Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book investigates an area in L2 Arabic phonology which had been unexamined before: lexical stress. It examines L1 transfer and the production of lexical stress by L1 English learners of Arabic by focusing on the phonetic cues of duration, pitch, and intensity. The book also investigates the role of L1 in the perception and production of Arabic emphatic, uvular, and pharyngeal consonants by Arabic L2 learners who are L1 speakers of English, Greek, Chinese, Turkish, and German. It presents a minimalist account of the role of economy conditions on the syntactic derivation of Arabic L2 resumptive pronouns within four types of relative clause constructions: direct object, indirect object, oblique, and subject relative clauses. The book deals with L2 Arabic phonology and phonetics.