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The present thesis investigates some melodic and prosodic processes in Syrian and Jordanian Arabic in the framework of Optimality Theory. This study supports the superiority of this theory over other past theories, i.e. SPE and Autosegmental Theory. in accounting for this variety of phonological processes. Processes of assimilation (place, manner and voice) will be shown to occur regressively. whether within words or across word boundaries. One of the novel findings of this stUdy is the fact that the notion of similarity seems to govern some of the assimilation pr~cesses in Syrian and Jordanian Arabic in terms ofmarmer and voice assimilation. In terms of emphasis spread, it ""ill be shown that different dialects manifest different scenarios of opacity to emphasis spread which alludes to the fact iliat the opacity of some segments tends to be language specific. What is opaque in one dialect might be transparent in another. Additionally, emphatics and gutturals will be shown to behave as natural classes in triggering vowel lowering in certain contexts. Unlike English, Syrian and Jordanian Arabic will be shown to tolerate complex onsets which do not conform to sonority constraints such as rising sonority and Minimal Sonority Distance. Complex codas. on the other hand, are governed by these constraints. The process of deletion in both dialects seems to target segments in weak positions; short vowels are syncopated in unstressed syllables, whereas consonants are deleted wordfinally. Another important finding is the fact that closed syilable shortening is a result of phonology-morphology interactions.