Syllabic and emphatic conditioning of /l/ in Levantine Arabic: an auditory, acoustic and articulatory analysis

International audience ; Throughout the world’s languages, typologies of /l/-darkening systems are often reported as havingone of two patterns: those which have an allophonic distinction between a lighter, more coronalvariant of /l/ and a darker, more retracted variant, and those that do not. However, comparatively littleresearch has focussed on languages whereby there seems to be allophony conditioned by somethingother than syllabic structure. The present study is an investigation into lateral variation in LevantineArabic. Early work by Delattre [1] suggests that, like German, Arabic has a clear ‘flat’ /l/ regardless ofits position in the syllable. This is of interest, particularly as onset/coda realisations of /l/ in languagessuch as English have been argued to be a natural articulatory consequence of the dorsal gesture of thefollowing/preceding vowel and darkness is correlated with duration [2,3]. An acoustic investigation ofbilingual children’s lateral productions by Khattab [4] suggests that a dual gestural account may notbe appropriate for Arabic, but no instrumental work has so far been carried out to corroborate that.Conversely, conditioning of Arabic laterals has been claimed to be predicted by the presence of anemphatic (i.e. pharyngealised) consonant. /l/s in proximity to an emphatic consonant are said to bepharyngealised themselves, but it is not clear whether this is an allophonic distinction or simply agradient effect of co-articulation. The present study investigates /l/ patterning in Levantine Arabic in avariety of syllabic and emphatic environments to test the claims in the existing literature.