A Preliminary Comparative Study between Ouled Nhar and Ouled Ouariach Arabic Dialects in Sebdou, Tlemcen: Some Salient Phonological and Lexical Aspects

Abstract

This study deals with the comparison between Ouled Nhar and Ouled Ouriach varies at the phonological and lexical levels in the speech community of Sebdou. The main results at the phonological level are as follow:first, the length of the short vowel [a] which has two variants; it is kept as [a] in ON speech and weakened into [B ] among OO speakers. Second, the production of the diphthong [ai] which is kept [ai] in ON speech and it shifted to [i :] among OO speakers. Also, at the lexical level, ON speakers use different vocabulary items of those of OO speakers.The reasons behind such variation is attributed to social factors, such as the ethnic belonging and age