Prosodic systems : North Africa and the Middle East

This chapter reviews the prosodic systems of languages spoken in North Africa and the Middle East, taking in the Horn of Africa, the Arabian Peninsula, and the Middle East. The area’s southern edge is formed by Mauretania, Mali, Niger, Chad, South Sudan, Ethiopia, and Somalia. We outline the scope of typological variation within and across the Afro-Asiatic and Nilo-Saharan language families in word prosody, prosodic phrasing, melodic structure, and prosodic expression of meaning (sentence modality, focus, and information structure). The survey is organized around language sub-families. We close with a brief discussion, where we also set out priorities for future research.