Interdental consonants in North-Eastern Neo-Aramaic dialects
Abstract
The North-Eastern Neo-Aramaic (NENA) dialects exhibit a wide range of reflexes of the historical interdental consonants *θ and *ð. These were originally post-vocalic fricative allophones *[θ] and *[ð] of the stops */t/ and */d/ respectively in earlier Aramaic. In NENA these fricative allophones have become phonemicized. The interdental realization of the consonants has been preserved mainly in dialects in the western sector of NENA. In the eastern sector the interdentals have been replaced by various other consonants or debuccalized under the influences of contact languages.