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Part of
Perspectives on Arabic Linguistics XXIX: Papers from the Annual Symposium on Arabic Linguistics, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, 2015
Edited by Hamid Ouali
[Studies in Arabic Linguistics 5] 2017
► pp. 33–54

Chapter 2
Prosodic domains of syllabification in Sudanese Arabic

| University of Toronto

This paper proposes a prosodic account of syncope and of epenthesis and consonant deletion, which function as strategies for repairing unsyllabified segments, in three dialects of Sudanese Arabic. The analysis identifies the precise prosodic domains of syllabification in these dialects and shows how these domains interact with the phenomena discussed. On the one hand, the dialects diverge significantly with respect to the prosodic levels at which unsyllabified segments are repaired; this divergence is shown to follow from the degree of restriction each dialect places on word-level syllabification. On the other hand, the dialects exhibit fairly similar patterns with respect to the phrasal domains of syncope; this similarity is shown to be a reflex of the degree of restriction on the phrasal domains of resyllabification.

Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Background
    • 2.1Theoretical assumptions
    • 2.2Dialects of Sudanese Arabic
  • 3.Prosodic levels of repair of unsyllabified segments
    • 3.1Syllable types in the three dialects
    • 3.2Repairing unsyllabified consonants in the three dialects
      • 3.2.1Repairing unsyllabified segments in Hamar
      • 3.2.2Repairing unsyllabified segments in Shukriiya
      • 3.2.3Repairing unsyllabified segments in UCSA
    • 3.3Summary and conclusions
  • 4.Prosodic domains of syncope
    • 4.1The interaction between syncope and syllabification
    • 4.2RHS within the ι-Phrase in all three dialects
    • 4.3LHS within the ι-Phrase in Shukriiya and Hamar
    • 4.4LHS within the φ-Phrase in UCSA
    • 4.5Summary and conclusions
  • 5.Concluding remarks
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 14 December 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/sal.5.03ali
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