Finding Natural Classes of Consonants and Vowels in Qur

The present study is aimed to find the natural classes in final rhyme of some verses in the Holy Qur"an. Many verses in the Qur"an have the final rhymes ending in the same consonants and vowels; some others don"t have similar consonants or vowels in the final rhyme; however, they have audible beauty. The reason is that there are some phonological relations between final consonants and vowels of one verse to another. This relation can be construed as natural classes of sounds. The text corpus of the present study is comprised of all of the verses of the Holy Qur"an. Some of the key findings of the study are as follows: (1) Although the final consonants and vowels of some sequential verses were different, they can be classified as natural classes; (2) In some chapters, some verses ended in /m/ and some others ended in /n/. These two sounds are classified as natural class of nasals; (3) Natural class of sonorants comprises the most frequent consonants in Qur"an.