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The Directionality of Emphasis Spread in Arabic

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The Directionality of Emphasis Spread in Arabic Remarks and Replies TheDirectionality of Emphasis Spread in Arabic JanetC. E.Watson Manymodern Arabic dialects exhibit asymmetries in the direction of emphasis(for most dialects, pharyngealization) spread. In a dialect ofYemeniArabic, emphasis has two articulatory correlates, pharyn- gealizationand labialization: within the phonological word, pharyn- gealizationspreads predominantly leftward, and labialization spreads rightward,targeting short high vowels. Since asymmetries in the direc- tionalityof spread of a secondaryfeature are phonetically motivated anddepend on whether the feature is anchored to the onset or the releasephase of the primary articulation, it is argued that the unmarked directionalityof spread should be encoded in the phonology as a markednessstatement on thatfeature. Keywords: Arabicdialects, emphasis, Grounded Phonology, labializa- tion,pharyngealization Thisarticle considers phonological emphasis in Arabic.It is dividedinto two parts. I firstdiscuss anarticle by Davis (1995) on asymmetriesin emphasisspread (spread of [RTR]) intwo dialects ofPalestinianArabic, and argue for thesignificance of directionality in emphasisspread. I then presentfurther supporting arguments for ahypothesisregarding directionality of spreadby consid- eringdata from S. an¨a¯n¯õ ,adialectof Yemeni Arabic, in which emphasis has two articulatory correlates,pharyngealization and labialization, and bydiscussingthe asymmetries in the direction- alityof spread,particularly of labialization,in this dialect. 1EmphasisSpread and Grounded Phonology Inan article on emphasis spread in two modern Palestinian dialects of Arabic, Davis (1995) adoptsGrounded Phonology (Archangeli and Pulleyblank 1994) to account for setsof opaque Thanksto Barry Heselwood for spectrographic analysis of my data andfor reading and commenting on various draftsof thisarticle; toJames Dickins;to Judith Broadbent; and to S.J.Hannahs,Mike Davenport, Phil Carr, andother members ofthe Phonology Reading Group at DurhamUniversity for providing critical comments onearlier versions. Thanksalso to two anonymous reviewers for LI.Theusual disclaimers apply.Thanks are alsodue to theUniversity of Durhamfor a SpecialStaff Travel Grant that allowed me totravelto Yemen inDecember 1994to collect thedata required forthis article, toTim Mackintosh-Smithfor assisting in my data collection,and to Abd al-Sala ¯m al-Amr¯õ forcheerfully providingmuch of the data. Some of thearguments presented in this article haveappeared in CMEISOccasional Papers and in the Proceedingsof theSecond AIDA Conference. Linguistic Inquiry, Volume 30, Number 2,Spring 1999 289–300 q 1999 bythe Massachusetts Institute ofTechnology 289 290 REMARKSANDREPLIES phonemesfound in these dialects and for differencesin the directionality of emphasis spread. Thepattern of emphasisspread (in this case spread of pharyngealization)varies from dialectto dialectin Arabic: in Cairene emphasis usually affects the whole phonological word; in Abha (spokenin Saudi Arabia) emphasis rarely spreads beyond the adjacent vowel; in Qatari Arabic emphasisspreads bidirectionally over the whole word, and where the emphaticis thefirst segment ofaword,emphasis may also spread leftward across the word boundary into the adjacent word (Bukshaisha1985:217 –219).In the two Palestinian dialects Davis considers, emphasis spread is bidirectionalwithin the phonological word but exhibits a rightward/leftwardasymmetry: leftward spreadis generally unbounded, whereas rightward spread is blockedby asetof opaque segments for eachdialect. Grounded Phonology views opacity as the result of imposinga groundedpath conditionon thetarget of a rulerather than (more traditionally)as theresult of specifyingopaque segmentsfor theopposite value of the spreading feature. A groundedpath condition is taken to bea featurecooccurrence restriction that can be motivated by phonetic criteria. Grounded path conditionsare labeled as weak or strong depending on the strength of phonetic motivation and onhow phonologically common they are across languages. Archangeli and Pulleyblank demon- stratethat there are grounded path conditions on thefeatures [ATR] and[low] andon thefeatures [RTR] and[high], as in (1) (Davis1995:468). (1) a. ATR/LOCondition If [`ATR] then [1low]. If [`ATR] thennot [ `low]. b. RTR/HICondition If [1ATR] then [1high]. If [1ATR] thennot [ `high]. Inthe southern dialect of Palestinian Arabic that Davis discusses, right-to-left emphasis spread (pharyngealization)is unbounded within the phonological word; however, left-to-right emphasis spreadis blockedby the [ `high, 1back]phonemes / i,y,sÏ ,j/.Considerthe examples in (2) and (3) (see Davis’s (11)and (12)). 1 (2) Wordsdisplaying leftward spread of emphasis(a southern dialect of PalestinianArabic) a. BALLAAS. ‘thief’ b. HAD. D. ‘luck’ c. ¨AT. sÏ aan ‘thirsty’ d. ¯ABSAT. ‘happier’ e. MAJAS. S. AS. -isÏ ‘itdid not solidify’ f. NASÏ AAT. ‘energy’ 1 FollowingDavis, targets ofpharyngealization are transcribedin uppercase, a dotunder a letter indicatesthe underlyingemphatic, and lowercase letters indicatesurface nonpharyngealizedsounds. / j/represents avoicedpalatoalveolar affricate, and/ y/represents apalatal glide.In contrast to Davis,the voiceless pharyngealfricative is transcribedwith a subscriptdot, the interdentals are transcribedwith a subscriptline, and the emphatic interdentalfricative is transcribed witha subscriptline plus a subscriptdot. REMARKSANDREPLIES 291 (3) Wordsdisplaying rightward spread of emphasis (a southern dialect of Palestinian Arabic) a. S. ABAAH. ‘morning’ b. ¯AT. FAAL ‘children’ c. T. UUB-AK ‘yourm.s. blocks’ d. S. OOT-AK ‘yourm.s. voice’ e. S. EEF-AK ‘yourm.s. sword’ f. T. iin-ak ‘yourm.s. clay’ g. S. Ayyaad ‘fisher;hunter’ h. ¨AT. sÏ aan ‘thirsty’ i. D. Ajjaat [typeof noise] As (3) illustrates,rightward spread of emphasis is blockedonly by members of the set / i,y,s Ï , j/ (butinterestingly, not by ee (3e),which derives historically from thediphthong / ay/). Evenepen- thetic[i] servesto block rightward spread in this dialect, as illustratedin (4b). 2 (4) a. BAT. N-AK ‘yourm.s. stomach’ b. BAT. in-ha‘ herstomach’ Inthe northern dialect of Palestinian Arabic that Davis discusses, emphasis spreads leftward from theunderlying emphatic consonant to thebeginning of theword (though it mayoptionally failto spreadinto inflectional prefixes (Davis 1996:484)); however, rightward spread is frequently restrictedto afollowinglow vowel and is blocked by anintervening high phoneme / sÏ , y, w, i, u/ (Herzallah1990). Since data from thenorthern dialect of Palestinian Arabic do not add to, or detractfrom, myargument, I shallnot consider this dialect further. 2FeatureRelations in Grounded Phonology InGrounded Phonology, feature relations are said to be eithersympathetic or antagonistic.Thus, itcan be saidthat [ `high, 1back]vowels and consonants (i.e., / i,y,j,sÏ /)blockrightward spread of[RTR] inthe southern dialect of PalestinianArabic under investigation precisely because the tonguebody retraction required for RTR(spread of pharyngealization) is antagonistic with the hightongue body configuration needed for [ `high]and the front tongue body configuration requiredfor [ 1back].In other words, the cooccurrence of [RTR] and[ `high, 1back]is dis- allowedbecause the two (sets of) featuresare physiologically antagonistic (Davis 1995:475). For thesouthern Palestinian Arabic dialect, the RTR/ HIConditiongiven in (1b)is modifiedas in(5) toinclude a conditionon thecooccurrence of [RTR] andfront segments, the RTR/ FRCondition (Davis1995:475). 2 Bycontrast, Herzallah (1990:109–110fn., 190f., cited in McCarthy 1997) claims thatepenthetic [i] in northern PalestinianArabic isphonologicallyfeatureless. 292 REMARKSANDREPLIES (5) a. RTR/HICondition If [RTR] thennot [ `high]. b. RTR/FRCondition If [RTR]then not [ 1back]. That[RTR] spread in southern Palestinian Arabic is blocked by the set of [ `high, 1back] consonantsand vowels is indisputablya phoneticallygrounded condition since it is physiologically motivated.However, as Davis points out, whereas left-to-right [RTR] spreadis blockedby [ `high, 1back]and is thus subject to the antagonistic RTR/ FRandRTR/ HIConditions,right-to-left [RTR] spreadis unbounded (see (2)). Davisproposes that this discrepancy is accounted for by thefact that grounded path conditions may be process specific and do not necessarily hold for theentire language; thus, Grounded Phonology invokes the target conditions (5a –b)on the rule ofrightwardspread but not on therule of leftwardspread. The rule of rightwardemphasis spread for southernPalestinian Arabic is expressedas in(6) usingthe parametric rule formalism devel- opedby Archangeli and Pulleyblank (1994) (Davis 1995:476). (6) RightwardEmphasis [RTR] Spread(in a southernPalestinian dialect) Argument [RTR] Parameters 1.Function: INSERT 2.Type: PATH 3.Direction: LEFT TORIGHT 4.Iteration: ITERATIVE Structurerequirements 1.Argument structure: NONE 2.Target structure: FREE Otherrequirements 1.Argument condition: SECONDARY PLACE 2.Target conditions: RTR/ HIandRTR/ FR Comparethis with leftward emphasis spread, in whichthere are no targetconditions (Davis 1995: 477–478). (7) LeftwardEmphasis [RTR] Spread(in a southernPalestinian dialect) Argument [RTR] Parameters 1.Function: INSERT 2.Type: PATH 3.Direction: RIGHT TOLEFT 4.Iteration: ITERATIVE REMARKSANDREPLIES 293 Structurerequirements 1.Argument structure: NONE 2.Target structure: FREE Otherrequirements 1.Argument condition: SECONDARY PLACE 2.Target conditions: NONE Inthis article I arguethat although the
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