Regressive Vowel Harmony in Libyan Arabic

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to study Regressive vowel harmony induced by a suffixal back round vowel in the Libyan Arabic dialect spoken in the city of Misrata. The skeletal structure in the collected words is a /CVCVC-/ stem followed by the third person plural suffix /-u/. Consequently, the derived form of the examined words becomes /CVCVCV/. Following a rule of re-syllabification, the coda of the ultimate syllable in the stem becomes the onset of the newly formed syllable (ultimate in the derived form). Thus, in the presence of the suffix /-u/ in the derived form, all vowels in the word must harmonise with the [+round] feature of /-u/ unless there is a high front vowel /i/ intervening. In such cases, the high front vowel is defined as an opaque segment that is incompatible with the feature [+round]. Syllable and morpheme boundaries within words do not seem to contribute to blocking the regressive spreading of harmony. An autosegmental approach to analyze these words is adopted here. It is concluded that there are two sources in underlying representations for regressive vowel harmony in Libyan Arabic. One source is floating [+round] and another source is [+round].