A COMPREHENSIVE ANALYSIS OF CODA CLUSTERS IN HIJAZI ARABIC: AN OPTIMALITY-THEORETIC PERSPECTIVE Hassan Abdulrashed Bokhari Submitted to the faculty of the University Graduate School in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of Linguistics and the Department of Near-Eastern Languages & Cultures, Indiana University December 2020 Accepted by the Graduate Faculty, Indiana University, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Doctoral Committee Stuart Davis, PhD Salman Al-Ani, PhD Tracy Hall, PhD Nader Morkus, PhD Öner Özçelik, PhD November 12, 2020 ii Copyright © 2020 Hassan Abdulrashed Bokhari iii To my parents, and my family iv Acknowledgments At the end of my academic journey at Indiana University, I would like to extend my thanks and gratitude to many individuals without whom this dissertation could not have been completed. First, I would like to extend my deepest gratitude to Professor Stuart Davis, the chair of my dissertation committee and my advisor in the linguistics department, for his tremendous support and guidance in the field of linguistics. He was always impressing me with his profound, comprehensive knowledge in the fields of phonology and morphology. From him, I learned a lot, especially how to develop a deep and critical analysis of many topics in phonology and morphology. He also provided me with constructive critiques, which helped to build this study. He was with me with help and support through all the chapters of the study and he always provided me with good comments and the materials that I needed. He was deeply enthusiastic about all parts of my study, especially my analysis of guttural sounds. Professor Davis was always available whenever I had any questions or needed help. During this unprecedented time of quarantine, he always wanted to ensure that nothing was preventing me academically or financially from making good progress in my study. I especially thank him for guiding me through the last stage of my dissertation writing in terms of keeping up with deadlines and the requirements for the PhD degree. No matter what I say, it wouldn’t be enough to thank Professor Davis for his help and support. My sincere, deep thanks to Professor Salman Al-Ani, the co-chair of my dissertation committee and my advisor in the Near Eastern Languages and Cultures department, for his help, encouragement, and support throughout my graduate career. He especially helped me a lot when I first came to Indiana University with his advice and mentoring. I have learned a lot from him about the phonetics and phonology of Arabic dialects. Professor Al-Ani was always encouraging v me to pursue a broad and deep investigation of various topics of Arabic phonetics and phonology. I am proud to be one of his students in the Near Eastern Languages and Cultures department. I would like to thank Professor Tracy Hall for serving on my dissertation committee as a member from the linguistics department. His phonological seminar has expanded my knowledge in markedness theory. I also benefited from his valuable comments and critiques concerning my dissertation analysis. Although I learned a lot from him, I wish to have had the opportunity to learn more from his knowledge of phonological theory. I extend my thanks to Professor Nader Morkus for serving as a committee member from the department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures. I learned much from his language pedagogy course, from which I have obtained a good method in how to develop an interactive and cooperative language learning class. Many thanks to Professor Öner Özçelik for his encouragement and support, as well as serving as a committee member in my minor in the department of Central Eurasian Studies. I have benefited from and enjoyed both his language class and linguistic structure class. I learned a lot from him, and his dissertation was one of the early manuscripts that I enjoyed reading at the beginning of my graduate career. I wish all the best to him and his dear wife, Teuta. I am grateful for Professor Joseph Clements and Professor Robert Botne for their encouragement, help and support. I also extend many thanks to Professor Ken de Jong and Professor Steven Franks from the Department of Linguistics. I learned a lot from them and they helped to build my knowledge in different fields of linguistics. Thank you also to Professor Asma Afsaruddin from the department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures for her support and her service on my Master and Phd examination committees in the department of Near vi Eastern Languages and Cultures. I would like to thank Professor Jamsheed Choksy, the chair of the department of Central Eurasian Studies, for his encouragement and support. I really enjoyed being in his history class and I learned how to develop a critical analysis of the major events, which changed the shape of the history of the Middle East. My special thanks also to Professor Kemal Silay in the department of Central Eurasian Studies for his encouragement and motivation during my early years at Indiana University. Thank you very much to my friends and colleagues, Dr. Jonathan Washington, Dr. John Scott, Matthew Carter, David Bolter, Andrew Lamont, Samson Lotven, Tyler Kniess, Elijah Peters, Benjamin Swakopf, Abdulhamid Gadoua and Jeremy Coburn for their motivation, energy and support. My many thanks to all of my many classmates over the years in the department of Linguistics, the department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures, and the department of Central Eurasian Studies. You all stay in my heart. I would also like to offer my warmest thanks to my friends from the Bloomington community, Saleh Al-Sihli, Dr. Tulah Al-Salah, Dr. Attia Youseif, Mr. Gul-Muhammad and Ayoub Lassoued for their company, help and loyalty. I am grateful to my country, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, to have given me the opportunity to pursue my higher education in the U.S. through the Ministry of Education Program for Studying Abroad. Also special thanks to the Clarence R. McIntire and Peggy Thomas McIntire Scholarship as well as the Indiana University Department of Linguistics Fellowship for their support during the final stages of my dissertation. I would also like to thank the employees at the Assistive Technology & Accessibility Centers at Indiana University for their help and accommodation. Thank you to Mary Stores, Brian Richwine and Christopher Goodbeer for converting my documents into Braille and other accessible formats. vii I am extremely grateful to everyone who has made this study possible, and have tried to recognize by name everyone I can. My sincerest apologies to those individuals whom I could not mention by name here. They are always in my heart. I am very grateful to my parents and my siblings for their love and support, especially the greatest woman in my life, my dear mom, for her unconditional love and continuous sincere prayers during my long journey in the U.S. She always encouraged me to be patient during the difficulties in my academic life and ensured to me that I would achieve all of my goals. I could never reward her for all that she has done for me. May God bless her and reward her for all her efforts during my long educational journey. Thank you also to my father for his support and his encouragement to complete my degree in a timely fashion. I would also like to offer my thanks to my middle sister, Um-Bassaam, for her encouragement and motivation. Finally, may God have mercy upon the soul of my grandmother, ‘Ā’isha, who loved me deeply and always hoped that I would pursue higher education. viii Hassan Abdulrashed Bokhari A COMPREHENSIVE ANALYSIS OF CODA CLUSTERS IN HIJAZI ARABIC: AN OPTIMALITY-THEORETIC PERSPECTIVE In Hijazi Arabic, an urban dialect spoken in the western region of Saudi Arabia, sonority, which is defined as the loudness of a particular speech sound relative to others (Ladefoged & Johnson 2010), plays a particularly important role in constructing the coda consonant cluster, which occurs in word-final position. This means that there are restrictions on the relative sonority of consonants that can form part of a syllable coda cluster. The current study utilizes the Split- Margin Approach to the syllable (Baertsch, 2002; Baertsch & Davis, 2009) within the framework of Optimality Theory to analyze the sonority of coda clusters in the dialect. The goal of this study is to determine the segment sonority scale in Hijazi Arabic, which necessitates a comprehensive phonetic and phonological investigation of guttural sounds in Arabic. Furthermore, it examines other constraints that play a role in shaping the coda cluster in the dialect. One of the major findings of the study is that Hijazi Arabic does not allow rising-sonority coda clusters, but tolerates level-sonority coda clusters with restrictions. Moreover, there are high-ranked constraints in the dialect independent of the sonority hierarchy that prevent various other cluster types from comprising a coda. In addition, the study offers a new approach to the analysis of vowel-glide coalescence in triliteral roots which consist of a medial glide and word-final glide vocalization in triliteral roots ending with a glide. The study also analyzes the status of coda geminates in Hijazi Arabic. Finally, vowel quality in sonority-driven epenthesis is analyzed in depth. ix Stuart Davis, PhD Salman Al-Ani, PhD Tracy Hall, PhD Nader Morkus, PhD Öner Özçelik, PhD x Table of Contents Chapter 1: Preliminaries ............................................................................................................. 1 Background and Goal of Study ................................................................................................... 1 1.1. Hijazi Arabic ........................................................................................................................ 3 1.1.1. Dialect Distribution and Name ..................................................................................... 3 1.1.2. Current Status................................................................................................................ 4 1.1.3.