Jarrah (2016): Weightlessness Preservation in Jordanian Arabic Varieties: A Stratal OT Analysis

Direct link: http://roa.rutgers.edu/content/article/files/1578_marwan_jarrah_1.pdf

ROA: 1294
Title: Weightlessness Preservation in Jordanian Arabic Varieties: A Stratal OT Analysis
Authors: Marwan Jarrah
Comment:  
Length: 13pp
Abstract:

 

 

 

 

 

 

This research explores the morphological form of 2nd person possessive clitics in Jordanian Arabic varieties within Stratal OT. It assumes that possessive clitics formation in these varieties undergoes two levels of constraint interaction, namely the stem level and the word level. Additionally, it argues that the surface differences between these varieties regarding formation of 2nd person possessive clitics is reducible to the relevant ranking of one constraint that bans weightless consonants of the input to have moraic weight in the output, at the word level where inputs can be constrained. This constraint is coined as NONFINAL(c)-IO. The argument is that in Mainstream Jordanian Arabic, NONFINAL(c)-IO outranks LINEARITY-IO, hence the possibility for metathesis as a repair strategy when the input of level 2 includes a weightless consonant (yielding, as a result, the surface form -ik). On the other hand, in the so-called Karaki Arabic, the order between NONFINAL(c)-IO and LINEARITY-IO is reversed (LINEARITY-IO >> NONFINAL(c)-IO), the matter which excludes metathesis as a repair strategy (yielding, as a result, the surface form -ki). The study shows that other repair strategies, including deletion and insertion, are blocked in Karaki Arabic, given that NONFINAL(c)-IO is outranked by *COMPLEXONS, *COMPLEXCOD, MAX-IO, and DEP-IO.
Type: Paper/tech report
Keywords: Weightless consonants, Jordanian Arabic, Stratal OT