An OT Account of Moroccan Arabic Prosody

After an examination of the minimal surface word patterns in Moroccan Arabic, the paper argues for the existence of the category minimal prosodic word in this language (min[PrWrd]). Thus a review of a standard account of syllabification in MA adopting the schwa epenthesis theory is demonstrated to lead to the recognition of such a category, which, among other things, observes the universal bimoracity requirement. It is demonstrated that the different surface patterns can be obtained within an Optimality Theory framework using universal prosodic constraints such as Ft-Bin, No-Coda and Onset. While hollow and weak roots, on the one hand, and geminates on the other, can be accounted for independently, sound triliteral roots present a challenge for the adoption of a unified min[PrWrd] in MA. This is because whereas verbs and adjectives show an invariant template structure, (non-derived) nouns vary depending on their segments sonority, which can be shown to derive in general from the H-NUC constraint. Whatever the invariant template verbs and adjectives abide by, it is shown to be respected also by other non-concatenatively derived words in MA. This lends more support to its role in the morphology of the language.