Arabic stress with no moras, no syllables, no feet and no extrametricality
Noam Faust, Shanti Ulfsbjorninn
direct link: http://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/003520
June 2017
This paper continues the effort that began in Scheer & Szigetvari (2005) to present a compelling alternative to moraic accounts of stress systems, framed in the theory of Strict CV (Lowenstamm 1996). For this purpose, the empirical basis of the paper is a stronghold of moraic theory: stress in Palestinian Arabic, with its rich interplay of syllable structure and stress assignment, involving quantity sensitivity, a syllabically-determined stress shift and metrically-conditioned long vowel shortening. Showcasing the innovative grid-based notion of weight incorporation in Ulfsbjorninn (2014), the account provided recognizes only one unit relevant for meter: the nucleus. No appeal is made to moras, syllables, feet or extrametricality. Besides these principled advantages over the traditional moraic account, it is shown that metrical vowel shortening is much more simply explained in the present framework than in the moraic account, and can also explain final vowel shortening. The analysis is also brought to bear on Cairene Arabic, which in our analysis differs from Palestinian in a single parameter setting. Finally, the paper also improves on previous analyses of meter in Strict CV, as for the first time in Strict CV metrics, a computational component is explicitly formalized. Given all of the advantages of the Strict CV account here presented, we submit that this framework, rather than the moraic alternative, should be pursued.