Phonological development of Kuwaiti Arabic: Preliminary data

Abstract

An overview of Kuwaiti Arabic is presented, with very preliminary data from two typically developing brothers (ages 2;4 and 5;2) and a 6-year-old with a severe sensorineural hearing impairment. The siblings show early mastery of many aspects of the complex Arabic phonological system, with universally expected later mastery of coronal fricatives and /r/. The 6-year-old shows patterns typical of children with hearing impairments, e.g. hypernasality, a prevalence of 'visible' segments, particularly labials, and simplified syllable structure. Her accurate use of /l/, /r/, and some gutturals, however, raise questions about the enhanced perceptibility and functionality of these segments in Arabic.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 39 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.