Stress patterns in Bani Saxar Arabic in Jordan: an optimality theory perspective

Abstract EN

The present study aims to investigate stress patterns in Bani Saxar Arabic (BSA), an Arabic dialect spoken by Bedouins of the center in Jordan, from an Optimality Theory perspective.

The data have been collected via tape-recording and note-taking of the participants' spontaneous speech.

The study shows that the foot in the phonological system of BSA is iambic which is parsed from left to right.

Degenerate feet are strongly prohibited since content words obey the word bimoraic minimality condition.

The study also shows that stress assignment patterns in BSA can be accounted for by a limited number of universal constraints