AN OPTIMALITY THEORETIC ANALYSIS OF DTO STESS IN QARNI ARABIC

Abstract

The quantity-sensitive languages are influenced by the weight of the syllable while placing the stress. Some languages are argued to be default-to-opposite (DTO), others are default-to-same (DTS). Gordon (2000) claimed that this is either not well attested or not possible to test due to the lack of speakers in some languages (e.g. Classical Arabic). However, this thesis argues that Qarni Arabic (QA) is a language that has a DTO stress system similar to other Saudi dialects. The stress falls on the rightmost heavy syllable, otherwise on the leftmost foot. To demonstrate that QA is a DTO language, an optimality theoretic (Prince & Smolensky, 1993) analysis is presented. This research proposes that, in addition to other regular constraints, the Align-L/R (H́ , H, ω) constraint is sufficient to regulate DTO/DTS stress patterns. Also, it proposes a simple factorial typology for quantity-sensitive languages.