Emphasis Harmony in a Modern Aramaic Dialect

Abstract

In the modern Aramaic dialect of the Jews of Azerbaijan, emphasis (pharyngealization) behaves much like vowel harmony, though it affects consonants and vowels alike. An autosegmental analysis of its distribution shows that emphatic spans are underlyingly marked as such, whereas plain spans must have no initial specification as to emphasis, and are eventually pronounced as non-emphatic by default. In mixed words, which are part plain and part emphatic, emphasis is underlyingly associated with a particular syllable; but in words which are emphatic throughout, the underlying mark of emphasis is floating-not associated with any particular segmental position.*