Sound Shift and Metathesis in Three Pre-School Nasiriya Iraqi Arabic Children : A Case Study

This study is a case study which describes the speech of three pre-school Nasiriya Iraqi Arabic children. The data of this study are collected through tape-recording them. Through the analysis, it is concluded that the phonetic processes which exist in the informants’ speech include assimilation, elision, gemination, nasalization and tafxiim and the main ones are sound shift and metathesis. It has been noted that the study informants pronounce some consonants which are difficult to be pronounced by other children living in the same city; those consonants are either regularly shifted to in the production of other consonants or as part of ordinary words containing such sounds. Sometimes, more than one process is available in the production of some words. The consonantal changes existing in the informants’ speech are many compared with the vocalic ones which are very few.


Introduction
Nasiriya is a city in Iraq which is located along the banks of the Euphrates River.It is one of the southern cities in Iraq and it is about 225 miles (370 km) southeast of Baghdad.It is situated near the ruins of the ancient city of Ur.It is regarded as the centre of the Thi-Qar governorate.
The aim of the study is to describe the speech of three preschool children and the characteristic processes accompanying their speech like sound shift, metathesis, elision, assimilation, gemination, nasalization, and tafxiim.
The study hypothesizes the following: a. Sound shift and metathesis mainly exist in most Nasiriya Iraqi consonants of the informants.
This study is limited to investigate the speech of three Nasiriya Iraqi Arabic pre-school children.This description includes both vocalic and consonantal segments.
In analyzing the speech of the two authors' children, we discover that their speech is characteristic of sound shift and other linguistic processes and we assume that they follow some phonetic rules which are specific to them and we tried to list those rules in tables.

Linguistic Description of Acquisition
Children of 1-2 years produce the first word combination.Then simple and complex sentences are produced when they become 4-6 years old.Any study concerning the child's language acquisition includes a description and then an explanation for the sound segments produced by the children.The explanation is the uneasy step to deal with because it involves dealing with children not adults.According to Ingram (1987, p. 10), "The value of dairy studies is enormous in providing a database for the field.In some cases, the data are rich to provide the basis for a study and at other cases, the data may be supplemented in that it is used in conjunction with newly collected data to substantiate a point".
During the process of child language acquisition, there are two principal variables: referentiality and sound change noticeability.Each is of a universal nature.Sound change noticeability deals with the easiness of perceiving some sound changes.There are some sounds which are more noticeable in their changes than others.For instance the changes and addition of the vowels can be noticed more than those of the consonants.This is because when vowels change, syllables are created and then they must receive some degree of stress.So, changing play into playing or come into came can be noticed more than jump into jumped /pt/ (Steinberg, 1991, pp. 154-155).Greenlee (1980, p. 283) also comments by saying: "many assume that the child is the initiator of sound change".In children's acquisition, nasal consonants are separated from oral ones especially the oral stops at the very early age, and this distinction is among the first consonant contrasts to appear in children's speech.The phonetic basis of nasal stability can be found in the articulatory and acoustic properties of nasals as their production requires simple articulatory requirements and they are acoustically distinct from other classes of consonants (Ibid,p. 288).
Depending on Jackobson's observation (1941), in all languages, children learn sound segments in a relatively fixed order.For example, in English, children tend to acquire /f/ before /Ɵ/: three /free/, thumb /fumb/, etc; voiceless stops are acquired before voiced stops.So, /p, t, k/ are expected to be acquired before /b, d, g/.Also, the front consonants like /p, t/ are acquired before the back consonants /k/ (Hyman, 1975, pp. 16-17).

Phonology of Iraqi Arabic
Iraqi Arabic is one variety of Arabic that is used by the Iraqi people: educated and non-educated to communicate with each other.It is like other varieties which have their own phonetic and phonological systems with a number of consonants and vowels (Jasim & Sharhan, 2013, p. 5;Ibrahim, 2012, p. 44).

Description of Arabic Consonants
The thirty one Arabic consonants can be described in terms of consonantal features which are voicing, place and manner of articulation.Emphatic and non-emphatic consonants (or velarized and non-velarized) can be referred to as well.The emphatic consonants which are /S, ş, T, ţ/ are distinguished from the non-emphatic ones/s, d, D, t/ by iTbaq 'lidding' or 'tafxiim' (emphasis).
Emphatic consonants are produced when the muscles of the pharynx are contracted; the tongue back is raised towards the palate; and the lips are protruded.In addition to those four consonants, there is another one which exists in a very restricted context like the divine name ' َ ‫'ﷲ‬ /l/ (Khalil, 1999, p. 15).
The Arabic back consonants are six: Four are fricatives and two are stops: /x, ǵ/ are velar fricatives.They are articulated with the back of the tongue almost touching the soft palate (velum).
/9, H/ are pharyngeal fricatives./H/ is voiceless while /9/ is voiced.Their production occurs in the pharynx.When they are articulated, the muscles in the pharynx are tensed up.
Another consonant is /h/ which is the glottal fricative which is voiceless.Its production occurs in the larynx.It occurs in all positions (initially, medially, and finally).
In Arabic, /r/ is trilled which is repeatedly produced.
/l/ is a common consonant.English and Arabic are different in the rules of light-dark-phone distribution.

Phonetic Processes
Phonetic phenomena (assimilation, elision, emphasis 'tafxiim', gemination 'tašdiid') were first studied as part of the old Arab grammarians' grammar, but they did not discuss those linguistic phenomena.This is not because of their unawareness of their existence in the language but the fact is that they considered the sound segments as the vital carriers of intelligibility in oral communication and the suprasegmental features were of marginal significance.The phonetic processes to be discussed in this section are only those which are available in our children's speech.
a. Sound shift (Phonemic substitution): Sound shift is a phonetic process that refers to the replacement of one sound segment by another in a certain context.The process of substitution which occurs in the structural context is known as "substitution frame" (Crystal, 2003a, p. 444).
In the typical speech, a number of types of phonetic substitution can be shown.Those processes are usually found in the performance of typically developing children 2-4 years old (Walliamson, 2014).

b. Metathesis
Metathesis refers to changing the order of successive sounds (Matthews, 2007, p. 244).An interchange of segments is allowed by phonetic rules.For example, ask is pronounced as /aks/ (Hyman, 1975, pp. 14-15).It is the change in the normal sequence of elements in a sentence.Those elements can be sounds, syllables, words or other units.Such a process can be noticed in everyday speech and even it is regarded as a feature observed in language history, as in: hros in Old English which became horse in Modern English (Crystal, 1992, p. 249).

c. Assimilation
Assimilation is a process by which adjacent sounds become similar to each other by affecting each other.It commonly exists in rapid speech and some in all spoken styles.Three types of assimilation are found: 1. anticipatory or regressive in which the following sound affects the preceding one: ten balloons /tem/; 2. progressive: the preceding sound influences the following one: bridge score: the second word will be pronounced as /ʃko:/; 3. coalescence: it is a reciprocal effect: two sounds assimilate to produce a new segment: won't she /t/ and /ʃ/ → /ʧ/ (Crystal, 2003a, p. 247 andFrawley, 2003, p. 320).
But there are other two main types of assimilation which are historical and contextual.The historical type means that assimilation occurs during the development of a language and by which a word which was pronounced in a certain way came to be pronounced in another way, for example, ant /n/ was /m/ which was written as amete and amte /'am∂t∂/.in the 15 th century, the change from /m/ into /n/ appeared (Jones, 1969, p. 218).

d. Elision
Elision is a process of losing a vowel at the end of the word, or a vowel before another vowel that follows it at the beginning of a word (Matthews, 2007, p. 119).
When someone's speech becomes quick, some sounds are dropped.In informal speech, vowels in the weak syllables are elided.It is unusual to hear the vowels in the first syllables of the following words: police, correct, etc. /p'lice/.Consonants in the clusters are dropped to simplify the process of speaking.It is difficult to pronounce three consonants altogether at the end of the words: acts of parliament /aks/.Sometimes the whole syllable may be elided when the same consonant is repeated: British pronunciations of library and particularly /laibri: p∂tikjli:/.Or words can be dropped when they occur before consonants: cup o' tea, gonna (going on), etc (Crystal, 2003a, p. 247).
According to Al-Hilfy (2014, p. 60), elision is of interest to old Arab grammarians.It is one of the most important aspects of the Quranic text.For example, two terms are interchangeably used by Sibaweyh which are alHaDif, al?işmar.
Contextual elision can be observed in the expressions: /Hamdilla waşşikir/ (thanks and appreciation for God) in which the short vowel /u/ is omitted in the word /al Hamdu/ (thanks) (ibid, p. 48).

e. Gemination
Gemination (tašdiid) refers to the lengthening of Arabic consonants, like the vowels.The consonant can be doubled without an insertion of a vowel.Any consonant can be geminated, especially in the medial position of the word.In Arabic writing, the geminated consonant is referred to by the sign ( ّ◌) (šadda or tašdiid) (Ghalib, 1984, p. 27).
"Geminate consonants in Arabic were, and still are, generally orthographically represented with one letter only.
It was Al-Khalil who was credited with the introduction of this sign which was merely an looped /ʃ/ sound derived from the word 'taʃdiid itself".This new sign was important to be introduced to stop any confusion with corresponding words that contain single consonants because there is a distinctive difference between single and geminate consonants in Arabic.For example, /kasara/ (he broke); /kassara/ (he smashed) (ibid).
In Arabic, the sign ( ّ◌) is used to express that process, for example, ّ ‫مر‬ means there are three consonants ‫ر(‬ ‫ر‬ ‫)م‬ while in English, it is a term which is used in phonetics and phonology to represent two identical adjacent segments of a sound in a single morpheme: happy.Those two sounds can be considered as a long consonant, it is written as two subsequent consonants but phonetically transcribed as one consonant (Crystal, 2003a, pp. 196-7).
f. Nasalization Nasals /m, n, Ƞ/ are pronounced when the soft palate is lowered to allow an audible escape of air through the nose.Other consonants and all vowels can be nasalized by being followed by one of the nasals.Its symbol is /~/ (Jones, 1973, p. 123).Nasals become voiceless when they follow /s/ in small, snooze.When a plosive is followed by one of the nasals, it will be released through the nose instead of the mouth and the resulting auditory effect is one nasal plosion, so sudden /sʌdn/ rather than /sʌd∂n/ (Crystal, 2003b, pp. 307-8).

Methodology and Data Collection
The technique of data collection adopted in this study is based on a number of tapes recorded for the children, and this linguistic study is mainly phonetic and the approach to data consists of the establishment of inductive generalizations from the analysis of the children's language.
The data (see Appendix A) needed for this study has been collected from the speech of the authors' three male children aged two, three and five years at the time of starting recording the data respectively.They live in the same house.Their dialect is Nasiriya Iraqi Arabic.The period of collecting the data lasted for 4 years.
The words which are said by the children are described first in terms of the consonantal features (voicing, place and manner) and then the explanations for each are given.
Most of Nasiriya Iraqi Arabic phonemes (Appendix B) are available in Standard Arabic except /č/; /v/ is neither available in the first nor in the second but it is produced by the informants as a part of the sound shift.Nasiriya dialect is used by the people who live in Nasiriya city and its surroundings, south of Iraq.It is distinguished from other dialects in Iraq by its phonetic, lexical and syntactic features.

Data Analysis and Discussion
The results of our study can be summarized in the following phonetic rules discovered by the authors as every child in every stage of acquisition is following his interim grammar.The informants' speech is characterized of many changes which are mostly consonantal rather than vocalic.Those changes reflect some phonetic processed like sound shift and metathesis in addition to other phonetic processes.The consonants pronounced can be voiceless and voiced; place of articulation: post-velar, palatal, glottal, dental, bilabial, labio-dental, pharyngeal, nasalized /r/ and mufaxam /l/; in terms of manner of articulation: stop, affricate, nasal, fricative, flap, and lateral (see Appendix B in which every phonetic rule is provided with a number of words in addition to what is available in the following tables):    10.More than one process can be found like metathesis, sound shift, and addition of a sound.ma?axiD → mahadid (I do not take it) 11.Gemination can be found with or without elision.
bidayah → baddayah (beginning) 12.In some words there is no change at all.9indič → iddič (You have it) with elision fiil (elephant) 13.There are many words which include metathesis in their speech.ta9ban →tab9an (tired) şowah→ dowah, howah (light) 8.A change of a half of a word occurs No change in the middle of the word but the change is in the first and last parts.

?
istiqbal → hibal (reception room) rimot → himon (remote control) 9. Changes occur in the same word without being subject to any of the above rules.jwariib → jlaliib (socks) They are: backing in which front sound segments are replaced by back ones; gliding in which glides /w, y/ are substituted by liquids /l,r/; stopping which occurs when fricatives /f, v, s, z, Ɵ, ð, ʃ, З, h/ or affricates /ʧ, ʤ/ are replaced by stops /p, t, b, d, k, g/; and vocalization in which liquids are replaced by vowels(Yeh, 2011, p. 1).

Table 1 .
Statement of rules of change

Table 2 .
The processes which occur in the informants' speech Two or more changes in the same word burkan→ bulqan (volcano) 7. One sound in the same word can change twice, i.e. with two allophones.