Preliminary study of Moroccan Arabic word-initial consonant clusters and syllabification using electromagnetic articulography

This study examines the relation between theoretical claims of syllabic organisation in Moroccan Arabic and temporal patterns in experimental data from two speakers of this language. By an analysis of interval stability, where intervals are defined within and across hypothesised syllable constituents, the paper provides evidence that consonants added before a consonant-vowel sequence are not parsed in the same constituent as that consonant-vowel sequence. The results obtained in this study and in other studies in the research reviewed promise to provide a rigorous methodology for exploring the syllabic structuring of phonological form in terms of temporal patterns.