Social network integration and language change in progress in Iraqi Arabic : a sociophonetic study of dialect levelling in the HiÌti dialect
This study investigates the linguistic outcomes of war-induced dialect contact between speakers of two dialects of Iraqi Arabic (IA): the qiltu dialect spoken in HiÌt (HIA) and the gilit dialect spoken by migrants from the gilit areas to HiÌt. It differs from previous contact-based studies on Arabic dialects in that it investigates dialect change in the speech of the local residents rather than in the speech of the migrants. The HIA dialect has been noted for the loss of certain local linguistic features at the expense of gilit features with a wider areal distribution (Al-Ani, 1978; Khan, 1997). The thesis provides a quantitative sociophonetic description of the speech of 36 male and female HIA speakers and of their accommodation to the gilit dialect by examining the impact of four independent variables (age, gender, Social Network Integration (SNI), and speakersâ attitudes) on the use of four phonological variables (two consonantal and two vocalic). At the consonantal level, variation in the use of the uvular stop (q) and the velar stop (k) are examined. At the vocalic level, the variation in the insertion of the epenthetic vowel [i] within onset consonant clusters in word initial positions and the lowering
Mohammed, Fuad
Social network integration and language change in progress in Iraqi Arabic : a sociophonetic study of dialect levelling in the HiÌti dialect. This study investigates the linguistic outcomes of war-induced dialect contact between speakers of two dialects of Iraqi Arabic (IA): the qiltu dialect spoken in HiÌt (HIA) and the gilit dialect spoken by migrants from the gilit areas to HiÌt. It differs from previous contact-based studies on Arabic dialects in that it investigates dialect change in the speech of the local residents rather than in the speech of the migrants. The HIA dialect has been noted for the loss of certain local linguistic features at the expense of gilit features with a wider areal distribution (Al-Ani, 1978; Khan, 1997). The thesis provides a quantitative sociophonetic description of the speech of 36 male and female HIA speakers and of their accommodation to the gilit dialect by examining the impact of four independent variables (age, gender, Social Network Integration (SNI), and speakersâ attitudes) on the use of four phonological variables (two consonantal and two vocalic). At the consonantal level, variation in the use of the uvular stop (q) and the velar stop (k) are examined. At the vocalic level, the variation in the insertion of the epenthetic vowel [i] within onset consonant clusters in word initial positions and the lowering
social_network integration language change_progress iraqi arabic sociophonetic study dialect level dialect study_investigate linguistic outcome war induced dialect_contact speaker dialect iraqi arabic dialect_speak dialect_speak migrant area differs previous contact based study arabic dialects investigates dialect change speech local resident rather speech migrant dialect note loss certain local linguistic_feature expense feature wider areal distribution provide quantitative sociophonetic description speech male_female speaker accommodation dialect examine_impact independent_variable age_gender social network integration speaker attitude use phonological_variable consonantal vocalic consonantal level variation use stop velar stop examine vocalic level variation insertion vowel within onset consonant_cluster word_initial position lower