A prosodic account of syncope and epenthesis in Sudanese Colloquial Arabic

In this paper I propose a theory of phrasing of P-Phrases in Sudanese Colloquial Arabic (SCA). In doing so, I show that complicated conditions on the application of the ru1e of syncope, proposed in previous analyses, are unnecessary. I argue that what has been previously analyzed as two types of syncope is in fact one process the asymmetrical nature of which is explained in terms of its interaction with the process of resyllabification. I consider the predictions of this analysis with regard to the process of epenthesis and show that a prosodic approach accounts for both processes in a unified way