Morphophonemic convergence and divergence in Palestinian Arabic

This paper provides a sociophonetic account of variation in the Arabic feminine gender marker, a word final vocalic morpheme realized variably in Arabic varieties as [a, ɛ, e, i] (Al-Wer 2007). 1,132 occurrences of this morpheme were analyzed acoustically in Praat (Boersma & Weenink 2016) from a sample of 22 speakers including indigenous Gaza City Palestinians and refugees from Jaffa who have lived in Gaza City since 1948. The results that Gaza City residents and Jaffa refugees are undergoing similar processes of lowering and backing of this vowel across generations. Younger speakers in both communities have a lower and backer vowel for this variable than elderly speakers. This suggests that refugees are diverging from the raised [e] realization of their traditional dialect, while broader processes of leveling (Trudgill 1986, 2004) may be taking place in both communities as a result of long-term dialect contact happening in Gaza City.