Syllable contact in Quranic Arabic

Abstract This study examines the interactions between codas and onsets across syllable boundaries in Arabic as exemplified by Quranic Arabic. It provides empirical evidence supporting the syllable contact law, which prohibits rising sonority across syllable boundaries. The data comprises 4,549 syllables extracted from four Quranic chapters. Analysis of wordinternal 1,049 closed syllables shows that 85% of them adheres to the syllable contact law, i.e., the coda is more sonorous or equal in sonority to the onset in the immediately following syllable. The 15% of cases with rising sonority appear to be marked. Many of them appear in complex morphological processes. Also, vowel epenthesis is resorted to in many places resulting in better syllable contact. Moreover, total assimilation is invoked in many cases, resulting in a geminate with better syllable contact. The findings show that the syllable contact law constitutes a strong but gradient constraint in Arabic that is driven by markedness.