The theory of PROSODIC CIRCUMSCRIPTION (McCarthy & Prince 1990a) is a general approach to the problem of limiting the domain of rules to less than a morphological constituent. For example, in the Arabic singular/ plural pairs ndub/anaadib ‘locust’ and sulṭaan/salaaṭiin ‘sultan’, vowel length in the final syllable remains unaltered despite significant changes in the shape of the rest of the word. Prosodic circumscription theory partitions the singular base into affected ( aun, sul ) and unaffected ( dib, ṭaan ) portions, with only the affected portion mapped onto a light–heavy (or iambic) template.
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Lombardi et al. (1991) studied this question.
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