Syllabification patterns in Arabic dialects: long segments and mora sharing

Watson, JCE

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 segments – long 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).

Citation

Watson, J. (2007). Syllabification patterns in Arabic dialects: long segments and mora sharing. Phonology, 24(2), 335-356. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0952675707001224

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Publication Date: Jan 1, 2007
• Deposit Date: Jan 27, 2009
• Journal: Phonology
• Print ISSN: 0952-6757
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press (CUP)
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 24
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 335-356
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0952675707001224
• Publisher URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0952675707001224