Search

“Irreversible binomials” or “lexical pairs” are word pairs that occur always or almost always in a specific order: bread and butter, to and fro. Such pairs exist in Arabic, and a typological characteristic can be identified: positive before negative. The article largely provides a contrastive analysis with English practice.

An account of consonantal ‘twinning’ in English and other languages.THIS ESSAY concerns itself with gemination in English, but more specifically, it asks whether English has consonantal gemination (CG), as has been reported by some in the literature. Gemination is usually defined as a phonetic doubling (cf. Latin geminus ‘twin’); however, phonetic length (as opposed to a single or nongeminated segment) is a more accurate designation (see Matthews 1997:141, who cites Italian atto [at[Length mark]o] ‘act’, making reference only to ‘doubling’). It has long been known that English does not have contrastive CG as is recognized, say, from the phonemic difference between Classical and Modern Standard Arabic kasara (‘he broke’) and kassara (‘he smashed’) or darasa (‘he studied’) and darrasa (‘he taught’).

Every language has its share of odd or idiosyncratic words, expressions, idioms, and collocational ranges for its vocabulary. For example, Arabic has many lexemes, phrases and expressions which use the plural, but which translate into English in the sg. The plural in the datum in question is overtly marked in Arabic, and what it refers to can be explained in terms of the notion of a semantically transparent plurality; e.g., filmu llahajaat (science/NOM/the dialect/PL) 'the science of dialects' = 'dialectology'. Semantic transparency can be defined as a literal cognitive mapping of an idea, thought or concept, or as 'guessability' for the native speaker. Thus, 'eye doctor' is semantically transparent, since native speakers know the meanings of 'eye' and 'doctor'; however, 'ophthalmologist' is semantically opaque since its morphemic parts are not readily discernable. Returning to the notion of'dialectology', from the viewpoint of the logic of semantic and cognitive structure, 'dialectology' studies dialects, usually many dialects - not merely one, and thus the marking of the plural makes logical sense. In other words, the Arabic plural marking instantaneously denotes reference to numerous dialects (in the plural!) - the object of the study of dialectology.

A review of the complexities and inconsistencies of Arabic words and names in English texts

In this interview, Paul Newman, Distinguished Professor Emeritus at Indiana University, the world's leading Chadicist and Hausaist, and one of the world's leading linguists specializing in African and Afroasiatic languages and field linguistics, speaks candidly about his long and distinguished career on three continents as linguist, Africanist, and attorney-at-law. Among the topics covered are: (1) his influence in African, Afroasiatic, and general linguistics; (2) his evaluation of the Chomskyan paradigm; (3) his long association with the late Joseph H. Greenberg of Stanford University; (4) his evaluation of the writings of Edward Sapir, Leonard Bloomfield, and Franz Boas; (5) his perceptions of his colleague of many years at Indiana University, the late Thomas A. Sebeok; (6) his views on academic writing and scholarly editing; and (7) his recent formal entrance into the legal field, having graduated with a J.D. degree summa cum laude from Indiana University School of Law in 2003.

This chapter argues that modern spoken Arabic dialects sometimes retain very archaic Semitic features. It discusses the importance of the aleph in the Hebrew word for 'no, not', pointing out that Classical Arabic, although usually very conservative in matters of phonology, is sometimes innovative. The chapter discusses two significant innovations. First, many contemporary spoken Arabic dialects preserve the Proto-Semitic imperfect vowel preformative */i/ rather than */a/ = Classical Arabic /a/. Second, the Classical Arabic voiced alveo-palatal affricate (jim) is clearly secondary deriving from Proto-Semitic */g/. A notable feature of verbal morphology is the vowel harmony in preformatives of the imperfect forms, which is common in many Sinai dialects, dialects discussed here the first p. c. singular is included in this rule. The chapter suggests that certain Classical Arabic forms are indeed secondary, as e.g., /la/ 'no'. Keywords: Classical Arabic; colloquial Arabic archaisms; Proto-Semitic imperfect vowel; verbal morphology; vowel harmony

Although the French term diglossie was introduced by the Arabist William Marc°ais in 1930 (Marc°ais 1930), it is the late Charles A. Ferguson who is most often credited as the first to introduce the notion of a ``high'' (H) and a ``low'' (L) variety or register of a language in a classic (1964 [1959]) article in the journal Word with the now famous one-word title, ``Diglossia.'' The gist of his widely influential essay was to demonstrate that the idea of H and L registers best explained the pervasive linguistic distinctions observable in a few speech communities concerning the strict complementary distribution of formal vs. informal usage. For Ferguson, who calqued the term from the French, there were only four ``defining'' languages that he considered representative: Arabic, Swiss German, Haitian Creole, and Modern Greek. This essay reviews some of the voluminous diglossia literature and focuses on the linguistic situation in the Arab world, presenting ideas about future research prospects (such as the diglossic continuum).