2026/06/08 by Ali Nirheche · 1 voice
Psychology · Social Sciences · #Language Development and Disorders #Linguistic Variation and Morphology #Phonetics and Phonology Research
paper · doi:10.16995/glossa.26364
openalex publication_date 2026/06/08 · openalex created_date 2026/06/09 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/02
This paper investigates whether the syllabification of medial geminates can be probed using temporal stability measures (Browman & Goldstein 1988; Goldstein et al. 2007). Theoretical accounts treat medial geminates as either heterosyllabic (VCi.CiV; Levin 1985; Hayes 1989a) or tautosyllabic (V.CiCiV; Mohanan 1989; Topintzi 2008). I show that the two parses make distinct predictions about temporal alignment: the former predicts stability at the mid-point of the right part of the geminate, while the latter predicts stability at the mid-point of the entire geminate. I test these predictions on medial geminates in Moroccan Arabic and compare them to medial clusters, using acoustic measurements of temporal stability (Durvasula et al. 2021). The results show that both medial geminates and clusters exhibit right-edge-to-anchor stability, supporting a heterosyllabic representation. This finding aligns with existing phonological evidence, which already supports a heterosyllabic parse for both geminates and clusters in Moroccan Arabic (Boudlal 2001; Dell & Elmedlaoui 2002; Noamane 2021), providing evidence that temporal stability measures can serve as a useful phonetic tool for testing predictions of competing analyses of geminate syllabification.