Date of Award
2019
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
M.A. in Modern Languages
Department
Modern Languages
First Advisor
Vance K. Schaefer
Second Advisor
Felice Coles
Third Advisor
Tamara Warhol
Relational Format
dissertation/thesis
Abstract
Although Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) has three different interdental fricatives /θ/, /ð/, and the emphatic interdental /ðˤ/, most Egyptian Arabic (EA) speakers do not pronounce these interdental fricative sounds, whether in Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) or in English, and instead substitute them with the sibilant /s/ and /z/, respectively (Schmidt, 1987), as in the examples ‘three’ and ‘the’. The factors which influence the pronunciation of interdentals by EA speakers vary from one study to another. For instance, Ahmed Ali (2014) and El Zarka (2013) refer to dialect interference in the second language acquisition of phonology, while other studies indicate some sociolinguistic variables such as a socioeconomic background variable (Labov, 1970) or a stylistic variable (Schmidt, 1987) as influencing the EA speakers’ pronunciation of interdental fricatives. This study examines the interdentals of 15-20 EA speakers through an interview and several tasks, including reading samples, in order to determine which variables (e.g., phonological, sociolinguistic, stylistic) are the most salient in the acquisition of interdentals in MSA and L2 English. In addition, this study tests several new variables (the effect of pronunciation teaching, and formality of the topic) that may influence the EA speakers’ pronunciation of interdentals. Through analysis of the collected data, this study demonstrates that the pronunciation of interdentals by EA speakers is in fact due to a combination of these factors.
Recommended Citation
Sedeek, Yasmine Mohamed Dahy, "Factors That Influence the Pronunciation of Interdentals in Modern Standard Arabic and English by Egyptian Arabic Speakers" (2019). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 1683.
https://egrove.olemiss.edu/etd/1683