Linguists who are interested in Arabic are familiar with the fact that in spoken Arabic certain syllables stand out to the ear more than others; these syllables have been variously referred to as stressed or prominent syllables. The phenomenon of prominence has been treated by a number of linguists who have regarded it mainly as a characteristic of the word. But it has to be viewed as a characteristic of the one-word piece or pieces of a more complex structure with more than one prominent syllable.