The Behaviour of the Schwa in the Saoura Spoken Arabic: schwa epenthesis and deletion

Abstract

In the present study, we argue in favour of adopting a moraic approach to the syllable to describe and explain phenomena in prosodic phonology. We indicate that the implementation of the mora (Hyman, 1985) in the Saoura Spoken Arabic (henceforth SSA) syllables helps in explaining morpho-phonological processes, namely 'the Disparity in Epenthesis ' between words on the pattern CəCC and those on the pattern CCəC, and 'the Schwa Vowel deletion' in a specific morphological context. We attempt to clarify that in order to account for the difference in epenthesis between CəCC and CCəC, we have to refer to both the moraic structure and the inflectional paradigm. We also try to demonstrate that the assumed schwa vowel, inserted via an epenthesis rule, disappears in fluent speech.