Prominence and Syllabication in Arabic

Abstract

Faced with the fact that in many varieties of Arabic, including Bedouin dialects of the kind to which Sibawayhi was wont to turn, polysyllabic words and certain other unitary complexes are characterized in pronunciation by the prominence which makes one syllable stand out to the ear above the others, the linguist is understandably puzzled by the failure of the Arab grammarians to mention the subject of accentuation. Bewilderment increases with the realization not only that rules of prominence are statable for a given colloquial but also that correspondence between colloquials or between a colloquial and a given ‘Classical’ pronunciation is equally regular. Confusion is complete when the ‘rules’ given in all reference grammars of Classical Arabic are found to take no cognizance of regional differences of pronunciation and, what is worse, to bear little or no resemblance to the facts in any one region.

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