Assignment of Plural Modes in Northern Rural Jordanian Arabic

Abstract

This article seeks an explanation why many nouns in this Arabic variety are irregularly pluralized (e.g. dʒabal  Ɂɪdʒba:l) whereas only few are regularly pluralized (muʔalim  mʔalm-iin). While repudiating the long-standing views which attribute the dichotomy of the sound (regular) and broken (irregular) plurals to primarily morphological factors, the current study shows that this dichotomy rather follows from a confluence of morpho-phonological processes, including moraic weight. It argues that the broken plural is the normal mode of plural formation in Arabic, being basically confined to words weighing 2-5 moras. If the given word weighs more than five moras or less than two moras (i.e., mono-moraic), broken formation is no longer accessible, and hence, the sound plural mode is called for. Furthermore, the study demonstrates how certain vowel melodies and the OCP are competing forces that constrain plural formation in this Jordanian Arabic variety.