This article investigates the production of the emphatic consonants /ṭ, ḍ, ṣ/ by typically developing Jordanian children. Sixty typically developing monolingual Ammani Arabic-speaking children (30 boys and 30 girls) with ages ranging from 2 to 7;11 years were recruited in a production experiment. In the experiment, they were asked to produce 18 minimal pair words with emphatic consonants and their corresponding plain coronals in all word positions. Contrary to Amayreh & Dyson (1998) and Hamdan & Amayreh (2007), >50% of Ammani Arabic-speaking children produced emphatic consonants by the age of 3, >75% produced them by the age of 4, and >90% produced them by the age of 5. Acoustically, they produce them in an adult-like manner at the age of 6 word-initially and medially and at the age of 7 word-finally. The acoustic measurements confirm that children’s productions become increasingly adult-like with age. Compared with nonemphatic consonants, the appearance of emphatics tends to be delayed in Ammani Arabic. This delay in the production of emphatics, which are among the least frequently occurring consonants in Arabic, is likely due to their articulatory complexity, which involves a secondary co-articulation (the so-called pharyngealization). The current findings help clarify the developmental trajectory of children’s acquisition of emphatic consonants and should be informative for both researchers and clinicians.

Objectives: The aim of this research was to investigate the early word syllable structure and notable phonological processes in the speech of Jordanian Arabic (JA)-speaking children. Methods: Elicited and spontaneous speech productions of 20 children were transcribed and analyzed by syllable structure. The ages of the participants ranged from 1 to 3 years, divided into four age groups: 1;0-1;6, 1;7-2;0, 2;1-2;6, and 2;7-3;0. Then, the data was analyzed according to ten phonological processes influencing word syllable structure and number. Results: CVC was found to be the most prevalent syllable structure used across all age groups. In terms of syllable number, disyllabic words were the most frequently used. Onomatopoeia, weak syllable deletion, and closed syllable CVVC reduction to CVV were noticed in the productions of children in the first age group. Cluster reduction and onset/ coda deletion occurred the most with the age group 2;1-2;6, while syllable deletion was evident until age 3. Conclusion: It appears that JA-speaking children use CVC syllable structure heavily in bisyllabic and polysyllabic words in their early speech; they avoid monosyllabic CV or CVC syllables to preserve the minimal bimoraic weight of Arabic phonological words. Onomatopoeia is noticed beyond the age of 1 with syllable deletion in the speech of children up to 3. The results are discussed within the context of the current literature.

This study offers an account of selected key phonological aspects of al-Issa Arabic, spoken in three villages in al Mafraq: Ad-Dafyana, Mansiyat al-Gublan and Um As-srab. Forty suitable participants plus four language consultants were recruited. The dialect has a number of distinguishing features that make it stand out from the rest of Bedouin Jordanian Arabic dialects, e.g. the Bani Saxar dialect (Palva 1980), Bani Ḥassan dialect (Irshied 1984), Abbādi dialect (Sakarna 1999), and Wadi Ramm Arabic (Mashaqba 2015). These features include the unlimited affrication of ∗k, the realization of the palato-alveolar/j/ as [y] in all word positions (yaʔyaʔa phenomenon), and the unconditioned retention of Classical Arabic diphthongs ∗aw and ∗ay in all contexts. In terms of syllable structure, the core syllable types observed are: CV, CVC, CVV, CVVC, CCVVC, CVC1C1, and C1C2VVC. There is a strong ban against C1C2C3 and C1C2 coda clusters in the dialect. Following Kiparsky's (2003) typological classification, the dialect is a VC-dialect where a vowel is inserted between C1 and C2 in C1C2C3 clusters. To avoid gutturals in coda positions, the dialect exhibits of the gahawa syndrome where CVG.CV underlying forms are attested as CV.Ga.CV. Stress is predictable in the vast majority of forms and is controlled by a trochaic foot ('CV.CVC). Stress falls on the right-most heavy syllable in the last three syllables. Where a word lacks a heavy syllable, it falls on the antepenultimate, or a penultimate in two syllable words. However, stress assignment interacts with epenthesis and the gahawa syndrome: the inserted vowel attracts the main stress in the absence of an ultimate heavy syllable.

Background: Individuals with Down syndrome (DS) have more difficulties with the structural aspects of language, including morphology (concatenation and non-concatenation) and syntax (word order and grammatical/concord rules), than with other language components (e.g. vocabulary, phonetics and pragmatics). Objectives: This study investigates the accuracy of grammatical number inflection produced by Jordanian Arabic-speaking children and young adults with DS. The work also examines the correlation between age and the correct production of singular, dual and plural numbers. Methods: The study involved 60 monolingual Arabic children and young adults with DS, 30 males and 30 females, enrolled at the Nazik Al Hariri Welfare Centre for Special Education, Amman. The participants were divided into three groups: KG2 (7.1–12.5 years old), school (13.10–17.6) and vocational training (18.3–27.3). The participants’ data were collected from a picture elicitation task and free speech, and the answers were recorded using a smartphone. Tokens were classified into correctly used, incorrectly used or not recognised. Proficiency percentage in using the correct number in correlation with age was calculated adopting Jia’s (2003) composite score of proficiency. The one-way analysis of variance was used to trace the impact of age on the correct performance of number. Post hoc comparisons (guided by the Scheffe test) were calculated for the cumulative results of the scale as a whole to examine the difference in the arithmetic mean between the three groups. Results: The singular form was the most used by all age groups (83.3%), followed by the plural (27%); the most delayed was dual (10.3%). Intriguingly, the dual form is the most difficult plural pattern because it was the least frequently used pattern in everyday language. Results were in line with other research on morphological markers in individuals with DS (e.g. Penke, 2018). The cumulative results statistically prove the influence of age on the correct use of grammatical number, in favour of the older two groups (total F = 29.865, at the level of significance P = 0.000), with a higher arithmetic mean of all categories (AM: KG2 = 9.00, school = 15.10, VT = 16.25). Hence, sensitivity to the correct number option increases with age although children and young adults with DS do not reach adult-like performance. The non-recognition cases of the proper number category significantly mark language delay in participants with DS. Conclusion: The study concluded that inflection for grammatical number is evidently delayed in individuals with DS. Linguistic teaching and training of children with DS (involving families, caregivers and educators) should start from childhood and continue to adulthood to improve their use of dual and plural numbers.

Objectives: This study investigated the validity of four language measures, i.e., phonological mean length of utterance (PMLU), the proportion of whole-word proximity (PWP), the proportion of whole-word correctness (PWC), and percentage of correct consonants, in assessing phonological development in Jordanian Arabic (JA) speaking children with phonological disorders in comparison with typically developing (TD) children.Methods: The study involved 88 monolingual JA-speaking children within the age range of 5 to 6 years, with 44 children diagnosed with phonological disorders and 44 TD children. Each group was further categorized into two age groups, namely 5;0-5;6 and 5,7-6,0. Data were gathered by observing the interactions between the children and their caregivers or parents using age-appropriate toys. A minimum of 100 utterances were collected from each participant.Results: The study found that TD children performed better than the children with phonological disorders on all measures, indicating delayed phonological performance in the phonological disorders group. Positive correlations between the measures were also observed, indicating their ability to provide significant information about children’s phonological abilities. Specific speech sound errors and substitution patterns exhibited by children with phonological disorders were identified, highlighting the motor control and articulatory challenges experienced by this group. Age was found to be a significant factor in the development of TD children, while children with phonological disorders showed similar scores across different age groups.Conclusion: These findings support the usage of the four measures for understanding phonological development in children with phonological disorders, accurately diagnosing them and tracking their progress.

This study examines the morpho-syntax of labile anticausative structures in Jordanian Arabic (JA). Although the transitive counterpart of anticausatives is marked via morphological affixes that reflect structural and lexical components in Classical Arabic and Modern Standard Arabic, a number of verbs involving causative alternation exhibit identical forms in JA (e.g., ġala [+T] ‘to CAUSE boil something’ vs ġala [–T] ‘to BECOME boil’). Such variation poses challenges for mapping between verb morphology and its lexical semantics. To handle such variation, which is also observed cross-linguistically, we argue in favour of Schäfer (2008; 2012), Schäfer & Vivanco (2015), and Ramchand’s (2008) “causer-less” analysis over Koontz-Garboden’s (2009) “reflexive” analysis. This work further assumes the existence of a Voice phrase lacking a specifier (external argument) and assumes that Voice projection is headed by an implied Voice head ( ^v causer) that syntactically assigns the accusative case to its new subject and semantically encodes the internal argument and describes the resultant subevent of the verb. The work also provides an alternative solution for voice projection that lacks an explicit specifier bearing [+agent] or [+causer] feature specification. The work assumes the presence of an inchoative Voice head [ ^v inch] introducing the Spec Voice Phrase, which encodes an inchoative resultant state of an event achieved over its theme. Contrary to Al-Qadi (2015), the present model assumes that such verbs constitute a middle position between transitive and intransitive verbs in JA but do not constitute a separate class of their own. Evidently, the correct characterization of the anticausative subclass distribution is that it surfaces wherever v is transitive as well as in intransitive volitional contexts (a non-natural class). More intriguingly, the presented material suggests that there is an ongoing process of diachronic change in spoken Arabic varieties (including JA) that amounts to the development and expansion of an inchoative class where no external or internal inchoative detransitivizing morphemes are involved. This topic, which incorporates an intriguing diachronic dimension in addition to the syntactic details, is missing from the generative literature on Arabic morpho-syntax and is potentially of sufficient interest to merit investigation.