The Syllable in English and Arabic: a contrastive Study

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زح
ٌاري
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خيراتب
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0202
ةيساسلاا ةيبترلا ةيلك ةلمج
ةيرصيتشلما ةعمالجا
which is the nucleus and the other elements are considered as being marginal. 
The nucleus is acoustically prominent and it acquires syllabicity with the 
presence of short and long vowels (ibid.). 
Al-Ani (ibid.) argues that Arabic has two kinds of syllables: open (maftuh) 
syllables: CV (which is a light syllable) and CVV, and closed (muqfal) 
syllables: CVC, CVVC, and CVCC. The syllable types with three units, i.e., 
CVC and CVV are termed heavy syllables, while those with four units, i.e., 
CVVC and CVCC are super-heavy syllables. In classical Arabic, super-heavy 
syllables occur in only two places: at the end of the sentence and in words 
such as جدام maddah (stuff). 
Al-Ani (1970:33) and Al-Ani and May (1973: 89-93) claim that CV, 
CVV, and CVC are unmarked types in terms of their distribution because 
they occur more often than the other types, namely CVVC and CVCC. CV 
and CVC are more frequent types because there are no constraints of any 
kind on their distribution in any position in Arabic words. They occur freely 
in word initial, medial, and final positions. On the other hand, there are some 
constraints on the distribution of the CVV type. This type is less frequent in 
final position than the other two positions and more frequent in medial 
position than in initial or final positions. 
Al-Ani and May (ibid.) apend that a syllable rhyme may contain one 
consonant as in CVC and CVVC patterns or no consonant as in CV and CVV 
patterns but not more than two consonants, and that the CVVC patterns are 
confined to the final position of the word.
There are certain constraints on the structure of the syllable in Arabic. 
The first constraint is that every syllable begins with a consonant, except in 
the case where the phrase begins with the definite article, for example, ريدملا
almudi:r "the manager." When a word ends in a vowel and the following 
word begins with the definite article, then the initial vowel of the article is 
elided and the consonant closes the final syllable of the preceding word, for 
example, ريدملا تيت baytu –l mudiir “house (of) the manager”, which 
becomes[baytul mudi:r]. The second constraint is that no syllable may start 
with a consonant cluster (two or more consonants) (ibid.). The second 
constraint is that no syllable may start with a consonant cluster (two or more 

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