Deriving Arabic verbal "templates" without templates

Abstract

Much of the recent OT-based literature on Arabic root-and-pattern morphology has identified prosodic constraints as a main driver of the language’s verbal "templates". I argue instead that the system is governed by non-prosodic (morpho)phonological constraints (in the spirit of McCarthy 1993). Following much recent work, this approach views Arabic’s root-and-pattern system as garden-variety morpheme concatenation that is subject to unusual complications in the phonology and/or at the (morpho)syntax-phonology interface. This paper outlines an integrated analysis of the morphophonological properties of the Arabic verbal system without CV templates or prosodic constraints.