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Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

2015

Linguistics

Theses/Dissertations

Grammar

Articles 1 - 2 of 2

Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

Progressive Place Assimilation In Optimality Theory, Andrew Lamont Nov 2015

Progressive Place Assimilation In Optimality Theory, Andrew Lamont

Master's Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

This thesis presents an investigation into progressive place agreement in clusters through the lens of Optimality Theory (Prince & Smolensky, 1993/2004; McCarthy & Prince, 1995, 1999). A large typology of such languages is presented and examined to detail a broad swath of phenomena. The main line of inquiry over this typology is how direction of assimilation is formally represented. This work argues that simple phonological mechanisms explain the cross-linguistic effects including an agreement constraint and conflicting faithfulness constraints.


An Optimality-Theoretic Analysis Of Syllable Structure In Qassimi Arabic, Sarah Soror Al Motairi Apr 2015

An Optimality-Theoretic Analysis Of Syllable Structure In Qassimi Arabic, Sarah Soror Al Motairi

Master's Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

This thesis examines syllable structure in Qassimi Arabic (QA), a Najdi dialect spoken in Al-Qassim region in Saudi Arabia. Syllable-related phenomena in QA have not been fully addressed and understood because QA has not received attention in the available literature on syllable structure within Arabic dialects. Thus, the present study aims to provide an analysis of syllable structure in QA and to contribute to the current research on Arabic syllable structure. Adopting the framework of Optimality Theory, this study explores the effect of high vowel deletion on syllable structure and the treatment of superheavy syllables in QA. Results confirm three …