ARABIC SYLLABLE STRUCTURE AND STRESS

Presented by:Fawzia AmmouraIslam al Tamimi

Readings in Arabic and English Languages

SYLLABLE STRUCTURE

Syllable Structure constitutes the component of phonological words division focused on pronounceable segments of words and how they are composed, divided and distributed.

Syllable structure is also a subdivision of the study of phonotactic, or the rules of sound distribution, the specific sequences of sound that occur in a language. And, third, the study of syllables in Arabic involves the analysis of lexical stress.

ARABIC SYLLABLE CONSTRAINTS Full-form pronunciation

 No syllable may start with a vowel

No syllable may start with a consonant cluster (two or more)

all Arabic syllables start with CV or CVV.

Syllables must nowhere contain a cluster of three or more consonants.

CV : weak or light syllable

CVV/ CVC : strong or heavy syllable

CVVC: restricted circumstances, the result of gemination.

Pause-form pronunciation (Omitting Final short vowels)

Phonotactic rules allow for a word-final syllable to be either CVVC or CVCC. These syllables are considered superstrong or “superheavy.”

FORMALIZATION OF SYLLABLE STRUCTURE

CV (V) C 0/1/2

Parentheses: enclose a potential increment of vowel length CV CVVC CVC

zero: indicates the non-occurrence of a final consonant in the structure of a syllable

CV CVV

 if C0 occurs then the syllable is open؛ otherwise, it is closed.

THE PATTERNS OF ARABIC SYLLABLES

THE PATTERNS OF ENGLISH SYLLABLES

LEXICAL STRESS Lexical Stress:-Stress is a prosodic or suprasegmental (non-linear) feature of pronunciation dependent in Arabic for its placement upon the nature of the syllable structure within a word.

The placement of lexical stress in Arabic is predictable and non-phonemic; we place the stress according to the syllable not the phoneme)

Stress in Arabic Language in most instances is trivially predictable.

Syllable structure and stress interrelate because one determines the other in Arabic, and it is therefore useful to be able to describe the system, especially when it comes to conveying to learners of Arabic a rule of thumb for stress placement.

 The stress system is obviously weight-sensitive: final syllables are stressed if super heavy cvvc or cvcc; penults are stressed if heavy cvv or cvc; otherwise, the antepenult is stressed (universal norm by McCarthy and Prince (1990b)) (this norm summarizes the system of Arabic stress).

LEXICAL STRESS

Syllable structure is the one that stress rules most often refer to.in fact, they refer the syllable weight .it is this distinction between heavy and light of stress syllables that affects the placement

Heavy syllables containing a long vowel or diphthong and syllables with a short vowel but closed by a consonant.

Basic Rules of Lexical stress.

 Stress is always measured from the end of an Arabic word.

Stress never falls farther back than the third syllable from the end of a word (the antepenult).(the third syllable of a word counting from the end).

 Stress rules differ slightly in full-form and pause-form pronunciation.

FIRST: FULL-FORM STRESS

When Arabic is pronounced in "full form" i.e., including all desinential inflection markers, there are three basic stress constraints.

Stress does not fall on a final syllable. In a word of two syllables, it therefore falls on the first, no matter whether that first syllable is strong or weak:

 

e.g. qab-la before

e.g. hu-naa here

e.g. hi-ya she

e.g. naħ-nu we

 

(2)Stress is assigned to the second syllable from the end (the penult) if it is a strong/heavy syllable.

e.g. hu-naa-ka there

e.g. yad-ru-suu-na they are studying

e.g. mu-ta-taw-wi-ʕіі-na volunteers

e.g. qa-raʔ-tum you (m. pl.) read

(3)Stress is on the third syllable from the end of the word (the antepenult) if the second syllable from the end is weak/light:

e.g. mux-ta-li-fun different

e.g. da-ra-sat she studied

e.g. ma-dii-na-tun city

e.g. mad-ra-sa-tun school

SECOND: PAUSE FORM

An additional stress rule applies in pause-form pronunciation (where desinential inflection is omitted): that stress falls on the final syllable if it is CVVC or CVCC.

 

e.g. Ka-riim karim (man's name)

e.g. fa-naa-jiin cups

e.g. tar-jamtI translated

e.g. ruk-kaab riders

e.g. naʕ-saan sleepy

e.g. mus-ta-ħiqq worthy, entitled

e.g. yu-ħaa-wi-luun they (m.) try

STRESS SHIFT

Words in Arabic may be pronounced in full-form or in pause-form, depending on circumstances and context. Arabic words may also include pronoun suffixes that extended the length of the word and as a consequence (since stress is calculated from the end of a word), shift the stress. The rules stated above still apply; it is the length of pronunciation style of a word that conditions the application of those rules. For example:

 

Word form

ti-jaa-ra pause form

ti-jaa-ra-tun full form

ti-jaa-ra-tu-naa suffixed pronoun

 

mu-ħaa-da-ra pause form

mu-ħaa-da-ra-tun full form

mu-ħaa-da-ra-tu-haa suffixed pronoun

 

jaa-mi-ʕa pause form

jaa-mi-ʕa-tun full form

jaa-mi-ʕa-tu-hum suffixed pronoun

jaa-mi-ʕa-tu-hun-na suffixed pronoun

THANK YOU!