represent those changes in a for¬mal notation and ultimately try to interpret the observations in the light of modem phonological theories.

All the above assimilative changes represent a selection and arrangement of the common articulatory fea¬tures.

Thus such assimilative changes simplify the articulatory opera¬tion and this has been referred to as ease of articulation.