Palatalization in English with Reference to Arabic

Abstract

Palato-alveolars are considered as a significant area for phonological features investigation in both English and Arabic. This set of phonemes in English is defined by either an output of French borrowing influence like the case of [Ӡ] or of a palatal assimilation within the words or at their boundaries under conditions of phonetic environments. The current study sheds light on accounts of palato-alveolars and their origins and illustrating the process of palatalization in English and Arabic. Since such phonemes are the product of constriction made by co-articulation of several organs, Articulation-Based Feature Model is implemented to be applied on words taken from Iraqi Arabic and some Qur’anic expressions which motivate the spread of features to produce constriction or stricture whereby place of articulation for some palato-alveolars is shifted due to the environment in which they occur.