Newcastle University

Project:

Phonological acquisition in multilingual settings: the case of Lebanese Arabic

From April 2007 to June 2010
Project Leader(s): Ghada Khattab
Staff: Jalal Al-Tamimi, Gerry Docherty and Marilyn Vihman (University of York) as mentors
Contact: Ghada.khattab@ncl.ac.uk
Sponsors: ESRC

The aim of this project is to investigate the phonological development of Arabic by monolingual and multilingual children in Lebanon and the UK. French and English constitute part of Lebanese children’s daily language use in both locations due to the sociolinguistic role that the two languages play in relation to education, social class, and religion. The structural differences between the three languages provide an interesting context for examining input and interaction factors in the acquisition of Arabic by monolingual and multilingual children. The specific objectives of the study will therefore be: (i) To provide a comprehensive longitudinal study of the acquisition of Lebanese Arabic both alone and together with English and/or French by children aged 1 to 2 years growing up in Lebanon and the UK. (ii) To carry out a detailed study of three related phonological aspects: vowel lengthening, consonant gemination, and stress patterns in Lebanese Arabic. These have been chosen as a focus because of the availability of crosslinguistic data on the acquisition of these features. (iii) To investigate differences in the Arabic, French, and English varieties by the Lebanese communities used in Lebanon and the UK, with specific reference to segment length and stress patterns.