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The Phonology of Ma'ani Arabic

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The Phonology of Ma'ani Arabic The Phonology of Ma’ani Arabic: Stratal or Parallel OT Belal A. Rakhieh A thesis submitted for the degree of Ph.D. Department of Language and Linguistics University of Essex September 2009 DEDICATION i ACKNOWLEDGEMENT All praise is due to Allah almighty to whom I express my first and uppermost gratitude for the completion of this dissertation. This thesis could not have been completed without the assistance, constant support and guidance of my supervisor, Wyn Johnson, whose feedback and encouragement are invaluable. I would like to express my deepest gratitude to you, Wyn. Special thanks go to the members of my research committee, David Britain and Rebecca Clift. This work has been improved greatly by your questions and comments. I am also indebted to Enam Al-Wer for all the great discussion we had and for all the useful references she provided me. I am also indebted to the members of the weekly Phonology Workshop, Wyn Johnson, Nancy Kula, Hana Daana, Moris Al-Omar, Jennifer Amos, Catharine Carfoot and Verónica Villafaña, with whom I have interacted during the course of my graduate studies. Special thanks are due in particular for Hana and Moris for all their useful comments. I am also grateful to Al-Hussein Bin Talal University in Jordan who contributes to bring this work to light by financially supporting me. My mother and my father, words cannot express my sincere gratitude to you. Your continuous prayers, support and unconditional love have been the source of relief and strength during difficult times. My brothers, my sisters and their families deserve big thanks as they have been incredibly supportive at all times. Last but not least, I owe the greatest debt of gratitude to my wife, Rabah. Rabah has been at my side throughout this work, enduring the erratic hours and most importantly managing to relief my own angst. All the while, Rabah has been raising up, almost alone, a wonderful little boy, Mohammad. Our life together is my greatest ii joy, and it, above all, is my greatest source of strength. Rabah, I am grateful for you being patient, supportive and understanding. Hammada, my little cute son, thanks for being my child and bringing me a lot of fun. iii ABSTRACT Accounting for the phonology of Ma’ani Arabic, a JA dialect that has never previously been studied, and supporting the superiority of Stratal Optimality Theory over other parallel Optimality Theory models, i.e. classic, Sympathy and Correspondence, are the main purposes of this dissertation. This dissertation is dedicated to the investigation of the phonology of Ma’ani Arabic. Special attention is given on stress assignment, vowel epenthesis, syncope, geminates and the interaction of these processes. Authentic examples from Ma’ani Arabic and other Arabic dialects show that the interaction of phonology and morphology is inevitable. In chapter three, the transparent stress assignment rules is comprehensively investigated and accounted for. Segment epenthesis is investigated in chapter four, where two types are identified, i.e. lexical and postlexical. Prosthetic / Бi/, which is inserted before the imperative form, and the epenthetic vowel /i/, which breaks sequences of four medial consonant clusters, are lexical. The epenthetic /i/, which breaks medial three consonant clusters and final antisonority clusters, is postlexical. The dissertation addresses syncope and vowel shortening in chapter five. It is argued that the high short vowel deletion is a lexical process that takes place at both the stem and word levels. Vowel shortening in open and closed syllables takes place at the stem level only. An account is developed in chapter six to explain the nature of geminates in Ma’ani Arabic. It is argued that there are two types of geminates in Arabic, i.e. true and fake geminates. True geminates are underlyingly moraic, while fake geminates iv are sequences of identical consonants which result form a constraint that prohibits high short vowels between identical consonants. Ma’ani Arabic is compared to other Jordanian dialects and to other neighbouring dialects through out this dissertation. When certain phonological phenomena are active in Ma’ani and other Arabic dialects, this dissertation tries to uncover the underlying reasons especially when these phenomena behave differently in one of the dialects. Finally, chapter seven summarises the main outcomes of the current dissertation and gives some recommendations for future research. v TABLE OF CONTENTS DEDICATION ............................................................................................................... I ACKNOWLEDGEMENT ............................................................................................ II ABSTRACT ............................................................................................................... IV TABLE OF CONTENTS ........................................................................................... VI LIST OF SYMBOLS AND ABBREVIATIONS ..................................................... VIII LIST OF CONSTRAINTS ........................................................................................... X 1 INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................. 1 1.1 LOCALITY ........................................................................................................... 1 1.2 THE DIALECT UNDER INVESTIGATION ................................................................ 3 1.3 CONSONANT INVENTORY IN MA ........................................................................ 5 1.4 VOWEL INVENTORY IN MA ................................................................................ 8 1.5 DATA SOURCES ................................................................................................ 10 1.6 OVERVIEW OF THE DISSERTATION .................................................................... 11 2 THEORETICAL BACKGROUND .................................................................... 13 2.1 INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................. 13 2.2 OPTIMALITY THEORY ....................................................................................... 16 2.2.1 Classic OT ............................................................................................... 20 2.2.1.1 Opacity ............................................................................................. 24 2.2.2 Correspondence Theory........................................................................... 27 2.2.3 Sympathy Theory ..................................................................................... 34 2.2.4 Stratal OT ................................................................................................ 37 2.2.4.1 An Introduction to Lexical Phonology ............................................ 37 2.2.4.2 Stratal Optimality Theory ................................................................ 40 2.3 WHICH OT MODEL ? ......................................................................................... 44 2.4 OVERVIEW OF ARABIC MORPHOLOGY .............................................................. 48 2.4.1 Introduction ............................................................................................. 48 2.4.2 The Generative-Transformational Approach .......................................... 49 2.4.3 The Autosegmental Approach .................................................................. 50 2.5 CHAPTER CONCLUSION ..................................................................................... 56 3 PROSODIC FEATURES .................................................................................... 57 3.1 THE SYLLABLE ................................................................................................. 57 3.1.1 Types and Representations of the Syllable .............................................. 58 3.1.2 Syllable Typology..................................................................................... 64 3.1.3 The Syllable in OT ................................................................................... 67 3.1.4 The Sonority Hierarchy and the Syllable................................................. 69 3.1.5 The Syllable in Arabic ............................................................................. 74 3.1.5.1 Syllable weight and Consonant Extrametricality in Arabic ............ 75 3.1.6 Syllable Types in Jordanian Arabic Dialects .......................................... 80 3.1.6.1 The Onset in JA ............................................................................... 84 3.1.6.2 Coda in JA ....................................................................................... 87 3.2 THE FOOT ......................................................................................................... 92 3.2.1 The Foot in MA ........................................................................................ 94 3.2.2 Section Summary ..................................................................................... 98 3.3 STRESS IN MA .................................................................................................. 99 vi 3.3.1 General Stress Pattern in MA .................................................................. 99 3.3.2 Transparent Stress Rules ....................................................................... 102 3.3.2.1 Monosyllabic words......................................................................
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