A phase-based account to t-liaison in Jordanian Arabic

Abstract EN

This paper focuses on a phonological process in Jordanian Arabic, t-liaison.

two previous accounts have been offered to find out its domain of application.

Abdulghani (2010) proposed that this process applies in a non-final position within a maximal syntactic projection in modern standard Arabic, whereas Yasin (2012) suggested that it applies in a phonological phrase non-final position in Jordanian Arabic.

we will show that this prosodic account can predict the (non-application) of t-liaison in Jordanian Arabic; however, it cannot explain why prosodic variability cannot block or trigger the application of t-liaison.

in this study, we present a new account based on phase theory (Chomsky 2001) to t-liaison.

we propose that this process applies only at a spell-out domain non-final position in Jordanian Arabic.

this account can actually capture the contexts in which t-liaison applies and explain why prosodic variability cannot reverse the (non-)application of t-liaison.