Secondary stress exist in Cairene Arabic?
In this paper I demonstrate that secondary stress in Cairene Arabic (CA) exists, and that is by invoking Optimality Theoretic (OT) constraints of FootBinarity, Align-Head/R, Trochaic, Wsp, *Clash, and *Lapse. There is no dispute in the literature over the place of primary stress, on one of the rightmost three syllables. However, very few studies support the presence of secondary stress (Harms, 1981; Welden, 1980), while more research suggest that secondary stress does not exist (Aljarah, 2008; De Lacy, 1998; Halle & Vergnaud, 1987; Hayes, 1995; Kenstowicz, 1994; McCarthy, 1979; Watson, 2002). Although I agree with research (Gairdner, 1926; Harms, 1981; Welden, 1980) that secondary stress exists in CA, I refute the data and analysis proposed by this research.