Vowel Shortening and Resyllabification in Quranic Arabic

Vowel shortening and resyllabification are common phonological processes in Arabic dialects. However, these processes are less common in Standard Arabic, and they are expected to be the least common in Quranic Arabic, which represents Classical Arabic. This is because Quranic Arabic needs to be pronounced clearly and enunciatively as dictated by Quranic recitation rules. In this study, we shed new light on these processes by analyzing vowel shortening and resyllabification in Quranic Arabic. Data comes from four chapters in the Holy Quran, namely Chapter 38 (Sad), Chapter 44 (Al-Duxan), Chapter 50 (Qaf), and Chapter 68 (Al-Qalam). The analysis of 2427 words that are made up of 4549 syllables shows that the two processes of vowel shortening and resyllabification are common phonological processes even in Classical and Quranic Arabic. Results show that these processes are invoked to avoid CVVC syllables, which are marked phrase internally. Arabic here resorts to shortening the long vowel yielding a bimoraic syllable, which is unmarked. Moreover, results confirm that the definite article in Arabic is underlyingly /l/ only. The connecting hamza in the definite article and elsewhere is invoked to avoid CC complex onsets phrase internally and vowel epenthesis is induced to preclude complex onsets when a vowel is not present. It is concluded that these processes represent universal linguistic principles that are driven by economy of effort and markedness.