A different treatment of qalqalah stops recognition in Arabic

Abstract EN

This paper aims to investigate the way a group of stops in Arabic, or more specifically in the Arabic of the Holy Quran (AHQ) is recognized.

The stops / b d t3 d3 q / take part in the phenomenon of qalqalah which involves vowel insertion (and sometimes a vowel and glottal stop insertion).

This process takes place in order to identify this set of stops when they occur word-finally before a pause and word medially as part of a consonant cluster.

One of the thorny issues regarding this phenomenon is that the group of sounds that undergoes qalqalah comprises voiced as well as voiceless stops.

To resolve this problem, some proposals have been put forward.

One of these proposals suggests that there is interaction between voicing and emphasis in order to explain the membership of the voiceless / t ̣ q / along with the voiced / b d d / in the class subject to qalqalah.

The same notion will be used to account for the absence of the voiceless stops / t k / and the voiced stop / d ̣/ from the list.

The discussion will also examine other reasons for the exclusion of the stops t k ? / from the stops contributing to this process in AHQ.