Linguistics and Literature Studies 5(3): 213-223, 2017 http://www.hrpub.org DOI: 10.13189/lls.2017.050309 Assimilation in the Djelfa Dialect of Algerian Arabic: An OT Account Slimani Khedidja*, Jisheng Zhang School of Foreign Languages, East China Normal University, China Copyright©2017 by authors, all rights reserved. Authors agree that this article remains permanently open access under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0 International License Abstract The Djelfa dialect (DJ) is one of the varieties of of the hierarchal ranking of its constraints. Algerian Arabic that is characterized by complicated As far as I know, no one has dealt with assimilation in the regressive and progressive assimilatory processes. The dialect under scrutiny and this is the crucial rationale current paper addresses some of these assimilatory motivating such an investigation. The data used in this paper mechanisms; namely, nasal assimilation, lateral assimilation, are collected by the author himself, being a native speaker of /t/ assimilation, devoicing assimilation, emphasis the dialect, and which may contribute in one way or another assimilation and guttural place assimilation. The paper offers to the comparative studies of Arabic dialectology. The a straightforward analysis and provides a comprehensive current paper revolves around two main questions (i) what picture of these assimilatory processes within the framework are the assimilatory processes attested in the dialect (ii) how of Optimality Theory (OT), [1] [2], [3] and [4] by means of they are accounted for within OT. To put it differently, how accounting for the trigger motivating them, which is the conflicting constraints interact with each other to yield reflected through the relevant constraints at play and their the desired outputs. way of interaction. The paper concludes that regressive The paper falls into two parts. The first part provides a assimilation is very pervasive in the dialect as the latter detailed account of some regressive assimilatory processes endeavors to abide by IDENT-STEM-ONS (F) and attested in the dialect, viz., nasal assimilation, lateral IDENT-ONS (F) as much as possible unless a higher ranked assimilation, /t/ assimilation and devoicing assimilation and constraint is endangered. Moreover, the paper lends support how the markedness and the faithfulness constraints interact to McCarthy and Prince’s (1995) claim that root faithfulness with each other to yield the optimal outputs. The second part outranks affix faithfulness as DJ prefers to keep stem addresses some progressive assimilatory processes; namely, segment features intact at the expense of affix features emphatic assimilation and guttural place assimilation and change. how OT adequately accounts for them. Keywords Djelfa Dialect, Regressive and Progressive Assimilation, Constraints, Optimality Theory 2. Regressive Assimilation in DJ 2.1. Nasal Assimilation 1. Introduction In DJ, the alveolar nasal /n/ either fully or partially assimilates to some of the segments it immediately precedes. Assimilation is known to be the influence of the The motivation triggering these partial and total articulation of a segment upon another in the way that one assimilations is accounted for in this section. segment becomes identical to another in one or more phonetic features. The core issues pursued in this paper 2.1.1. Partial Assimilation revolve around some regressive and progressive assimilatory DJ undergoes partial assimilation by means of which the processes attested in DJ. It is to the credit of OT that alveolar nasal /n/ shares the place feature of the following assimilation is adequately motivated. The cornerstone obstruent segments: /b/, /k/, /g/ or /f/. In this respect, when /n/ assumption of OT is that there are only two levels of is followed by the voiced bilabial plosive /b/, the velar representation input and output that are evaluated via a set of plosives /k/ and /g/ or the labio-dental fricative /f/, the place constraints to yield the optimal outputs. Since constraints are feature of these segments spreads leftwards and hence, the universal, DJ may differ from other languages only in terms original /n/ surfaces as /m/, /ŋ/ and /ɱ/ respectively. It is 214 Assimilation in the Djelfa Dialect of Algerian Arabic: An OT Account important to note here that this place assimilation either takes This markedness constraint should be ranked very high in place within one word or across a word boundary. Consider the dialect. In order to satisfy N-O SHARE (place), DJ may the data in (1a) and (1b). delete one of the adjacent segments, either /n/ or the obstruent segment following it, but this option is quite 1) (a) Partial assimilation within one word hopeless in the dialect as it is prone to violate the Input Output Gloss anti-deletion constraint MAX-IO. qanbu:la qambu:la ‘bomb’ 5) MAX-IO [4] junkur juŋkur ‘he denies’ Every segment of the input has a correspondent in the ʕangu:d ʕaŋgu:d ‘cluster’ output. mangu:l maŋgu:l ‘taken from’ (No phonological deletion) janfaʕ jaɱfaʕ ‘it benefits’ As revealed in the data in (1a) and (1b), DJ secures N-O SHARE (place) through assimilation. It follows from this that MAX-IO should outrank IDENT-IO; otherwise N-O (b) Partial assimilation across a word boundary SHARE (place) will be satisfied via elision rather than Input Output Gloss assimilation. min bla:di mim bla:di ‘from my country’ 6) IDENT-IO wi:n ba:ʕ wi:m ba:ʕ ‘where did he sell?’ Correspondent segments of input and output should be ka:n kbi:r ka:ŋ kbi:r ‘he was big’ identical. ʃku:n kallam ʃku:ŋ kallam ‘who called?’ After recalling the relevant constraint, the following min gassam miŋ gassam ‘when he distributed’ constraint hierarchy is borne out. ʃku:n ga:l ʃku:ŋ ga:l ‘who said?’ 7) N-O SHARE (place)>>MAX-IO>>IDENT-IO min fa:t miɱ fa:t ‘when he passed by’ Table 1 tests the interaction of these markedness and min ftaħ miɱ ftaħ ‘when he opened’ faithfulness constraints to optimize the winner candidate from the input /qanbu:la/ ‘bomb’. This nasal place assimilation only targets the alveolar nasal /n/ as the place feature of the bilabial nasal /m/ is kept Table 1. Constraint tableau: /qanbu:la/→[qambu:la]/[qandu:la] intact when followed by the velar plosives /g/ and /k/ and the N-O SHARE /qanbu:la/ MAX-IO IDENT-IO labiodentals fricative /f/. Consider the data in (2). (place) a. qanbu:la *! 2) b. qabu:la *! Input Output Gloss c. qandu:la * kla:m ga:si kla:m ga:si ‘tough words’ d. qambu:la * ʕla:m kbi:r ʕla:m kbi:r ‘a big flag’ jkallam fi:h jkallam fi:h ‘he is calling him’ As it turns out from the constraint tableau above, the constraint hierarchy established in (7) is not sufficient to As revealed in the data in (1a) and (1b), the alveolar nasal select the desired output since both of the candidates (c) and /n/ assimilates to the following obstruent segments in terms (d) are still competing for optimization in that they both of the place feature. In order to capture this nasal satisfy the highly ranked constraint N-O SHARE (place) by assimilation by a constraint, we refer to the markedness segmental feature change: candidate (c) changes the place constraint SHARE (F) feature of the bilabial plosive to be homorganic with the preceding alveolar nasal while candidate (d) changes the 3) SHARE(F) [5] place feature of the nasal segment to be homorganic with the Assign one violation mark for every pair of adjacent following bilabial plosive. The fact that DJ optimizes elements that are not linked to the same token of [f]. [qambu:la] over [qandula] reflects the dialect’s preference This constraint bans the adjacency of two segments that do for keeping onset features unchanged. Consequently, another not share the same features. To account for the N+O version of IDENT-IO should come to play. distribution in the data above, we propose the following constraint: 8) IDENT-ONS (F) Onset features should be kept intact. 4) N-O SHARE(place) Integrating IDENT-ONS (F) within the hierarchy already When a coronal nasal is followed by an obstruent, they established in (7) yields the following dominance hierarchy should be linked to the same place feature. which is further testified in table 2. Linguistics and Literature Studies 5(3): 213-223, 2017 215 9) N-O SHARE (place)>>MAX-IO>>IDENT-ONS 11) (F)>>IDENT-IO Input Output Gloss Table 2. Constraint tableau: /qanbu:la/→[qambu:la] ħlim ro:ħo ħlim ro:ħo ‘he dreamt himself’ kla:m kla:m ‘men’s words’ N-O raʒʒa:la raʒʒa:la IDENT-ONS /qanbu:la/ SHARE MAX-IO IDENT-IO sja:m la:zim sja:m la:zim ‘fasting is a must’ (F) (place) la:m Lubna la:m Lubna ‘he blamed Lubna’ a. qanbu:la *! The data in (10) reveal that DJ does not allow the coronal b. qabu:la *! nasal /n/ to be followed by the sonorant segments /l/, /r/ and /m/ across a word boundary and accordingly, total c. qandu:la * assimilation is in order. To account for this total assimilation ☞ d. within OT, we are in need for a markedness constraint that * qambu:la bans the nasal /n/ from being followed by the sonorants /l/, /r/ Being faithful to the highly ranked constraints and and /m/. To this end, we propose the following constraint: incurring the least violation of IDENT-IO optimize 12) *N+SC candidate (d) over all its rivals. Coronal nasal /n/ cannot be followed by a sonorant consonant across a word boundary except /n/. 2.1.2. Total Assimilation The markedness constraint *N+SC militates against In DJ, the alveolar nasal /n/ also undergoes total IDENT-IO that strives for the congruency between input and assimilation when it is followed by the following sonorant output.