The Computation of Assimilation of Arabic Language Phonemes

Abstract

Computational phonology is fairly a new science that deals with studying phonological rules from the computation point of view. Computational phonology is based on the phonological rules, which are the processes that are applied to phonemes to produce another phoneme under a specific phonetic environment. A type of these phonological processes is the assimilation process, which its rules reform the involved phonemes regarding the place of articulation, the manner of articulation, and/or voicing. Thus, assimilation is considered a consequence of phonological coarticulation. Arabic, like other natural languages, has systematic phonemes’ changing rules. This paper aims to automate the assimilation rules of the Arabic language. Among several computational approaches that are used for automating phonological rules, this paper uses Artificial Neural Network (ANN) approach, and thus, contributes to the use of ANN as a computational approach for automating the assimilation rules in the Arabic language. The designed ANN-based system of this paper has been defined and implemented by using MATLAB software, in which the results show the success of this approach and deliver an experience for later similar work.