Language games and Bedouin Arabic

Language games can also provide evidence for the mental reality of underlying representations. Their relevance is that language game modifications are not always performed on the surface form, so by modifying the phonetic environment in which segments appear in the language, games may cause rules to apply when they would not normally (providing evidence for the reality of the phonological process), or prevent a rule from applying when it normally would (revealing the abstract underlying form). An example of such evidence comes from Bedouin Arabic spoken in Saudi Arabia, discussed by Al-Mozainy (1981). A number of verbs have the underlying form /CaCaC/, but this analysis is abstract in that, for these verbs, the first vowel sequence is never found on the surface, and the root surfaces as [CiCaC].