Stress Patterns in an Iraqi Arabic Variant: a Metrical Approach

The present study attempts to analyze stress patterns of Iraqi Arabic, particularly, Hity Arabic, an accent spoken in Hit town 175 k.m. to the south west of Baghdad. The study is specifically concerned with the assignment of primary stress at the word level within the recent manifestation of metrical approach outlined in Hayes (1995).According to metrical framework, stress is a hierarchy of rhythmic patterns in which one syllable scores relative prominence with relation to an adjacent one. Metrical stress theory assumes that generating the correct stress patterns should be done taking syllable quantity, foot inventory, directionality and extrametricallity into consideration. The study assumes that metrical approach succeeds in predicting both primary and secondary stress patterns in Iraqi Arabic in a straightforward fashion.