Perspectives on Arabic Linguistics: Papers from the Annual Symposium on Arabic Linguistics. Volume XIX: Urbana, Illinois, April 2005

321 Pages·2007·0.41 MB·English

by  Elabbas Benmamoun (Ed.)

PersPectives on ArAbic Linguistics XiX
AMSTERDAM STUDIES IN THE THEORY AND
HISTORY OF LINGUISTIC SCIENCE
general editor
e.F.K. Koerner
(Zentrum für Allgemeine sprachwissenschaft, typologie
und universalienforschung, berlin)
series iv – current issues in Linguistic tHeorY
Advisory Editorial Board
Lyle campbell (salt Lake city); sheila embleton (toronto)
brian D. Joseph (columbus, ohio); John e. Joseph (edinburgh)
Manfred Krifka (berlin); e. Wyn roberts (vancouver, b.c.)
Joseph c. salmons (Madison, Wis.); Hans-Jürgen sasse (Köln)
volume 289
elabbas benmamoun (ed.)
Perspectives on Arabic Linguistics XIX
Papers from the nineteenth annual symposium on Arabic Linguistics,
Urbana, Illinois, April 2005
PersPectives on
ArAbic Linguistics XiX
PAPers FroM tHe nineteentH AnnuAL
sYMPosiuM on ArAbic Linguistics,
urbAnA, iLLinois, APriL 2005
edited by
eLAbbAs benMAMoun
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
JoHn benJAMins PubLisHing coMPAnY
AMsterDAM/PHiLADeLPHiA
(cid:52)(cid:45) The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American
(cid:32)
national standard for information sciences — Permanence of Paper for Printed Library
Materials, Ansi Z39.48-1984.
Perspectives on Arabic linguistics XiX : Papers from the nineteenth annual symposium on Arabic Lin-
guistics, urbana, illinois, April 2005 / edited by elabbas benmamoun.
(Amsterdam studies in the theory and history of linguistic science. series iv, current issues in linguistic
theory, issn 0304-0763 ; v. 289)
includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn 978 90 272 4804 6 (Hb; alk. paper)
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CONTENTS

Acknowledgments vii

Foreword ix
Elabbas Benmamoun

Section I: Computational and Corpus Linguistics

Systematicity in the Arabic Mental Lexicon 3
Ilana Bromberg

Arabic PAPPI: A Principles and Parameters Parser 19
Sandiway Fong

Corpus-based Linguistic Analyses: Testing Intuitions
about Arabic Structure and Use 37
Salem Ghazali

Learning Arabic Morphology Using Statistical
Constraint-Satisfaction Models 63
Paul Rodrigues and Damir Ćavar

Learning to Use the Prague Arabic Dependency Treebank 77
Otakar Smrž, Petr Pajas, Zdeněk Žabokrtský, Jan Hajič,
Jiří Mírovský, and Petr Němec
CONTENTS vi
Section II: Phonology, Morphology, and Syntax

Intonational and Rhythmic Patterns across the
Dialect Continuum 97
Salem Ghazali, Rym Hamdi and Khouloud Knis

Roots and Patterns in Arabic Lexical Processing 123
Abdessatar Mahfoudhi

Affrication in North Arabic Revisited 151
Eiman Mustafawi

The Syntax of Complex Tense in Moroccan Arabic 175
Hamid Ouali and Catherine Fortin

On Agree and Postcyclic Merge in Syntactic Derivations: 191
First Conjunct Agreement in Standard Arabic
Usama Soltan

Section III: Sociolinguistics and Second Language Acquisition

Null Subjects Use by English and Spanish 217
Learners of Arabic as an L2
Mohammad T. Alhawary

Linguistic Diversity: The Qaaf across Arabic Dialects 247
Maher Bahloul

Arabic Sociolinguistics and Cultural Diversity in Morocco 267
Moha Ennaji

The Gendered Use of Arabic and Other Languages 277
in Morocco
Fatima Sadiqi

Index of Subjects 301
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The Nineteenth Annual Symposium on Arabic Linguistics
was held at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in March
2005. The Symposium was sponsored by the Arabic Linguistic
Society and the Department of Linguistics at the University of
Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Additional support was provided by a
number of departments and centers at the University of Illinois
including the Center for African Studies, the Center for Global
Studies, the Program in South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, the
Center for Advanced Studies, and the Beckman Institute. I am
indebted to all the reviewers for their help with the selection and
editing of the papers that are included in this volume. I would also
like to thank to Hala Jawlakh and Bezza Ayalew for their assistance.

FOREWORD

The fourteen papers in this volume engage various issues in
Arabic linguistics. The majority of the papers rely on quantitative
methods to analyze data from corpora or data elicited from speakers
using experimentally grounded methods. While most of the papers
focus on Standard Arabic, some deal with spoken colloquial dialects
from the Maghreb and the Gulf region.
Section I includes five papers that deal with computational and
corpus-based studies of Arabic. The topic of the paper by Bromberg is
the relation between form and meaning. More precisely, the paper
studies the correlation between the phonetic form of a word and its
meaning in Arabic. Bromberg bases her study on the analysis of 1,000
words selected for their frequency from the Linguistic Data
Consortium’s Agence France Press corpus. The author’s aim is to see
whether there is predictable similarity along the semantic and phonetic
dimensions. She claims that to a certain extent such correlation exists.
Then she explores the psycho-linguistics implications of the study,
particularly whether the observed systematic relation between form and
meaning can facilitate acquisition.
The paper by Fong describes the properties of PAPPI, a
multilingual parser, as it is implemented to handle Arabic clause
structure analyzed in the Principles and Parameters (P&P) framework.
The author relies on assumptions and principles posited in the P&P
framework to develop a parser that captures patterns that relate to
clause structure, word order, agreement, placement of verbs, etc. There
aren’t many parsers, in the public domain at least, that have been
developed for Arabic using the P&P framework.
Ghazali provides a large corpus study of the distribution of a
number of Arabic words and grammatical particles. By looking at the
collocation and colligation patterns, the author is able to demonstrate
that some nearly synonymous words have different distributions
depending on the words and expressions they co-occur with. This
finding, based on extensive corpus investigations, shows the limits of
current studies of the Arabic lexicon based on limited dictionary
definitions. The results will be beneficial to researchers and teachers of
Arabic alike.