Speech Perception of Arabic Pharyngealized Consonants by British and Greek Learners of Arabic

Abstract

This paper examines the ability of British English and Modern Greek learners of Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) to perceive and categorize Arabic pharyngealized consonants within the perceptual assimilation model (PAM-L2; Best & Tyler, 2007). It explores the categorization patterns of these sounds and compares the performance of British and Greek participants, highlighting how native language phonetic inventories and sociolinguistic factors influence non-native sound perception. Thirty participants, divided into British and Greek groups, underwent two perception experiments assessing their ability to discriminate and categorize these consonants. Additionally, the study adopted the frameworks of Faris et al. (2016) to analyze uncategorization patterns. Results revealed that Greek learners were more successful in categorizing pharyngealized consonants, often assimilating them to non-pharyngealized counterparts, while British learners showed greater difficulty, primarily demonstrating uncategorized patterns. Greek learners categorized [s?] and [ð?], whereas British learners struggled with all pharyngealized consonants. The findings underscore the influence of learners’ native phonetic systems and exposure to Arabic dialects on L2 perception. The study emphasizes the need to consider MSA as a foreign language in curriculum design, given its unique phonetic challenges.