The Syllable in Arabic: From the Traditional Perspective to the Systems of Representations and Constraints

Abstract

This article deals with the syllable in Standard Arabic from the traditional perspective, which adopts the principles of classical phonology, then from the modern perspective seen in the representation theory and the models derived from it. The article then cnsiders "Optimality theory" as a modern generative research program based on a new concept of grammar and the interaction of linguistic levels through the interaction of phonological constraints, morphological and prosodic.

The article also raises a set of questions related to the concept of the syllable, its structure, components and forms. It also presents linguistic facts related to the application of the procedures of "optimality theory" to the phonological system of Arabic, as a theoretical and methodological choice that reformulates the questions and problems of syllable structure in Arabic and adopts tools of the new generative theories in its classification and their description based on the principle of distinguishing between the phonetic and the phonological syllables according to the input/ output binary.

We also recall the most important processes of the theory of the syllable from the traditional notion to the perspective of multidimensional representations, then the approach based on the interaction of constraints.