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The analysis of coda clusters in Jizani Arabic: An OT perspective
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 LinguisticsISSN
1923-869XPublisher
Canadian Center of Science and EducationExternal DOI
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12Page range
89-89Department affiliated with
- English Publications
Full text available
- Yes
Peer reviewed?
- Yes
Legacy Posted Date
2022-07-01First Open Access (FOA) Date
2022-07-01First Compliant Deposit (FCD) Date
2022-07-01Usage metrics
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