This paper presents findings of the first systematic acoustic analysis of focus prosody in Hijazi Arabic (HA), an under-researched Arabic dialect. A question-answer paradigm was used to elicit information and contrastive focus at different sentence locations in comparison with their neutral focus counterparts. Systematic acoustic analyses were performed to compare all the focus conditions, in terms of both continuous F 0 trajectories and specific acoustic measurements. Results show that focused words have significantly expanded excursion size, higher maximum F 0 and longer duration. Post-focus words have significantly lowered F 0 (except in the case of penultimate focus). Pre-focus words, in contrast, lack systematic changes. These patterns are consistent with previously reported prosodic patterns of focus in other Arabic dialects. They are also consistent with a number of others languages that have also been applied similar systematic acoustic analyses. Thus Arabic appears to belong to a group of languages that all exhibit post-focus compression (PFC), as opposed to languages that lack PFC. In addition, the results also show evidence of prosodic differences between contrastive focus and information focus. This difference, however, is interpreted as due to a methodological feature that allowed elicitation of incredulity related to contrastive focus, rather than as a language-specific property. It is also argued that the possible involvement of incredulity in focus marking needs further research.

The encoding of focus and its role in Taif Arabic has not been understood fully. A recent production study found significant acoustic differences between syntactically identical utterances with focus and without focus. The current study aims to investigate further F0 peak alignment, F0 peak location and (b) focus perception in Taif Arabic. The acoustic analyses of F0 peak alignment and F0 peak location show that only the F0 peak alignment of the post-focus words was realized earlier than that of their counterparts under neutral-focus condition, and the location of the F0 peak of the stressed syllable of the post-focus words was lower than that of their counterparts in neutral-focus utterances. In focus perception, correct focus identification was 85% for initial focus and 71% for penultimate focus. These findings have implications for both focus typology and language variations.

Post-focus compression (PFC), in which words following focus are compressed in F 0 and intensity, is recently found to be effective in encoding focus. Recent studies find that PFC is present in Egyptian, Hijazi and Lebanese Arabic, and hence they are classified as +PFC languages. However, there are languages from the same family language which differ mainly in terms of the presence and absence of PFC. The current study investigated the production and perception of prosodic focus marking in Makkan Arabic, an under-researched Arabic dialect. Systematic acoustic analyses and statistical tests show that (a) the on-focus word is realized by expanding the excursion size, increasing the F 0 and strengthening the intensity of its stressed syllable, (b) information and contrastive focus are not prosodically distinguishable, (c) Makkan Arabic lacks PFC, and (d) focus recognition is low compared to Hijazi Arabic (+PFC), Taiwanese and Taiwan Mandarin (other −PFC languages). The new findings, taken together with recent findings, suggest that (1) the prosodic encoding of focus is different across Arabic dialects productively and perceptually, and (2) the on-focus raising is not a sufficient factor in recognizing prosodic cues to focus. These results contribute to broadening our understanding of different prosodic focus markings cross-linguistically and cross-dialectally.

Research on the phonological constraints on the linear order in binomial phrases has proven that the tendency to place the short conjunct before the long one can be active differently in different languages. The current research addresses the short-before-long preference tendency in binomials in Qassimi Arabic. It shows that Qassimi Arabic binomials manifest the short-before-long preference in three possible forms: (1) the conjunct containing the fewer phonemes (i.e., the shorter item) tends to precede the one containing the more phonemes (i.e., the longer item) within the same binomial phrase, (2) the conjunct containing the fewer syllables (i.e. the shorter item) tends to precede the one containing the more syllables (i.e. the longer item) within the same binomial phrase, and (3) the conjunct containing the shorter vowel (i.e. the shorter item) tends to precede the one containing the longer vowel (i.e. the longer item) within the same binomial phrase. To approve the real existence of these proposed hypotheses in Qassimi Arabic binomials, the study adopts a quantitative analysis which has largely been adopted in relevant studies. The findings of the quantitative analysis of a big number of binomials (336 binomial pairs) indicate the satisfaction rates for the three hypotheses posited in the current study are statistically highly significant. Therefore, the study concludes that there is definite evidence for the factual existence of the short-before-long preference in Qassimi Arabic binomials, a finding which is compatible with similar studies in binomials in English and some other European languages.

We identify and propose an analysis in LFG of Gapping construction in Taif "Hijazi" Arabic (TA). Gapping occurs in a coordination structure where the initial conjunct is syntactically complete and the non-initial conjunct is incomplete. To my knowledge, there is no previous description or analysis of gapping in TA. There have been two competing analyses in the literature on gapping, which view gapping as a result of a trace of movement and non-constituent coordination. In this paper, we show that none of these approaches succeeds to account for Gapping in TA, and hence, they fail to capture the facts of gapping in this Arabic dialect. Instead, we adopts a functionspreading approach within Lexical-Functional Grammar (LFG), and show how it is able to account for the facts of gapping in TA, using mechanisms proposed independently for other construction types.