Emphasis Spread in Zilfawi Arabic: An Optimality Theoretic Analysis

The current study seeks to provide a phonological analysis of emphasis spread on adjacent segments in Zilfawi Arabic (ZA), one of the spoken dialects in Najd province in central Saudi Arabia, within the optimality theory (OT) framework. There is a shortage of studies that addressed this phonological phenomenon in Arabic dialects from the perspective of the OT. This study leads to deepening the knowledge of the phonological system of this dialect. Moreover, it contributes to documenting this phonological phenomenon related to Saudi Arabia’s linguistic diversity. The study implemented the OT to account for the interaction and effect of the emphatic sounds on their adjacent segments. The analysis revealed that the primary emphasis spread has a syllable domain in which the emphatic sound lies and occurs bidirectionally where, consequently, the dominant constraints are MAX-RTR and EMPHATIC-σ, even when there is a morpheme.