Syllabification and Phrasing in Three Dialects of Sudanese Arabic

This study is a synchronic derivational analysis of phonological phenomena in three dialects of Sudanese Arabic. Its main goal is to provide a unified prosodic account of syncope and of the phonological processes functioning as strategies of repairing unsyllabified segments in the dialects of Urban Central Sudanese Arabic, Shukriiya, and Hamar. The domains of these processes are argued to follow from the degree of restriction that dialects place on word-level and phrase-level syllabification. To this end, the study proposes an analysis of syllabification in the three dialects that identifies the degree to which word-level syllabification is exhaustive, the segments that may be marked extrasyllabic and the conditions regulating their extrasyllabic status, the phrasal level at which these segments must be syllabified, and the level at which alteration to syllable structure is disallowed. In identifying the degrees of restriction dialects place on syllabification and resyllabification, the analysis provides a principled explanation for the levels of repair of unsyllabified segments as well as the domains of syncope. The study also provides an analysis of word stress and an analysis of phonological phrase formation. By revealing and accounting for the interesting phonological patterns attested in these dialects, the study aims to contribute to the area of Arabic phonology in general and to research on the typology of Arabic dialects in particular. In addition to the analyses proposed, its substantial contribution in this regard is a significant body of original data that is being analysed for the first time. With respect to dialects of Sudanese Arabic, the study represents a new direction of enquiry, one that seeks to disentangle their respective grammars and reveal the interesting ways in which they pattern alike and diverge.Ph