Phonological variation in modern standard Arabic : the case of the affricate ʤ : Oman as a sample

الملخص EN

This study investigates phonological variation of the affricate / ʤ / as pronounced by Omani speakers when they approach a formal style in Modern Standard Arabic (MSA), namely, word list style.

This work aims to identify the rate of adherence to the standard form when the subjects pronounce this phoneme in different word-positions.

Thirty Omani participants were chosen randomly to represent speakers of two different Omani regions, A-Dakhiliyya and Al-Batina.

The subjects read sixty tokens, distributed over three columns, where the occurrence of the variants of the affricate / ʤ / is identified.

Subjects' responses are recorded on a mobile phone and they are later downloaded on a laptop.

The total number and percentage analysis of the variants in different word-positions are calculated.

The prominent findings of the study are : (i) native dialect habits are deeply rooted and have their great influence on the speakers' performance regardless of the formality of the context under which the speech takes place, (ii) formal style has scored a slight impact in coda position only, (iii) the distribution of the standard variant shows great predictability of the occurrence of the standard form, (iv) the non-standard variants / g / and / ʒ / have registered free distribution in both dialects with different rates, (v) the rates of the variant distribution is relative and dialect-bound, and (vi) there was a great linguistic evidence of dialect continuum within one and the same dialect and within two neighbouring dialects.