INTERACTION OF WEIGHT EFFECTS WITH EXTRAMETRICALITY IN CAIRENE ARABIC: A CONSTRAINT-BASED ANALYSIS

The present paper is coached within the framework of Optimality Theory (Prince and Smolensky, 1993; McCarthy and Prince, 1993a, b) to show that intrinsic prominence of the syllable is not a determining factor in stress placement in Cairene Arabic (Mitchell 1960; McCarthy, 1979b; Kenstowics, 1994: 551)1. The argument hinges on the assumption that Prince and Smolensky’s (1993) PK=PROM and WSP, the two constraints responsible for the intrinsic prominence of syllables, are low-ranking in Cairene Arabic. That is, violation of one or both constraints never results in incorrect stress pattern(s). The stressing of a final superheavy syllable (and/or the stressing of a heavy penult), it is argued, is, like the stressing of a light syllable, an effect of parsability, not intrinsic prominence of the syllable, suggesting that Cairene Arabic is not, then, a prominence-driven stress system. In order to show this, it is argued that PARSEσ is relativized to syllable weight, i.e., whereas a final light and a final heavy syllable are invisible to parsing, a final superheavy syllable is not