Syllabification patterns in Arabic dialects: long segments and mora sharing

Abstract

In Classical Arabic and many modern Arabic dialects, syllables ending in VVC or in the left leg of a geminate have a special status. An examination of Kiparsky's (2003) semisyllable account of syllabification types and related phenomena in Arabic against a wider set of data shows that while this account explains much syllable-related variation, certain phenomena cannot be captured, and several dialects appear to exhibit conflicting syllable-related phenomena. Phenomena not readily covered by the semisyllable account commonly involve long segmentslong vowels or geminate consonants. In this paper, I propose for relevant dialects a mora-sharing solution that recognises the special status of syllables incorporating long segments. Such a mora-sharing solution is not new, but has been proposed for the analysis of syllables containing long segments in a number of languages, including Arabic (Broselow 1992, Broselow et al. 1995, Malayalam, Hindi (Broselow et al. 1997) and Bantu languages (Maddieson 1993, Hubbard 1995.

Geminate timing in Lebanese Arabic: the relationship between phonetic timing and phonological structure

“…A moraic view of timing was tested due to the fact that Moraic Theory has been shown to account for various aspects of stress and syllable structure in Arabic (e.g., Broselow et al 1997;Watson 2007; Davis and Ragheb to appear), but also due to its ability to yield different predictions for phonetic behaviour of short and long vowels when preceding geminate consonants.…”

“…The minimal word structure and stress patterns in LA provide evidence for a weight distinction that is driven by moraic timing (Broselow et al 1997;Ham 2001;Watson 2007;Davis and Ragheb to appear): onset consonants are weightless while codas acquire a mora due to the Weight by Position rule (Hayes 1989: 258). Hence CV syllables in LA are light, CVV and CVC are heavy, while CVVC and CVCC are superheavy.…”

“…Kiparsky (2003) and Watson (2007) suggest that this indeed is the case, but quantitative evidence is only available for the outcome in short vowel contexts (Ham 2001). In his study of Levantine Arabic, 3 Ham (2001: 134) highlights the lack of vowel shortening in short vowel contexts followed by medial geminates, but did not elicit CVVC G .C G V data in order to test the predictions in long 3 Two of the participants were from Jordan and the third from the West Bank, but the words the participants read were embedded in carrier sentences that were read in a formal register (/quːl baeːbi mara θanja/ 'say my door again').…”

Epenthesis and Devocalization in the Djelfa Dialect of Algerian Arabic: An OT Account

“…In Arabic CVCC and CVVC syllables are treated as superheavy syllables [2], [10], [11], [8], [6]. These syllables incur a serious cost of the foot size as they are comprised of three morae and accordingly breach *3μ that is undominated in Arabic.…”

“…Epenthesis is a recurrent theme that has been investigated in many Arabic dialects [1,2], [3], [4], [5], [6], [7], [8], [9] to name but a few. Most of the Arabic studies that revolve around epenthesis had approached the issue from three main angles: the quality of the epenthetic vowel, its docking site and stress-epenthesis interaction.…”