Abstract
This study provides a historical typological Optimality Theoretic analysis of the treatment of potential super-heavy syllables in six Arabic varieties: Hijazi, Egyptian, Emirati, Kuwaiti, Algerian, and Palestinian. The analysis in this study uses the same violable OT constraints for all languages, and the differences between the grammars are represented by the order in which the constraints are ranked relative to one another. The similarities and differences between these varieties are examined from the point of view of one approach to historical OT (Cho 1998), which states that individual pairs of constraints may be ranked or unranked in relation to one another, one operation at a time, meaning that switching the order of two constraints takes two steps historically. According to Cho (1998, 45), “each step of a sound change should be viewed as a change in the ranking of constraints.” Cho’s approach in detecting the historical typological differences between varieties by counting the steps of constraint reranking is compatible with a common approach to historical linguistics. Specifically, Wichmann et al. (2010) provide a quantitative method for determining the geographic homeland of a group of related languages, which takes into account a simple linguistic-difference metric and the geographic distance between the languages. Using constraint reranking in place of Wichmann et al.’s linguistic-difference metric to calculate the homeland of Arabic dialects results in an area around Hijaz as the homeland of Arabic dialects, since Hijazi, Egyptian and Emirati dialects form a cluster of geographically close, but linguistically diverse dialects.
Highlights
This paper considers the typology of how Arabic dialects deal with the potential generation of super-heavy syllables word-internally
The Hijazi, Emirati, and Kuwaiti speakers all represent Arabian dialects of modern Arabic, the Egyptian speaker is the only representtative of Egyptian Arabic, the Rural Palestinian speaker is the only representative of Levantine Arabic, and the Algerian speaker is the only knowledge of Modern Standard Arabic (MSA), and knowledge of other languages, only the variable of dialect is relevant to this study
This study provides an Optimality Theoretic (OT) analysis of potential super-heavy syllables in six Arabic dialects: Hijazi, Egyptian, Emirati, Kuwaiti, Algerian, and Palestinian
Summary
This paper considers the typology of how Arabic dialects deal with the potential generation of super-heavy syllables word-internally. Superheavy syllables are syllables with at least three timing slots in the rhyme, including CVVC, CVCC, and CVC.1 Syllables like these are problematic for a language such as Arabic, since normally three moras would be associated with them, one for each slot in the rhyme, while a syllable is in principle restricted to having two moras. This paper provides an Optimality Theoretic (OT) analysis of four Arabic dialects based on a representative data set These analyses will use the same violable constraints, and the differences between the grammars of the languages will be represented by the order in which the constraints are ranked relative to one another.
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