boudlal_abdelaziz_the_prosody_and_morphology_of_a_moroccan_a

second consonant, the schwa is epenthesized before the third consonant (78b). Also, the schwa is epenthesized before the third consonant if its sonority equals that of the second consonant (78c). What the items in 78b and 78c show is that right-to-left directionality of schwa syllabification is also observed in nouns and this through satisfaction of the constraint ALIGN-R-σ′ demanding coincidence of the right edge of the stem with the right edge of a prominent syllable. The only cases where ALIGN-R-σ′ is violated is when sonority is at stake. This points out to the fact that ALIGN-R-σ′ must rank below sonority. The question that should be asked here is the following: how is it possible to express the relative sonority of consonants in the theoretical framework adopted in the present work?

To answer this question, it should be noted that the schwa in CMA is moraless on its own and that it acquires a moraic status only in combination with a following consonant in the same syllable. Such an assumption excludes the possibility of having schwas in open syllables, something which is true about MA (Benhallam 1980, 1988, 1990a; Hammoumi 1988, Al Ghadi 1990, Boudlal 1993, 1998 and others). In other words, all schwa syllables have a coda, and it is the coda which determines the epenthesis of the schwa. The behavior of the schwa in 78 is reminiscent of what Clements (1988:68) calls the Dispersion Principle which he states as follows:

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The Dispersion Principle:

a.The preferred initial demisyllable maximizes sonority dispersion.

b.The preferred final demisyllable minimizes sonority dispersion.

Demisyllables according to Clements are overlapping portions of a syllable sharing the peak. For example CV is an initial demisyllable while VC is a final demisyllable 9.

What interests us here are final demisyllables which Clements (1988:69) ranks as follows:

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Final demisyllables

V ¾ VG ¾ VL ¾ VN ¾ VO

(G=glide, L=liquid, N=nasal and O=obstruent, and ¾ means better than)

9 According to Clements (1988) V is both an initial and final demisyllable. Syllables on this pattern are called onemember demisyllables.

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The sonority constraints in 82 along with the constraints developed so far can adequately account for the nominal items in 78. Recall from our discussion above that nouns on the pattern (CəC.C) violate ALIGN-R-σ′ because the right edge of the stem aligns with a minor syllable which cannot be prominent. This points out to the fact that the sonority constraints must rank higher than ALIGN-R-σ′. As to the constraint ALIGN-R(Vb/Adj, σ′), it does not have any visible effect on nouns and as such will not be included in the analysis. In the tableau below, we consider the different parses of the input /klb/N, where the sonority constraints outrank ALIGN-R-σ′.

Now consider a case where the schwa is epenthesized between the second and third consonants of the root and where the sonority of the third consonant is greater than that of the second. An input noun such as /ktf/N would have the candidate parses represented in 84.

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The last case of trisegmental nouns we will consider is one where the sonority of the second consonant equals that of the third. Here the schwa is epenthesized between the two consonants and it is the constraint ALIGN-R-σ′ which is decisive. Consider the two parses of the input /smn/ given in 85 below:

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Wherever the schwa is placed (before [n] or before [m]), the constraint *µ/əN is violated. Although ALIGN-R-σ′ is dominated, it is still active in the language in that it enables us to determine the appropriate placement of the schwa in trisegmental nouns whose second and third consonants have equal sonority.

The syllabification of quadrisegmental nouns on the pattern CCCC is generally CəC.CəC as shown in 86 below:

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In non-derived quadrisegmental nouns such as the ones given in 86, one wonders whether it is necessary to refer to the sonority constraints since there is no other way for the sequence CCCC to syllabify except as CəC.CəC. Syllabifying the sequence as CCəCC would violate *COMPLEX. Trying to avoid having complex margins by syllabifying the sequence as C.CəC.C would constitute a violation of ALIGN-R-σ′ as shown in the constraint tableau below:

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Now let us consider quadrisegmental suffixed nouns to see if the constraints developed so far can generate the correct output. First consider the examples in 88:

In these items, the final consonant of the root is syllabified as the onset of a syllable whose nucleus is the vowel of the suffix; the remainder is syllabified much in the manner of the trisegmental nouns considered above. The schwa is epenthesized before the second consonant of the root if its sonority is greater than that of the third consonant (88a), and before the third consonant if its sonority is greater than that of the second (88b). The constraint tableau in 89 gives some of the candidate parses of the input /mslm-in/.

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Constraint hierarchy in CMA

NO-SPLITTING

ALIGN-R (Vb/Adj, σ′)

ALIGN-R-σ′

ALIGN-R

DEP-IO

*Min-σ, H-NUC

NO-CODA

4. CONCLUSION

This chapter has tried to account for CMA syllable structure within the OT constraintbased framework. It has been shown that such a framework, which derives syllabic wellformedness from the interaction of constraints belonging to UG, is far better than a step-by-step syllable structure building algorithm, especially in the problematic cases of schwa syllabification.

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While we maintain the previous scholars’ assumptions that schwas are epenthetic and dependent on syllable structure as well as on the sonority of the consonants of the base if this happens to be a noun, the analysis offered in this chapter has an explanatory power since it shows that prosodic structure assignment in CMA is governed not by rules but by constraints such as the ones listed in 92. A constraint-based analysis offers a straightforward analysis to some of the recalcitrant problems like directionality of syllabification and the representation of geminates and their contribution to the achievement of prosodic word minimality requirement. Directionality of syllabification has been shown to derive from alignment constraints such as ALIGN-R (Vb/Adj,

σ′), ALIGN-R-σ′ or else from ALIGN-R. It has been shown that in a large number of trisegmental items, the schwa is epenthesized before the third consonant of the root and this follows from the constraint requiring that the stem be iambic. It has also been shown that the difference between verb and adjective schwa syllabification, on the one hand and noun schwa syllabification on the other could be accounted for by ranking the verb-/adjective stem-prominent syllable alignment above the general stem-prominent syllable right alignment. In both cases, it has been shown that a minor syllable can never be in prominent position, a prohibition ensured by the constraint *Min-σ′. As to minimality requirement it has been shown that in the case of nonderived words, the first segment of an initial cluster or the second segment of a final cluster must be moraic and therefore form a minor syllable on its own. By adopting the Two-Root Theory of length, the proposed analysis also nicely accounts for words with initial and final geminates. It has been shown that the fact that final geminates in trisegmental stems are never split up by schwa epenthesis follows from ranking ALIGN-R (Vb/Adj, σ′) and ALIGN-R-σ′ immediately below NO-SPLITTING. This constraint is violated only when the constraint on verb bimoraicity is at stake as is the case with quadrisegmental verbs with final geminates.

The chapter has also shown that nominal cases, where schwa syllabification depends on the sonority of the consonants in the input, can adequately be accounted for in terms of universal constraints demanding that the sonority of the consonant serving as the coda of schwa syllables be as close as possible to that of the nucleus. It has also been shown that directionality plays an important role not only in verb and adjective schwa syllabification but also in nominal schwa syllabification, especially in trisegmental roots whose second and third segments have the same sonority value. Here, we have argued that ALIGN-R-σ′ decides in favor of the candidate that best satisfies the constraint.

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In sum, two types of constraints have been distinguished: dominated constraints which are DEP-IO, NO-CODA, H-NUC, ALIGN-R (Vb/Adj, σ′), ALIGN-R-σ′, ALIGN-R, NOSPLITTING and *Min-σ; and undominated constraints which are ONSET, MAX-IO, PARSEseg, *COMPLEX, SONORITY in nouns, *Min-σ′, VERV=[µ µ] and FT-BIN which is satisfied in CMA by associating the first consonant of CCV or CCəC to a mora as proposed by Al Ghadi (1994). We have argued that the undominated constraints are never violated and as such they are ranked at the top of the ranking scale. Throughout this chapter, it has been argued that the relative ranking of these constraints is what determines the right syllabic output.

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