Syllable Structures Across Arabic Varieties

AbstractThis study compares the syllable structures of nine Arabic varieties from Wiktionary, using a computational syllabifier. It further investigates methods for learning syllable boundaries in unsyllabified words transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). The syllabification algorithm is evaluated under three conditions: (i) Default, employing fixed rules; (ii) Joint, learning onsets and codas across all varieties collectively; and (iii) Per-variety, learning onsets and codas specific to each variety. Results indicate that the default configuration yields the highest accuracy, ranging from 97.05% to 100%. The per-variety approach achieves 90.64% to 100% accuracy, while the joint approach ranges from 84.63% to 94.74%. A cross-variety analysis using Jensen-Shannon divergence reveals three principal groupings: Egyptian, Hejazi, and Modern Standard Arabic are closely related; Levantine and Gulf varieties constitute a second cluster; and Juba Arabic, Maltese, and Moroccan emerge as outliers. A cleaned dataset encompassing all nine varieties is also provided.