Abstract
•The study examines final consonant repair in 42 dialects of Arabic.•Arabic dialects cluster into seven repair groups along a repair continuum.•Progression along the continuum correlates with stepwise sonority-scale augmentations.•/CG/ is the most repaired cluster type in the corpus.•/LN/, /LO/, and /NO/ are the least repaired clusters in the corpus.
This paper surveys the behaviour of final consonant clusters in 42 varieties of Arabic, and synthesises a typology of final cluster repair. The typological facts are used to construct a continuum of repair. The study proposes a discretisation of the repair continuum that permutates two parameters: Trigger Multiplicity (SSP with or without OCP effects) and Sonority-Scale Granularity (natural-class divisions). The result is seven non-overlapping categories extending from no-repair all the way to repair-all. Plotting the repair facts along the continuum reveals a host of implicational relations among repair triggers and highlights cluster type dependencies. These are used to evaluate sonority and perception-based accounts of sound sequences. An alternative model that takes an integrative approach to sound sequencing and sound grouping is sketched. The model’s predictions are assessed against the repair/retention patterns uncovered by the study. Finally, having charted a pathway of final cluster repair, the paper also reflects on how repair progression along the continuum bears on the broader issue of language change.