Sībawayhi's Observations on Assimilatory Processes and Re-syllabification in the Light fo Optimality Theory

Abstract

The last seven chapters (chs. 565–71) of Sībawayhi’s Kitāb contain many phonetic and phonological observations that can be conveniently recast in terms of theories of linguistic preference and natural generative phonology (Hooper 1976), notably in terms of the approach of Vennemann (1983, 1988). Optimality Theory (Prince and Smolensky 1993) offers a formal means to capture the “constraint ranking” that is implicit in Sībawayhi’s rejection of disallowed forms and evaluation of parallelly occurring and competing forms (“candidates”). The relevant phenomena under investigation in this paper are mainly assimilatory processes but also re-syllabification and haplological syllable ellipsis.