Summary of Syllables and Moras in Arabic - Essay Example

It also comes in the Hijazidialects of Central Arabia, and the dialects of Eastern Libya, and two groups of Egyptian dialects, spoken in the Easternmost part ofthe Delta, and in Upper Egypt approximately to Asyut.. According to the table above, there are some of the cross-dialectal generalizations noticed. In phrase final CC- clusters, the VC- dialect either permit no –CC clusters (kalib,katabit) or permit them only with falling sosnority (kalb, katabit). Geminates often feature in the class of permissible initial CC- clusters (Kiparsky, 2003).

Most often arising from assimilation, initial geminates occur only in VC- dialects. They can be resolved by epenthesis in the same way as other onset clusters, e.g. /l-landan/ llandan, ?illandan `to London, /l-ˇcaay/ ˇc-ˇcaay`the tea. Medial -CCC- clusters are broken up as -CiCC- in VC-dialects. \Metathesis" of medial -CCiC- to -CiCC- occurs only in VC-dialects (column D), e.g. /yi-ktib-u/ yikitbu `they write. CV-dialects always retain -CCiC- (yiktibu). High vowel deletion occurs after geminates only in the VC- dialects (column E).e.g.

/y-kallim-u/ (y)ikal(l)mu `they talk to someone, /y-sakkir-u/ (y)isak(k)ru, `they shut, /y-Qallim-u/ (y)iQal(l)mu `they teach. Former theoretical literature has settled on issues of divergent ways of resolving consonant clusters by epenthesis, and the issue of cyclinity and opacity. In a variation on this approach, Broselow 1992 claimed that stray consonants link via Moras in VC-dialects. A rather different approach got initiated by Itˆo 1986, 1989, and further developed by Farwaneh 1995 (Kiparsky, 2003).

They suggested that VC-dialects syllabify right-to-left. Mester and Padgett 1994 noted that this processual formulation could translate into constraint-based terms by means of alignment constraints. In the VC- dialects license, the