Is the phonotactics of the Arabic complex coda sonority-based?

Abstract

The study investigates the phonotactics of coda consonant clusters in Modern Standard Arabic CVCC syllable from the perspective of the Sonority Sequencing Principle (SSP). Based on around 500 CVCC lexical items listed in The Hans Wehr Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic, and on Hogg and McCully’s (1987) sonority scale, the study provides an exhaustive quantitative account of all possible coda manifestations which have been found in this study to fall into three major categories: conformity (42%), sonority reversals (49%), and sonority plateaus (9%). The study specifies and thoroughly exemplifies the patterns and subpatterns under each, and concludes, given the 58% of violation, that SSP is not a reliable phonological predictor for the sequencing of the consonant clusters in Modern Standard Arabic CVCC coda, contrary to long standing phonological assumptions that put much weight on the explanatory adequacy of this principle.