<OT> New Posting: ROA-650

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ROA 650-0404

Constraint Interaction in the Phonology and Morphology of Casablanca Moroccan Arabic

Abdelaziz Boudlal <aboudlal at eudoramail.com>

Direct link: http://roa.rutgers.edu/view.php3?roa=650


Abstract:
The objective of this dissertation is to account for some
aspects of the prosodic phonology and morphology of Casablanca
Moroccan Arabic within the framework of Optimality Theory
as conceived in Prince and Smolensky (1993) and McCarthy
and Prince (1993a) and developed in the Correspondence model
of McCarthy and Prince (1995, 1999) and other related works.
It is argued that prosodic aspects such as the syllable
structure and the stress system and morphological aspects
such as the nisba adjective, the causative, the passive
participle and the diminutive are better understood as cases
involving interaction between two types of conflicting universal
constraints: markedness constraints and faithfulness constraints.


It is shown that a division must be established between
two types of syllables: a major syllable whose nucleus is
one a schwa or one of the full vowels [i, u, a], and a minor
syllable which consists solely of a moraic consonant. Granting
a moraic status to this consonant is allowed for the purpose
of achieving the foot binarity requiring, especially in
nonderived trisegmental words on the pattern CCV, CCeC or
CeCC [e = schwa], where the first consonant of the initial
cluster and the second consonant of the final cluster form
minor syllables on their own. The fact that the schwa is
epenthesized before the final consonant of nonderived trisegmenta
l verbs, adjectives and a class of nouns follows from the
requirement that the right edge of the stem be aligned with
a prominent syllable, which corresponds to a major syllable.
The nominal class showing the CeCC pattern is shown to abide
by markedness constraints favoring schwa syllables with
a higher sonority coda. The dissertation also offers an
adequate analysis of the problematic cases of cyclic schwa
syllabification in terms of a subset of output-output constraints
, one of which demanding phonological identity between a
derived form and its morphologically-related base form.


The theoretical framework herein conceptualized gives a
straightforward answer to the puzzling stress system of
the language which shows both trochaic and iambic feet.
In particular, it is argued that in both isolation words,
where the foot is trochaic and context words, where the
foot is iambic, the location of stress and consequently
the foot types that emerge depend on the hierarchical organizatio
n of prosodic words into phonological phrases. A unitary
account of the stress system is offered to the effect that
both trochaic and iambic feet occur in the language. Trochaic
feet surface as optimal when the word is in isolation (i.e.
when it is a phonological phrase); iambic feet arise when
the word is in context.


The dissertation also argues that morphological classes
such as the causative, the passive participle and the diminutive
are governed by a prosodic constraint requiring that their
output conform to an iambic foot. The causative form, which
has previously been analyzed as involving prosodic circumscriptio
n, is now reanalyzed as a case of partial reduplication
which can be accounted for by constraints demanding correspondenc
e between the base and its reduplicant. In particular it
is shown that the constraint calling for an iamb consisting
of a sequence of two light syllables takes priority over
the constraint on the base and reduplicant identity and
therefore block total reduplication. The passive participle
and the diminutive are two instances that resort to augmentation
to achieve an iambic foot type. In the case of the passive
participle, it is argued that the prefinal vowel that appears
in certain classes of non derived verbs is the result of
the constraint requiring that the output conform to an iambic
foot consisting of a sequence of light and heavy syllables.
In case where augmentation would lead to the violation of
higher ranked constraints, the foot that emerges as optimal
consists of a sequence of two light syllables. In the case
of the diminutive, if augmentation applies, it is for the
sole purpose of achieving a light-light foot. Augmentation
itself takes tow different forms: either by the addition
of schwa syllables to words that are masculine, or by the
suffixation of the feminine morpheme to words which are
inherently feminine.

Comments: 
Keywords: Moroccan Arabic, syllable structure, stress, truncation, reduplication, passive participle formation, diminutive formation
Areas: Phonology, Morphology
Type: PhD Dissertation

Direct link: http://roa.rutgers.edu/view.php3?roa=650