This paper provides a prosodic analysis of main stress and vowel reduction in Jewish Literary Aramaic (JLA), based on the texts in Sperber (1992) with main stress assigned as in Lambdin and Huehnergard (1995). The paper concludes that the best analysis of these phenomena in JLA is one that employs moraic trochees. It follows from this moraic analysis that vowel quantity was contrastive in JLA and was the independent variable in terms of which stress is predictable. That conclusion is at odds with assertions often made in the literature regarding the relation between stress and quantity in Aramaic (for JLA see Lambdin and Huehnergard 1995:ix).

The paper makes specific claims regarding vowel quantity in a number of JLA morphemes. Consideration of several classes of apparent exceptions to moraic trochaic stress in JLA yields arguments for CV metathesis in the history of a small number of JLA forms, and for the need to distinguish suffixes from enclitics in JLA.