Firas Shbeeb

Vowel Epenthesis in the Aleppine Dialect*

This study investigates the phonological process of vowel epenthesis in the Aleppine Dialect (AD) of Arabic, an urban variety spoken in northern Syria. While vowel insertion has been widely documented in many Arabic dialects, its behaviour in AD remains under-described. The analysis is based on a set of 23 CVCC lexical items and their occurrence in different prosodic environments, elicited from native Aleppine speakers. The study describes the distribution of the high short vowel /ɪ/ in final consonant clusters and across word boundaries, with particular attention to cluster type, sonority profile, and position in the phrase. The data show that AD systematically inserts /ɪ/ to break up final CVCC clusters in isolated words, even when these clusters conform to the Sonority Sequencing Principle, indicating a general ban on complex codas word-finally. Across word boundaries, however, epenthesis is not uniform: it is regularly blocked when a following vowel allows resyllabification of the final consonant, and it is often absent when the final cluster is homorganic or involves a sonorant–obstruent sequence, but retained with more marked obstruent–obstruent codas. Comparisons with other Arabic dialects (Jordanian, Cairene, Moroccan, Sudanese, Omani, Iraqi) situate AD within a broader typology of epenthesis strategies and highlight both shared and dialect-specific repair patterns. The findings emphasise the role of positional and cluster-specific phonotactics in shaping epenthesis in AD and identify residual patterns that invite further formal analysis in future work.

I am grateful to the anonymous reviewer for their helpful comments on earlier versions of this paper. Any remaining errors or shortcomings are my sole responsibility. The Even Yearbook 16 (2024), Department of English Linguistics, Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest https://doi.org/10.57133/evenyrbk.24sh © 2024, Firas Shbeeb

Shbeeb, Vowel Epenthesis in the Aleppine Dialect 87

1. Introduction One of the varieties of the Arabic language is Syrian Arabic. Other varieties include Egyptian, Jordanian, Iraqi, and Moroccan (Abd-El-Jawad 1992). Within Syrian Arabic itself, a wide range of varieties also exist, such as Shamiya, Halabiya, Hamwiya, and Homsiya, in addition to other ones related to each city in Syria. However, the main focus will be on the Halabiya or Aleppine Dialect (henceforth AD). Aleppo is one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world and serves as the economic capital of Syria. The uniqueness of this dialect comes from its long contact with Mesopotamian varieties of Arabic and influences from other languages, mainly Turkish but also Kurdish and Armenian. Before turning to vowel epenthesis, it is useful to briefly note another vowelrelated feature of Aleppine Arabic, imāla ‘inclination’, which is a contextdependent raising and fronting of /a/ into /e/ or /ɪ/. This phenomenon is present in multiple modern Arabic dialects, including Lebanese, Anatolian, and north Mesopotamian Arabic. Damascene Arabic lacks this feature. For example, ‘sitting’ would be pronounced /ʔaʕed/ in Damascene and /ʔeʕed/ in AD. This happens in specific environments, so not all instances of /a/ undergo this shift. Phonologically, imāla in Aleppo targets long /aː/ in non-initial, non-final syllables and the short /a/ of certain final syllables. For example, the active participle /laːbis/ ‘wearing’ is realized as /leːbis/ in Aleppine, with /eː/ replacing the /aː/ heard in Damascus /laːbis/. Some Syrian varieties even show a higher imāla in the same word (e.g. /liːbis/ in the Homs region), illustrating that Aleppo’s fronting is intermediate in degree. The tendency is conditioned by phonological context: historically, imāla occurs most robustly when the /a/ has a preceding high front segment in the word (often in the previous syllable), typically the vowel /i/. Under these conditions, Classical /kilaːb/ ‘dogs’ yields Aleppine /kleːb/, in which historical /i/ has been lost and the following /aː/ surfaces as mid front /eː/. By contrast, in environments lacking such triggers – or when an emphatic (pharyngealized) consonant neighbors the vowel – Aleppine /a/ remains a low /a/ (often even backed to /ɑ/ in emphatic contexts), so /a/ is by no means absent from the dialect’s sound system as in: a. /katab/ → /katab/ ‘he wrote’ b. /tˤalab/ → /tˤɑlab/ ‘he requested’ Morphologically, the raising of /a/ in Aleppine shows clear domain restrictions. Nouns and adjectives that end in -a are typically pronounced with a fronted /e/ vowel; for instance, /wazza/ ‘goose’ is /wazze/ in Aleppo. In these

Shbeeb, Vowel Epenthesis in the Aleppine Dialect 88

same accents, however, final /a/ in verb forms does not undergo imāla. For example, /bana/ ‘he built’ remains /bana/ with a low vowel, not /bane/. Other features include the use of the phoneme /dʒ/ (the consonant traditionally called ‘jeem’), which is pronounced as /ʒ/ in almost all Levantine Arabic dialects, but as /dʒ/ in AD. Also, unlike most Levantine dialects, Aleppine has the phoneme /tʃ/, which is found in loanwords from Turkish and Persian, but also in some Arabic words. These last two phonological features contribute to a somewhat richer affricate inventory in AD compared to many other Levantine dialects, even though similar sounds may occur marginally in loanwords elsewhere. In Aleppine, every syllable has to start with a consonant. Consonant clusters are allowed at the beginning of the word, the end of the word, and between vowels. Many Aleppine speakers insert a vowel to separate the two-consonant cluster at the end of the word. For example, in Standard Arabic, /dʒisr/ ‘bridge’ is pronounced in Aleppo as /dʒɪsɪr/ with the insertion of the high short vowel /ɪ/. The purpose of this article is to investigate epenthesis in AD. However, it offers a primarily descriptive account of the patterns of vowel epenthesis in the data and does not aim to propose a single, definitive theoretical solution to the issues discussed. Epenthesis occurs in many dialects, but it is different from one variety to another. Vowel epenthesis in AD is different from vowel epenthesis in the varieties of other Syrian cities. These differences concern both the presence versus absence of an inserted vowel and the quality and position of the vowels realized in comparable forms. Table 1 summarizes a small set of contrasts illustrating how selected Syrian dialects differ in these respects. Table 1. Dialectal variation in vowel epenthesis across selected Syrian dialects Gloss

Dialect 1

Dialect 2

Type of Variation

‘the same as you’ AD /mɪtɪl-kun/

ALS1 /mɪtl-iː-kun/ Vowel insertion and change in position

‘beside you’

D /ħad-kun/

ALS /ħadd-iː-kun/

Vowel insertion and gemination of a consonant

‘perfume’

AD /ʕɪtɪr/

ALS /ʕutur/

Vowel quality difference (non-epenthetic)

‘I said to him’

AD /ʔɪlt-ɪ-lu/

H /ʔult-u-lu/

Vowel quality difference (non-epenthetic)

1

Abbreviations: ALS = Al-Swaida dialect; D = Damascene dialect; H = Homs dialect.

Shbeeb, Vowel Epenthesis in the Aleppine Dialect 89

As shown in Table 1, the first two examples involve clear cases of vowel insertion in Al-Swaida Arabic. In ‘the same as you’ and ‘beside you’, Al-Swaida has an additional long vowel /iː/ between the stem and the pronominal clitic (e.g. /mɪtɪl-kun/ vs. /mɪtl-iː-kun/, /ħad-kun/ vs. /ħadd-iː-kun/). Here, the inserted vowel is /iː/, and in the second example, it co-occurs with gemination of the preceding consonant /d/, yielding a longer consonant plus vowel sequence in comparison with Aleppo and Damascus. The remaining two rows do not involve the insertion of an extra vowel, but rather differences in the quality of an already present vowel. In the item ‘perfume’, Aleppine /ʕɪtɪr/ contrasts with Al-Swaida /ʕutur/; both forms are disyllabic, but they differ in whether the high vowel is front /ɪ/ or back /u/. Similarly, ‘I said to him’ is realized as /ʔɪlt-ɪ-lu/ in Aleppo and /ʔult-u-lu/ in Homs, with alternation between front /ɪ/ and back /u/ in the stressed syllable. These are therefore better described as vowel quality alternations in cognate lexical items rather than epenthetic vowels in the strict sense. In the Jerash Fallaːħi dialect, a rural Jordanian variety, Jaradat (2019) reports that the vowel inserted in word-final CVCC structures may be either the high front vowel /ɪ/ or the high back vowel /u/ and that epenthesis is largely conditioned by the stem vowel (regressive vowel harmony): /i/-stems take [i] and /u/-stems take [u], while /a/-stems show variation between [i] and [u] attributed to feature agreement such as backness. For example, /ħiml/ ‘load’ and /ʃahr/ ‘month’ are realized as /ħimɪl/ and /ʃahur/ in Jerash, whereas in the Aleppine Dialect both items surface with /ɪ/ epenthesis, /ħimɪl/ and /ʃahɪr/. These comparisons indicate that, although the dialects avoid the same type of complex final cluster, they differ in how they repair it: Jerash allows two different high vowels in this position, while Aleppine consistently selects /ɪ/. In this sense, what varies across dialects is not the general dispreference for heavy clusters (which appears to be shared), but the choice and distribution of the epenthetic vowel and the conditions under which it is used—patterns that are plausibly influenced by each dialect’s vowel system and morphophonological organization, even if all dialects ultimately avoid CCC sequences.

2. Literature review A large body of research has investigated vowel epenthesis across various Arabic dialects. These studies reveal that while the process is widespread, the specific

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patterns and conditions under which epenthesis occurs vary significantly from one variety to another. For example, Irshied (1984) investigates vowel epenthesis in the Bani Hassan dialect, a Bedouin Jordanian variety. His study shows that epenthesis is conditioned by the sonority profile of final consonant clusters. Specifically, a vowel is inserted when the second consonant in the cluster is more sonorous than the first, creating a rising sonority sequence that violates the Sonority Sequencing Principle (SSP). According to Selkirk (1984), the Sonority Hierarchy ranks segments by their relative loudness and resonance: vowels are highest in sonority, followed by glides, liquids, nasals, and finally obstruents, which are lowest. In the Bani Hassan dialect, this tendency for rising-sonority clusters to be repaired by vowel insertion is illustrated by the word /dafn/ ‘burial’. Because the nasal /n/ is more sonorous than the fricative /f/, the cluster /fn/ rises in sonority and is therefore repaired by inserting a vowel, resulting in /dafɪn/. In another study, Watson (2002) examines how Cairene Arabic repairs sequences of three consecutive consonants. When a suffix beginning with a consonant attaches to a stem ending in a CC cluster, a high vowel /ɪ/ or /u/ is inserted after the second consonant. Rather than preserving syllable structure in a general sense, this insertion breaks up an illicit CCC string and yields syllable shapes that conform to the dialect’s preferred CV(C) templates. For instance, in Cairene Arabic, /ʔult + lak/ ‘I told you (m.sg.)’ surfaces as /ʔult-ɪ-lak/, and /kull + hum/ ‘all of them’ as /kull-u-hum/. In both cases, the epenthetic vowel removes a disfavoured three-consonant sequence at the morpheme boundary. A similar repair strategy is found in Moroccan Arabic, where the widespread elision of short vowels often gives rise to complex clusters. A timing study by Ali et al. (2008) shows that an epenthetic schwa is inserted between consonants in word-initial clusters, in both isolated words and sentence contexts. By contrast, when the relevant sequence is a lexical geminate, no vowel is inserted, and the long consonant surfaces intact. Recent work on Moroccan Arabic gemination provides a complementary perspective. Noamane (2020) argues, following earlier work on schwa in Moroccan Arabic, that the language has true geminates – long consonants that are either underlying or derived by total assimilation, that contrast with singletons, and that may occur morpheme-internally – as well as fake geminates, which arise only when identical consonants come together across morpheme or phrase boundaries. True geminates in Moroccan Arabic occur in all word positions and generally resist schwa insertion, whereas fake geminates behave like ordinary CC clusters and readily allow an intervening schwa. This

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pattern supports the view that schwa epenthesis in Moroccan Arabic targets illformed consonant clusters rather than long consonants themselves, and that the presence or absence of epenthesis can be used as a diagnostic for distinguishing true from fake geminates: (1) a. word-initial consonant clusters /bka/ → /bəka/ ‘cried’ /nʃətˁ/ → /nəʃətˁ/ ‘had fun’ b. true geminates word-initially /mmʷi/ → /mmʷi/ /bbʷa/ → /bbʷa/

‘my mother’ ‘my father’

c. fake geminates /mmdud/ /mmluk/

‘stretched’ ‘owned’

→ →

/məmdud/ /məmluk/

d. true geminates word-medially /bəkka/ → /bəkka/ /sǝnna/ → /sǝnna/

‘he made someone cry’ ‘tooth’

e. true geminates word-finally /ʒəṛṛ/ → /ʒəṛṛ/ /muxx/ → /muxx/

‘to pull’ ‘brain’

In a recent study, Elashhab (2018) investigates the epenthesis processes in four Arabic dialects, namely, Iraqi, Omani, Egyptian, and Sudanese. She finds that the four dialects differ in the position in which insertion occurs. In Egyptian and Sudanese Arabic, epenthesis occurs between the second and the third consonant, whereas in Iraqi and Omani Arabic, it occurs between the first and the second consonant in a CCC sequence: (2)

CCC > CCVC CCC > CVCC

Egyptian and Sudanese Omani and Iraqi

She provides the following examples from the four dialects to illustrate the epenthesis process (Elashhab 2018: 2): (3)

The Omani dialect: /tabx+kum/ /laʕb+hum/

→ →

CCC > CVCC /ta.bux.kum/ ‘your (pl.) cooking’ /la.ʕub.hum/ ‘their playing’

Shbeeb, Vowel Epenthesis in the Aleppine Dialect 92

The Iraqi dialect: /gɪl+t-la/ /bɪnt+na/

→ →

CCC > CVCC /gɪ.lɪt.la/ /bɪ.nɪt.na/

The Egyptian dialect: /ʔul+t-lu/ /ruħ+t-lak/

→ →

/ʔakl+na/ /tefl+ha/

→ →

CCC > CCVC

/ʔul.tɪ.lu/ /ruħ.tɪ.lak/

The Sudanese dialect:

‘I said to him’ ‘our daughter’

‘I said to him’ ‘I went to you’

CCC > CCVC

/ʔak.la.na/ /tɪf.la.ha/

‘our food’ ‘her child’

In these cases, the concatenation of the verb (sometimes with the 1st-person singular suffix /-t/, as in the Egyptian data and the first Iraqi example) with a following clitic pronoun yields a string of three consonants across the word boundary. The syllabification of the last C of the first word, whether as part of the previous coda or the following onset, produces illicit structures. As a result, inserting a vowel establishes a new syllable and prevents the formation of a complex coda or onset. Crucially, however, the position of this vowel is not uniform across dialects. The four dialects differ in where the epenthetic vowel surfaces. In the Omani and Iraqi dialects, the vowel appears inside the first word, breaking up its final consonant cluster, as in /ta.bux.kum/ ‘your (pl.) cooking’ and /gɪ.lɪt.la/ ‘I said to him’. By contrast, in the Egyptian and Sudanese dialects, the word-final CC cluster is retained, and the inserted vowel occurs at the word boundary, between the last consonant of the first word and the onset of the second, as in /ʔul.tɪ.lu/ ‘I said to him’ and /ʔak.la.na/ ‘our food’ in (3). In other words, the data reported by Elashhab (2018) suggest that Egyptian and Sudanese Arabic tolerate a word-final CC coda in these contexts, and epenthesis specifically targets the across-word CCC sequence rather than the coda itself. It is also worth noting that the Sudanese dialect requires the insertion of the low vowel /a/. Similar patterns are reported for Makkan Arabic, spoken in the Mecca region of western Saudi Arabia (Abu-Mansour 1991), and for Sanʕani Arabic, spoken in Sanaʕa in Yemen (Watson 2002). By contrast, Omani Arabic, spoken in Oman, requires the insertion of the high back vowel /u/. This means that epenthesis in Arabic dialects is not restricted to a single high vowel quality.

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In other dialects, as mentioned by Echcharfi (2022) in his description of vowel epenthesis in several Arabic dialects, vowel epenthesis is conditioned both by the structure of the consonant cluster and by the quality of neighbouring vowels. In the Bani Hassan Jordanian dialect, for example, epenthesis is first triggered by violations of the Sonority Sequencing Principle (SSP): /ɪ/ is inserted to break final consonant clusters only when they display a rising sonority profile. (4)

ħilm ‘dream’

vs.

ħimɪl ‘load’

The cluster /ml/ in the latter form creates a rising sonority profile, with the liquid /l/ more sonorous than the nasal /m/. According to Irshied (1984: 54–67), this violation of the SSP triggers the insertion of /ɪ/ between the two consonants, whereas the cluster in the left-hand example is sonority-falling and therefore does not require epenthesis. When the stem vowel is /u/, some Jordanian varieties additionally require the epenthetic vowel to harmonize with it. In such cases, a high back vowel /u/ appears in the cluster-breaking position, as in the examples cited by Al-Mashaqba (2015): (5)

/juħr/ → /juħur/ ‘deep hole’ /furn/ → /furun/ ‘oven’

These patterns suggest that vowel epenthesis in Arabic is shaped by at least two recurring types of conditioning. First, cluster-level phonotactics—including cluster size (e.g., CCC vs. CC) and the relative sonority sequencing of consonants—often determine whether epenthesis is triggered. Second, vowelquality conditioning—such as harmony or agreement with neighbouring vowels— can influence which vowel surfaces when insertion occurs. In the Iraqi, Omani, Egyptian, and Sudanese dialects, epenthesis is primarily described as a repair for illicit three-consonant sequences (CCC) that would otherwise conflict with the dialects’ syllable patterns. In Jordanian Bedouin dialects, by contrast, alternations like (4) show that epenthesis can be triggered by violations of the SSP even in two-consonant clusters. In all of these cases, the insertion of a vowel reshapes the surface syllable structure so that it conforms more closely to the language’s phonotactic restrictions, typically yielding unmarked CV or CVC syllables (Selkirk 1984; Hall 2011). This paper examines the epenthesis process in AD against this background, focusing on which vowel is inserted, where it appears, and which structural configurations require or block insertion. More specifically, the study addresses

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two questions: (1) what type of vowel is used in epenthesis in AD, and (2) under what structural and prosodic conditions vowel epenthesis occurs or fails to occur in AD (for example, word-final vs. phrase-medial position, cluster type, and following segment).

3. Method A wordlist was compiled specifically for this study to investigate the process of vowel epenthesis in the Aleppine Dialect (AD). The list consisted of 23 isolated words with a consonant-vowel-consonant-consonant (CVCC) structure, selected to represent a range of sonority profiles in final consonant clusters. To examine the behavior of epenthesis across word boundaries, thirteen of these words were combined with additional words, forming two-word phrases. Furthermore, the list included CVCC words followed by both vowel-initial and consonant-initial suffixes to explore potential effects of morphological attachment on epenthesis. Data were elicited from several speakers of the Aleppine dialect during informal online interactions, such as video calls with family or social conversations with friends. Each speaker was asked to repeat the target words multiple times to ensure consistency and minimize incidental variation. To reduce the risk of observer bias, participants were not informed that the study focused specifically on vowel insertion, allowing for more naturalistic speech data.

4. Results and Analysis 4.1 Epenthesis in isolated CVCC words In AD, vowel epenthesis consists of inserting the high short vowel /ɪ/ at the end of CVCC nominal stems. This insertion breaks up an otherwise impermissible final consonant cluster, so that these words surface with a CVCVC pattern, as illustrated in (6): (6)

/ʔɪbn/ → /sahl/ → /sˤaħn/ → /nahr/ → /saqf/ → /bahr/ → /qɪfl/ → /batˤn/ →

/ʔɪbɪn/ /sahɪl/ /sˤaħɪn/ /nahɪr/ /saqɪf/ /bahɪr/ /qɪfɪl/ /batˤɪn/

‘son’ ‘plain’ ‘plate’ ‘river’ ‘roof’ ‘sea’ ‘lock’ ‘abdomen’

Shbeeb, Vowel Epenthesis in the Aleppine Dialect 95

/ʔakl/ → /ʔɪsm/ →

/ʔakɪl/ /ʔɪsɪm/

‘food’ ‘name’

In all of these forms, the underlying CVCC structure is repaired by inserting /ɪ/ between the last two consonants. The process is obligatory for the items in (6) when they are produced in isolation. However, the words in (7) show that the same epenthetic pattern applies even when the final cluster does not violate the SSP. They do not create the kind of rising sonority clusters that trigger epenthesis in dialects like Bani Hassan. Their final clusters either consist of a sonorant followed by an obstruent (e.g. /nt, lb, rs, nz/) or an obstruent–obstruent sequence with no sonority rise (e.g. /ft, zf/). In SSP terms, these are falling-sonority or level clusters and are relatively well-formed, yet AD still inserts /ɪ/, so all of them surface as CVCVC. (7)

/bɪnt/ → /kalb/ → /zarʕ/ → /dars/ → /nɪfṭ/ → /kanz/ → /nazf/ → /ʔɪχt/ → /ħaʃd/ → /damd͡ʒ/→

/bɪnɪt/ /kalɪb/ /zarɪʕ/ /darɪs/ /nɪfɪṭ/ /kanɪz/ /nazɪf/ /ʔɪχɪt/ /ħaʃɪd/ /damɪd͡ʒ/

‘daughter’ ‘dog’ ‘plants’ ‘lesson’ ‘petrol’ ‘treasure’ ‘bleeeding’ ‘sister’ ‘crowd’ ‘merging’

Although the data in (7) have the same CVCC structure as the data in (6), they differ in their sonority profiles. Nevertheless, vowel epenthesis is obligatory in both sets. This suggests that in AD, the key generalisation for isolated words is not sonority-based but position-based: complex codas are not allowed in wordfinal position. This contrasts with dialects such as Cairene Arabic, where the word ‘dog’ surfaces as /kalb/ rather than /kalɪb/ (Watson 2002). 4.2 Epenthesis across word boundaries The previous CVCC words undergo vowel epenthesis when they are pronounced separately. A natural question is what happens when these words occur as the first element of a two-word phrase. To address this, we consider sequences in which a CVCC word is followed either by (i) a consonant-initial clitic or word or (ii) an element that is vowel-initial at the surface (for instance, after deletion of an initial /ʔ/ in phrase-medial position).

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First, consider (8), where the second word begins with a consonant and epenthesis is observed: (8)

a. /ʔɪbn xæːlɪ/ b. /saqf ʕelɪ/ c. /bahr melɪħ/ d. /ʔakl zakɪ/ e. /ʔɪsm gamiːl/

→ → → → →

/ʔɪbɪn xæːlɪ/ /saqɪf ʕelɪ/ /bahɪr melɪħ/ /ʔakɪl zakɪ/ /ʔɪsɪm gamiːl/

‘the son of my uncle’ ‘high roof’ ‘salt sea’ ‘delicious food’ ‘a beautiful name’

In all examples in (8), the epenthetic vowel that appears in isolation is retained phrase-medially, so the first word surfaces as CVCVC even when followed by another word. Now consider (9), where epenthesis is not observed phrase-medially: (9)

a. /bɪnt xæːlɪ/ b. /kalb ħɪrase/ c. /dars mufassal/ d. /kanz madfu:n/

→ → → →

/bɪnt xæːlɪ/ ‘the daughter of my uncle’ /kalb ħɪrase/ ‘watchdog’ /dars mufassal/ ‘a detailed lesson’ /kanz madfu:n/ ‘buried treasure’

In (9), the first word has the same CVCC structure as those in (7) and undergoes epenthesis in isolation (e.g. /bɪnɪt/, /kalɪb/, /darɪs/, /kanɪz/). However, in these phrase-medial contexts, the final clusters /nt, lb, rs, nz/ surface without a vowel when followed by a consonant-initial word. This indicates that AD allows certain complex codas phrase-medially even though it does not allow them wordfinally. Two properties appear to be relevant here. First, several clusters in (9) are homorganic coronals (/nt, rs, nz/). Second, /lb/ is a sonorant–obstruent sequence that is cross-linguistically a relatively well-formed falling coda. The fact that /kalb ħɪrase/ patterns with the homorganic coronals suggests that Aleppine does not rely solely on homorganicity to license phrase-medial codas, but that some nonhomorganic clusters are also tolerated in this position. The contrast becomes clearer when we examine (10), where epenthesis is maintained phrase-medially despite a following consonant: (10)

a. /zarʕ tawiːl/ b. /nɪft xam/ c. /ʕɪlm mufiːd/ d. /damʕ ɣaziːr/

→ → → →

/zarɪʕ tawiːl/ /nɪfɪt xam/

‘tall plants’ ‘crude petrol’

/ʕɪlɪm mufiːd/ /damɪʕ ɣaziːr/

‘useful science’ ‘heavy tears’

In (10), the final clusters of the first words also undergo vowel epenthesis in isolation, with an epenthetic /ɪ/ inserted, and this /ɪ/ is retained phrase-medially.

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The final clusters in (10) represent several segmental types, including an obstruent–obstruent sequence (/ft/) and a sonorant–sonorant sequence (/lm/), alongside clusters involving a sonorant followed by /ʕ/ (e.g., /rʕ, mʕ/) that have a falling-sonority profile and therefore do not violate the SSP. Yet, unlike the clusters in (9), these do not lose their epenthetic vowel in phrases such as /nɪfɪt xam/ and /ʕɪlɪm mufi:d/. Taken together, (8)–(10) show that the behaviour of epenthesis across word boundaries in AD depends on more than just the presence of a following consonant. Three descriptive generalisations emerge: 1. Word-final position: Complex codas are disallowed; all CVCC items in (6) and (7) insert /ɪ/ in isolation, regardless of sonority profile. 2. Phrase-medial position with consonant-initial second word: Some CVCC words retain epenthesis (as in (8) and (10)), while others lose it and surface with a complex coda (as in (9)). 3. Cluster type: Homorganic coronals (/nt, rs, nz/) and certain sonorant– obstruent clusters (/lb/) can surface without epenthesis phrase-medially, whereas obstruent–obstruent clusters (/ft/) and many other sonorant– obstruent clusters do not. A useful contrast arises when we compare 9(b) and 10(b). In both cases, the first word has a non-homorganic final cluster: /ft/ in /nɪft/ and /lb/ in /kalb/. Wordfinally, both clusters trigger epenthesis (/nɪfɪt/, /kalɪb/), which confirms that complex codas are systematically disallowed in this position in AD. Phrasemedially, however, the two clusters behave differently: /kalb/ surfaces as /kalb ħɪrase/ without an epenthetic vowel, whereas /nɪft/ retains epenthesis in /nɪfɪt xam/. From a phonotactic perspective, this suggests that Aleppine does not treat all non-homorganic clusters alike. The coda /lb/ is a sonorant–obstruent sequence and is cross-linguistically a relatively well-formed falling cluster, while /ft/ is an obstruent–obstruent cluster of a more marked type. The data therefore point to a hierarchy of cluster well-formedness in phrase-medial position: homorganic coronals such as /nt, rs, nz/ and some non-homorganic sonorant–obstruent clusters such as /lb/ are tolerated without epenthesis, but obstruent–obstruent clusters such as /ft/ continue to be repaired by inserting /ɪ/. Comparable contrasts are found when the second word begins with /ɪ/, as in (11): (11)

/nɪft ɪkti:r/

→

/ nɪft ɪkti:r /

‘a lot of petrol’

Shbeeb, Vowel Epenthesis in the Aleppine Dialect 98

Here, no epenthetic vowel is inserted between /f/ and /t/ in /nɪft ɪkti:r/, even though the same word surfaces as /nɪfɪt/ in isolation or when followed by a consonant. This can be described as a resyllabification effect: when /nɪft/ is followed by a vowel-initial word, the final /t/ of /nɪft/ is reassigned to the onset of the following syllable, and the /ɪ/ of /ɪkti:r/ fills the vocalic position between /f/ and /t/. In other words, the presence of a following vowel allows the language to avoid a complex word-final coda without inserting an extra vowel. This type of post-lexical re-syllabification is consistent with general accounts of sentence phonology, where syllable structure can be reorganised according to prosodic constituency (Selkirk 1986). Within a phonological phrase, the final consonant of one word can function as the onset of the next word, and vowels at word boundaries can license the absence of epenthesis even where epenthesis is required in isolation. 4.3 Epenthesis and suffixes Further evidence for the role of following segments comes from suffixes that begin with either a vowel or a consonant. The alternations in (12a) and (12b) show how epenthesis interacts with person and number marking on /ħɪlm/ ‘dream’: (12) a. /ħɪlm-u/ /ħɪlm-ɪ/ /ħɪlm-a/ /ħɪlm-un/ /ħɪlm-ak/ /ħɪlm-ɪk/

→ → → → → →

/ħɪlmu/ /ħɪlmɪ/ /ħɪlma/ /ħɪlmun/ /ħɪlmak/ /ħɪlmɪk/

‘his dream’ ‘my dream’ ‘her dream’ ‘their dream’ ‘your dream’ ‘your dream’

3rd, sg., ms. 1st, sg. 3rd, sg., f. 3rd, pl./du., ms., f. 2nd, sg. ms. 2nd, sg. f.

b. /ħɪlm-na/ /ħɪlm-kun/

→ →

/ħɪlɪmna/ /ħɪlɪmkun/

‘our dream’ 1st, pl. ‘your dream’ 2nd, pl./du., ms., f.

A closer look at these examples reveals that when a suffix begins with a consonant, it can create a CCC sequence at the stem–suffix boundary. In such cases (12b), epenthesis applies between the final consonants of the stem and the suffix-initial consonant, yielding /ħɪlɪmna/, /ħɪlɪmkun/. By contrast, when the suffix begins with a vowel, as in (12a), no three-consonant sequence arises at the boundary, and no epenthesis is observed. More interestingly, this pattern extends beyond /ħɪlm/. When the stems illustrated in (8)–(10) are combined with the same person- and number-marking suffixes, they display exactly the same epenthetic behaviour as in the phrasal contexts discussed earlier: when followed by a

Shbeeb, Vowel Epenthesis in the Aleppine Dialect 99

consonant-initial element, some CVCC stems retain the epenthetic vowel (as in /ʔɪbɪn-kun/ and /nɪfɪt-na/), while others lose it and surface with a complex coda, as in /bɪnt-na/. However, when the following segment is a vowel, no epenthesis occurs for any of these cluster types, and the stems surface without an additional vowel. 4.4 Residual patterns and open questions The non-epenthesizing phrases in (9) form a descriptively coherent set: in all of them, a word that epenthesizes in isolation (e.g. /bɪnt/, /kalb/, /dars/, /kanz/) surfaces without /ɪ/ when followed by another word within the same phonological phrase. However, they are not homogeneous in their cluster composition. Final clusters such as /nt/ in /bɪnt xa:lɪ/, /rs/ in /dars mufassal/, and /nz/ in /kanz madfu:n/ involve homorganic coronals and are cross-linguistically common as complex codas. By contrast, the cluster /lb/ in /kalb ħɪrase/ is non-homorganic, yet it patterns with these items in blocking epenthesis phrase-medially. Informal elicitations with Aleppine speakers suggest that similar behaviour is found with other CVCC words whose final clusters are non-homorganic, as in (13): (13)

a. /ʔalf ʕalam/ b. /ʔarḍ xadra/

→ →

/ʔalf ʕalam/ /ʔarḍ xadra/

‘a thousand flags’ ‘green land’

In each of these sequences, the final cluster of the first word (e.g. /lf, rḍ/) is non-homorganic, but speakers accept phrase-medial forms without internal epenthesis (e.g. /ʔalf ʕalam/, not */ʔalɪf ʕalam/). At the same time, the corresponding words epenthesize in isolation, reinforcing the generalisation that complex codas are disallowed word-finally but more freely tolerated phrasemedially. These residual patterns show that a purely sonority-based account is insufficient: even among sonority-falling clusters, AD differentiates between those that can surface as codas phrase-medially and those that continue to trigger epenthesis. The differences appear to be sensitive to a combination of factors, including homorganicity, the presence of a following vowel, and cluster-specific phonotactic preferences. Formal frameworks such as Government Phonology and CVCV (Lowenstamm 1996; Kaye 1990; Lahrouchi 2018; Scheer 2004) could provide tools for modelling such alternations in terms of empty positions and licensing, but here, the emphasis is on documenting the patterns and delineating where existing theoretical machinery would need to be refined or extended.

Shbeeb, Vowel Epenthesis in the Aleppine Dialect 100

5. Conclusion This study set out to answer two main questions: (1) What type of vowel epenthesis occurs in the Aleppine Dialect? and (2) Under what structural and prosodic conditions does vowel epenthesis occur or fail to occur in AD? The data show that AD systematically inserts the high short vowel /ɪ/ to break up final consonant clusters in CVCC forms. This process holds regardless of whether the clusters violate the Sonority Sequencing Principle, suggesting that complex codas are generally not allowed in AD in word-final position. No evidence was found for the insertion of /a/ or /u/, which aligns AD more closely with many Levantine and Egyptian varieties than with dialects from the Arabian Peninsula, where other epenthetic vowels have been reported (Abu-Mansour 1991; Elashhab 2018). Across word boundaries, epenthesis patterns diverge depending on structural and prosodic conditions. Epenthesis is regularly blocked when a following vowel allows resyllabification of the final consonant as an onset, as in /nɪft ɪkti:r/ → /nɪft ɪkti:r/. In other cases, certain complex clusters—especially homorganic coronals (/nt, rs, nz/) and some sonorant–obstruent sequences such as /lb/—are tolerated phrase-medially without epenthesis, whereas more marked clusters such as /ft/ continue to be repaired by inserting /ɪ/. The suffix data further show that when a consonant-initial suffix would create a three-consonant cluster, epenthesis applies, while vowel-initial suffixes are sufficient to avoid such structures without additional repair. Taken together, the findings portray Aleppine as a dialect with a strong positional asymmetry: complex codas are banned word-finally but are partially licensed phrase-medially and in certain morphophonological contexts. The detailed distribution of epenthesis reveals a hierarchy among clusters, shaped by sonority, homorganicity, and the presence of neighbouring vowels. Rather than committing to a specific formal framework, this study has focused on describing these patterns and comparing them to epenthesis strategies in other Arabic dialects. The residual cases—particularly non-homorganic clusters like /lb/ that nevertheless block epenthesis phrase-medially—point to areas where future work can fruitfully engage with more explicit theoretical models of syllable structure and licensing in Arabic.

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Firas Shbeeb Eötvös Loránd University firas-shb@student.elte.hu