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Epenthesis refers to the process whereby an intervening segment is added to separate ill- formed consonant clusters in order to meet the syllable requirements of the language (Hall 2006; Matthews 2007). Watson (2002) draws a distinction between epenthesis and prosthesis. The latter refers to the insertion of a vowel word or utterance initially, whereas the former refers to the insertion of a vowel in any other position.

Kiparsky (2003) classifies Arabic dialects in terms of their syllabification patterns into those in which CCC clusters are syllabified as CVCC (VC dialects), CCVC (CV dialects), and CCC (C dialects). For example, the word ḥalgha ‘her throat’ is syllabified as ḥaligha in VC dialects, ḥalgiha in CV dialects, and remains as ḥalgha in C dialects. WM Arabic can be

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described as a VC dialect because in CCC clusters, an epenthetic vowel is inserted to the left of the unsyllabified consonant, e.g. gilt-lak > gilitlak ‘I said to you’ (cf. 2.3.4).

As is common in VC-dialects (Kiparsky 2003), WM Arabic applies [i] epenthesis to nouns that have the underlying shape CVCC, where the sonority of the right-most consonant is greater than the sonority of the preceding consonant. Trask (1996: 327) defines sonority as ‘the sort of prominence associated with a segment by virtue of the way in which that segment is intrinsically articulated’. The basic notion of sonority is that segments are ranked according to their degree of sonority; thus, consonants increase in sonority towards the nucleus, while they decrease towards the coda. Accordingly, the most sonorous sounds are vowels followed by glides, liquids, nasals and fricatives and stops. Selkirk (1984) makes a further distinction between stops, showing that voiceless stops are less sonorous than voiced ones. The epenthesis of [i] comes as a response to the Sonority Hierarchy Principle whereby C1 in complex codas should be less sonorous than C2 (Selkirk 1982; Clements 1990). For illustration, consider the examples given in the table below:

Table 73: Final epenthesis in WM Arabic

Underlying Form Surface Form Gloss

ḥagl ḥagil field

ʔakl ʔakil eating

dabr dabir bee

ḥabl ḥabil rope

ḥafr ḥafir digging

šakl šakil appearance

As shown in the above examples, the right-most consonant in the coda is more sonorous than the preceding one, and this violates the Sonority Hierarchy Principle. As a result, the high front vowel [i] is inserted between C1 and C2 to produce phonotactically correct outputs. The epenthetic vowel fails to be inserted in clusters that obey the Sonority Hierarchy Principle, e.g. ḥarb ‘war’, galb ‘heart’, samᶜ ‘hearing’. By contrast, the high front vowel [i] is inserted between the final two consonants of CVCC nouns irrespective of the Sonority Hierarchy Principle in ᶜAbbādi Arabic (Sakarnah 1999). Therefore, the nouns samᶜ ‘hearing’ and dars ‘lesson’ are realised respectively in ᶜAbbādi Arabic as samiᶜ and daris, although the consonants involved do adhere to the Sonority Hierarchy Principle (cf. 2.3.4).

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Another epenthesis rule in WM Arabic involves insertion of the low back vowel [a] between the final two consonants in /CVGC/ forms, where G refers to the class of gutturals. The rule applies when the right-most consonant is more sonorous than the preceding guttural. The insertion of the epenthetic [a] is a response to the Sonority Hierarchy Principle which assumes that C1 in complex codas should be more sonorous than C2. For illustration, consider the examples shown in the table below:

Table 74: Insertion of [a] in CVGC forms

Underlying Form Surface Form Gloss

laḥm laḥam meat

sahm saham arrow

maḥl maḥal shortage

naᶜl naᶜal insole

ʔahl ʔahal family

The fact that the most-right consonant in the above examples is more sonorous that the preceding guttural leads to the insertion of the low vowel to avoid an impermissible structure. Medial epenthesis occurs when the morphology concatenates a cluster of three consonants within the phonological word. Arabic dialects differ in the placement of the epenthetic vowel to produce a phonotactically correct output. A group of dialects like Egyptian Arabic insert the epenthetic vowel between C2 and C3, syllabifying the second consonant as an onset ‘onset dialects’ (Kiparsky’s CV-dialects), e.g. ʔul-t-l-alk> ʔul-ti-lak ‘I said to you’. Another group of dialects insert the epenthetic vowel between C1 and C2, syllabifying C2 as the coda of that syllable (Kiparsky’s VC-dialects) (Hall 2011). WM Arabic can be classified as a coda or VC-dialect dialect since the epenthetic vowel [i] is inserted between C1 and C2 in three- consonant clusters. Consider the examples given in the table below:

Table 75: The insertion of [i] in three-consonant clusters

Underlying Form Surface Form Gloss

gilt+lak gilitlak I told you

dars+ha darisha her lesson

ḥalg+ha ḥaligha her throat

šarṭ+hum šariṭhum their condition

samᶜ+hum samiᶜhum their hearing

ḥarb+hum ḥaribhum their war

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Epenthesis may also take place across words within the phonological phrase where a word- final consonant or consonant cluster is followed by a word with an onset cluster, as shown in the following examples:

3- il-bint [i] kbīra ‘the girl is big’.

4- dars [i] kwayyis l-kul wāḥid ‘it is a good lesson for everybody’.

5- fi šarx[i] ṣġīr b-il-ḥēṭ ‘there is a little crack in the wall’.

6- ḥajar [i] kbīra wigᶜat ᶜala bēt-na ‘a big piece of stone fell on our home’.

The short high vowel is also inserted where the morphology concatenates any of the imperfect aspect markers y-, n- and t- to stems with an initial two-consonant cluster, thus avoiding an impermissible structure of three consonant clusters, e.g. yi-lᶜab ‘he plays’, ni- smaᶜ ‘we hear’ (cf. 3.2.2.5.1).