The Phonology and Morphology of ArabicOUP Oxford, 2007 M11 1 - 336 pages This book is the first comprehensive account of the phonology and morphology of Arabic. It is a pioneering work of scholarship, based on the author's research in the region. Arabic is a Semitic language spoken by some 250 million people in an area stretching from Morocco in the West to parts of Iran in the East. Apart from its great intrinsic interest, the importance of the language for phonological and morphological theory lies, as the author shows, in its rich root-and-pattern morphology and its large set of guttural consonants. Dr Watson focuses on two eastern dialects, Cairene and San'ani. Cairene is typical of an advanced urban Mediterranean dialect and has a cultural importance throughout the Arab world; it is also the variety learned by most foreign speakers of Arabic. San'ani, spoken in Yemen, is representative of a conservative peninsula dialect. In addition the book makes extensive reference to other dialects as well as to classical and Modern Standard Arabic. The volume opens with an overview of the history and varieties of Arabic, and of the study of phonology within the Arab linguistic tradition. Successive chapters then cover dialectal differences and similarities, and the position of Arabic within Semitic; the phoneme system and the representation of phonological features; the syllable and syllabification; word stress; derivational morphology; inflectional morphology; lexical phonology; and post-lexical phonology. The Phonology and Morphology of Arabic will be of great interest to Arabists and comparative Semiticists, as well as to phonologists, morphologists, and linguists more generally. |
Contents
1 | |
13 | |
3 PHONOLOGICAL FEATURES | 24 |
4 SYLLABLE STRUCTURE AND SYLLABIFICATION | 50 |
5 WORD STRESS | 79 |
6 MORPHOLOGY | 122 |
7 MORPHOLOGY 2 | 175 |
8 LEXICAL PHONOLOGY | 200 |
9 POSTLEXICAL PHONOLOGY | 226 |
10 EMPHASIS | 268 |
287 | |
299 | |
302 | |
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Common terms and phrases
active participle adjacent adjective affixed Arabic dialects articulation assimilation attested bimoraic broken plural Broselow Cairene Cairene and San'ani Classical Arabic consonant consonant-initial consonantal contrast CVCC CVVC syllables degenerate feet deletion derived devoicing dialects of Arabic diphthong domain-final dominant epenthesis examples extrametricality feminine singular final foot extrametricality foot layer fricative geminate glottal stop I/you initial interdental katab labial languages leftmost level-two lexical matrix McCarthy and Prince monomoraic mora morpheme morphology nasal object suffix obstruent OCP violation onset palatal palatoalveolar pattern penultimate perfect aspect pharyngealized pharyngealized coronals phoneme phonological word place features position pre-suffix prefix processes pronoun prosodic quadriliteral realized reduplication rightmost San'ani Section segmental layer Semitic sibilant sonorant Standard Arabic stem stress is assigned syllable layer syncope template third person trigger triliteral trochee upper moraic layer uvular velar verbal noun verbs vocalic melody vocoid voice voiceless vowel-initial Woidich word-final