Triconsonantal Clusters in Qassimi Arabic

Authors

  • Ahmed Alnuqaydan University of Utah

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.3765/amp.v9i0.5191

Abstract

 

Old Qassimi Arabic speakers show variation in avoiding morpheme-internal CCC in trisyllabic verbs. They epenthesize a vowel in both available positions: [CVCC] or [CCVC]. This variation ceases to exist in the speech of younger QA speakers where the repairing vowel is always epenthesized after the second consonant.

It is argued that the site of the epenthetic vowel breaking up illicit triconsonantal clusters is governed by an interaction between stress and epenthesis. This approach connects epenthesis to larger properties of the grammar and offers an independent justification for epenthesis. It is also shown that morpheme-internal triconsonantal clusters highlight tension between stress and epenthesis that yields variation for older speakers while younger speakers resolve that tension in an invariant fashion.

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Published

2022-08-05

Issue

Section

Supplemental Proceedings