Emphasis spread in the Djelfa dialect of Algerian Arabic

Abstract The paper documents Emphasis spread in the Djelfa dialect ( DJ ) of Algerian Arabic with a special examination of the emphatic segments /sˤ/, /tˤ/ and /ðˤ/. If a given word contains an underlying emphatic segment, the nearby segments are also realized with emphasis. The dialect, however, differentiates two types of emphasis spread: unbounded leftward spread that propagates from the emphatic segment till the beginning of the phonological word; and bounded rightward spread that is blocked by a set of segments /i/, /j/, /ʃ/ and /ʒ/. Of particular interest in the current investigation is the behavior of emphasis spread ( ES ) with respect to morpheme boundaries. While the left morpheme edge is realized with ES , the right morpheme boundary is deemed resistant to ES unless an underlying emphatic segment falls prior to a - V ( C ) suffix. This is well captured by the interplay between the markedness constraints FAITH [ RTR ] SUFFIX and SHARE ( RTR ).