Syllable Structure Variation between Two Iraqi Arabic Dialects: A Comparative Optimality-Theoretic Investigation
This study is an Optimality-Theoretic comparison of two major dialects of Iraqi Arabic: Baghdadi Gilit Arabic (BGD) and Basri Arabic (BAS), focusing on syllable structure variation. The data were collected from 20 native speakers (10 for each dialect), representing both rural and urban backgrounds, as participants in recorded naturalistic conversations and in targeted elicitation tasks. The analysis examined a large set of more than 200 phonological tokens in the framework of Optimality Theory (OT), in particular, the ranking of the constraints for dealing with complex onsets, the resolution of triconsonantal clusters, and the Gahawa Syndrome. Key findings reveal that complex onsets are allowed in both dialects, but that they have different strategies for resolving the triconsonantal clusters and different characteristics in the occurrence and phonological conditioning of the Gahawa Syndrome.