Syntax-prosody interface: Wh-movement in Jordanian Arabic and Egyptian Arabic

Richards (2006, 2010) suggests that wh-movement is prosodically driven. His analysis is based on the position of the Comp(lementizer) and the marking of prosodic XP edges: if Comp is on one side and the language marks the opposite side of the XP, then the wh-phrase does not move since Comp and the wh-phrase can create a prosodic wh-domain. However, if the language marks one side of the XP and Comp is also on the same side, a single wh- domain cannot be created and thus wh-phrase needs to move closer to Comp to have as few minor phrases as possible. This paper addresses wh-movement in Jordanian Arabic (JA) and Egyptian Arabic (EA): the former moves the wh-phrase, whereas the latter mostly leaves it in situ. JA and EA would be a strong testing ground for Richards' theory since it is expected that they will behave alike given that both dialects, as well as other Arabic dialects, descended from Classical Arabic (CA) (Aoun et. al 2010) and that Comp is on the left periphery in both. In this paper, I present phonological evidence for edge marking in each dialect. Specifically, I show how resyllabification and epenthesis blockage mark left edges of XPs in JA, whereas epenthesis and vowel reduction mark right edges of XPs in EA. The phonological evidence indicates that Richards' theory by and large works well for both dialects. However, as a follow up, an acoustic analysis for edge demarcation in both dialects revealed that the picture is not as neat as Richards wanted it to be.published or submitted for publicationis peer reviewe