Consonant Spreading in Arabic Stems

This paper examines the phenomenon of consonant spreading in Arabic stems. Each spreading involves a local surface copying of an underlying consonant, and, in certain phonological contexts, spreading alternates productively with consonant lengthening (or gemination). The morphophonemic triggers of spreading lie in the patterns or even in the roots themselves, and the combination of a spreading root and a spreading pattern causes a consonant to be copied multiple times. The interdigitation of Arabic stems and the realization of consonant spreading are formalized using finite-state morphotactics and variation rules, and this approach has been successfully implemented in a large-scale Arabic morphological analyzer which is available for testing on the Internet.

• Type: Conference
• Year: 1998
• Where: ACL
• Authors: Kenneth R. Beesley
• Keywords: ACL 1998, ACL 2007, Consonant Lengthening, Consonant Spreading, Spreading Pattern