• Zaidan Ali Jassem

  Author

This paper investigates the phonemic cognates of Arabic back consonants in English mainly besides German, French, and Latin. Using the lexical root theory as a theoretical framework, it shows that Arabic and English, for example, not only belong to the same family but also to the same language, contrary to traditional Comparative (Historical Linguistics) Method claims that they are not. The data consists of representative examples containing the pharyngeals /2 & 3/, the velar fricatives /kh & gh/, the uvular and velar stops /q & k/, the glottal fricative and stop /h & '/. The results show that they developed into similar ones in European languages which were either more advanced than their Arabic counterparts (e.g., /q, k/ → /t/) or unique to European languages such as /v/ which substituted for the pharyngeals and velar fricatives in the main. In other words, all the above Arabic sounds have true cognates with the same or similar forms and functions, irrespective of minor phonetic and morphological changes.

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