Coastal Hadhrami Arabic Intensive Verb Patterns: An Optimality Theoretic Analysis

An Optimality Theoretic Analysis

Abstract

Based on the Optimality Theory (OT), this research investigates morphologically the intensive verb patterns in
Coastal Hadhrami Arabic collecting their data from Mukalla and shihr only. It has been found that a set of
markedness and faithfulness constraints interact to assign the intensive verbal configurations of CHA: syllable
structure constraints and alignment constraints. The analysis shows that nearly all the stems of CHA intensive verbs
are completely different from their equivalent intensive verbs in Standard Arabic. As they are commonly derived
verbs their analysis depends mostly on Reduplication Theory in which the alignment constraints modify the prosodic
structure of the verb either by changing the vocalic pattern or by affixation.