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The analysis of coda clusters in Jizani Arabic: An OT perspective

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posted on 2023-06-10, 04:06 authored by Raneem Bosli, Lynne CahillLynne Cahill
This paper explains how native speakers of Jizani Arabic (henceforth, JA) treat final consonant clusters in superheavy syllables (CVCC) using a parallel Optimality Theory (Prince & Smolensky, 1993, 2004) to show how the theory can account for the cross-linguistic variations of coda clusters through the ranking of different constraints. JA is a Saudi dialect spoken in the southwestern part of Saudi Arabia in Jizan city. It is common among many Saudi Arabic dialects like Najdi, Hijazi, Taifi and Qassimi that rising sonority in coda clusters is avoided by using vowel epenthesis to comply with the Sonority Sequencing Principle (henceforth, SSP), where there is no difference between nasals and liquids. However, in JA, we observe that vowel epenthesis occurs only if the last segment in CVCC is a liquid (/l/ or /?/); for instance, /t?ifl/à [t?ifil] ‘child’ and /hib?/à [hibi?] ‘ink’. The vowel has been epenthesized because the last consonant in both examples is more sonorous than the preceding obstruents. However, the vowel will not be inserted if the final consonant is a nasal preceded by an obstruent; for instance, /lahm/à[lahm] ‘meat’ and /gut?n/à[gut?n] ‘cotton’. Although the universal sonority scale ranks nasals as more sonorous than obstruents, nasals in JA behave as they are equally sonorous as obstruents. In other words, nasals in this dialect group with stops and fricatives in the sonority scale.

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Publication status

  • Published

File Version

  • Published version

Journal

International Journal of English Linguistics

ISSN

1923-869X

Publisher

Canadian Center of Science and Education

Volume

12

Page range

89-89

Department affiliated with

  • English Publications

Full text available

  • Yes

Peer reviewed?

  • Yes

Legacy Posted Date

2022-07-01

First Open Access (FOA) Date

2022-07-01

First Compliant Deposit (FCD) Date

2022-07-01

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