Regressive voicing assimilation in Cairene Arabic

Cairene Arabic licenses voicing contrast in obstruents in most positions. However, within sequences all obstruents must agree in voicing. In clusters of obstruents, the voicing of the first obstruent assimilates to that of the second. This paper presents an account of regressive voicing assimilation, as well as the arguments that the feature [voice] must be binary in this language. This paper considers the role of guttural consonants in voicing assimilation. The major finding is that guttural sounds fall into two classes: some gutturals pattern with sonorant consonants, while other gutturals participate in voicing assimilation.