CONTRIBUTION OF TAJWEED SCHOLAR IN PHONOLOGICAL SCIENCE

The purpose of this study is to uncover the unfortunately neglected contributions made by Muslims to the modern linguistics by comparing and contrasting the descriptive framework of Tajweed of the Holy Qur’an and that of the generative phonology. The results of the study indicate that Tajweed and generative phonology are for the most part similar in terms of features, sound classifications and phonological processes. As for the features, it is observed that for any single feature given in generative phonology there is also one or more equivalent features in Tajweed. As for the sound classifications, they show an amount of 83% as similarities in the assignment of sounds to their due features. As with respect to the phonological processes, both of them have recognized two levels of representations; phonemic representation (i.e. haq), the underlying representation and phonetic representation (i.e. mustahaq), the surface representation after phonological rules have been applied to the phonemic representation. As the study demonstrates the high degree of similarities between the two frameworks, it indicates the fact that Muslim contributions to the study of linguistics is indeed eminent but efforts are needed to introduce Islamic linguistics word-wide.