Epenthesis and vowel intrusion in Central Dhofari Mehri

The paper discusses epenthesis and vowel intrusion in the Central Dhofari variety of Mehri, one of six endangered Modern South Arabian languages indigenous to southern Arabia. Mehri is spoken by members of the Mahrah tribe in southern Oman, eastern Yemen, parts of southern and eastern Saudi Arabia and in communities in parts of the Gulf and East Africa. The estimated number of Mehri speakers is between 100,000–180,000. Following Hall (2006), this study distinguishes between two types of inserted vowels: epenthetic vowels, which repair illicit syllable structures, and intrusive vowels, which transition between consonants. The paper examines how the properties of epenthetic and intrusive vowels as proposed by Hall relate to Mehri

Pre-aspirated sonorants in Shehret, a Modern South Arabian language

This paper examines pre-aspirated sonorants in the Central and Eastern varieties of Shehret, an endangered Modern South Arabian language (MSAL) spoken by c. 50,000 speakers in Dhofar, southern Oman. We assume pre-aspirated sonorants fall in the class of breathy sonorants, acknowledged to be typologically rare [1], [2], and phonotactically tightly restricted [3]. Shehret pre-aspirated sonorants are restricted to the offset of stressed word-final syllables in a closed set of words [4]; they contrast both with non-pre-aspirated sonorants and with strings of /h/ followed by a sonorant (/hS/ realised as [həS] with epenthesis), giving a /hS/ versus /hS/ phonological sequence contrast; pre-aspiration also characterises voiceless obstruents in the language. Western Shehret apparently lacks pre-aspirated sonorants [6]. While related Soqotri exhibits a post-aspirated palatal glide [7], pre-aspirated sonorants appear not to be attested elsewhere within the Semitic language family

Aspects of the phonology and verb morphology of three Yemeni dialects

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