scholarly journals Argument omissions by deaf students in three languages and three modalities

2021 ◽  
pp. 014272372110162
Author(s):  
Rose Stamp ◽  
Rama Novogrodsky ◽  
Sabrin Shaban-Rabah

While it is common for deaf children to be bilingual in a spoken and signed language, studies often attribute any delays in language acquisition to language deprivation, rather than as a result of cross-linguistic interaction. This study compares the production of simple sentences in three languages (Palestinian Arabic, Modern Standard Arabic, and Israeli Sign Language [ISL]) and three language modalities (spoken, written, and signed) by deaf and hearing students in an Arabic-speaking community. Thirty-eight school-age Palestinian Arabic–speaking students participated in a sentence elicitation task in which they retold the events portrayed in video clips. Hearing students ( n = 19) produced the sentences in spoken Palestinian Arabic and in written Modern Standard Arabic. Deaf students ( n = 19) produced the sentences in these two language varieties and additionally in ISL. Omissions of arguments and verbs were compared across the two groups and three languages. Results showed that deaf students omitted more arguments and verbs compared with their hearing peers who scored at close to ceiling. Deaf students produced more omissions for direct objects and more omissions in ISL. The findings can be interpreted in two possible ways: atypical effects resulting from inconsistent language input and cross-linguistic transfer known to arise in multilingual children.

2011 ◽  
Vol 39 (1) ◽  
pp. 61-89 ◽  
Author(s):  
REEM KHAMIS-DAKWAR ◽  
KAREN FROUD ◽  
PETER GORDON

ABSTRACTThere are differences and similarities between Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) and spoken varieties of Arabic, in all language domains. To obtain preliminary insights into interactions between the acquisition of spoken and standard varieties of a language in a diglossic situation, we employed forced-choice grammaticality judgments to investigate morphosyntactic knowledge of MSA and the local variant of Palestinian Colloquial Arabic (PCA), in 60 Arabic-speaking children aged 6 ; 4 to 12 ; 4, from a school in Nazareth. We used morphosyntactic structures which either differed or were similar between PCA and standard Arabic. Children generally performed better on items presented in PCA than in standard Arabic, with the exception of constructions involving negation. Children performed better on items when the two constructions were similar in both language varieties. We discuss the results with respect to the multiple factors that affect acquisition in a diglossic situation, and relate our findings to the possibility of interference effects of diglossia on learning.


2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 167-177
Author(s):  
Munerah Algernas ◽  
Yahya Aldholmi

Commercial advertisements in Arabic-speaking regions tend to alternate between dialectal Arabic and Modern Standard Arabic, but it is not yet clear whether language variety has any impact on listener’s lexical recall. Insight into this issue should help enterprises design their commercial advertisements in a linguistically intelligent manner. This study addresses two questions: 1) How does language variety (dialectal vs. standard) affect listener’s lexical recall in commercial advertisements? 2) Do listeners recall words that have appeared in dialectal advertisements better than those that did not appear in advertisements using the same variety? Fifteen Saudi participants responded to a forced-choice memory test with 24 yes-no questions (3 per advertisement) asking participants to report whether they heard a specific key word in eight advertisements that utilized different language varieties. The findings show that Arabic speakers tend to perceive both Modern Standard Arabic and dialectal Arabic in commercial advertisements similarly, but tend to recall the presence of a key word in an advertisement better than its absence. Future research may increase the sample size and examine more Arabic varieties.


2012 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 68 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dua'a Abu Elhij'a

Over the last fifteen years, in every Arabic-speaking country, young Arabic speakers have begun to write their spoken language in electronic media, such as Facebook, MSN Messenger, and so on.  The new way of writing in social media is a radical deviation from the traditional norm of writing the classical language—as well as what is commonly referred to as Modern Standard Arabic.  This study is presenting this phenomenon in the Levant— Jordan, Lebanon, and Israel/Palestine.


2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 591-611
Author(s):  
Randa Khair Abbas ◽  
Vered Vaknin-Nusbaum

Abstract The present study examines the extent to which sociohistorical and political contexts influence the language attitudes of Israeli-Druze students to Hebrew as L2 and to Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) in Arabic-speaking schools. It is a pioneer explorative research study that compares students’ attitudes toward diglossia and L2. Using the Foreign Languages Attitudes and Goals Survey (FLAGS), the attitudes of second, fifth, and ninth graders in two different Druze schools were assessed. The results indicate a positive attitude towards L2 Hebrew, not only for instrumental purposes but also for integration into Israel’s multicultural society. The positive attitude to L2 Hebrew is greater in older students, while the attitude to MSA becomes more negative among older students. Their low motivation to learn cultural heritage MSA may contribute to an understanding of how to teach it better or differently, as well as how to encourage future generations to learn it.


2022 ◽  
Author(s):  
Munerah Algernas ◽  
Yahya Aldholmi

Commercial advertisements in Arabic-speaking regions tend to alternate between dialectal Arabic and Modern Standard Arabic, but it is not yet clear whether language variety has any impact on listener’s lexical recall. Insight into this issue should help enterprises design their commercial advertisements in a linguistically intelligent manner. This study addresses two questions: 1) How does language variety (dialectal vs. standard) affect listener’s lexical recall in commercial advertisements? 2) Do listeners recall words that have appeared in dialectal advertisements better than those that did not appear in advertisements using the same variety? Fifteen Saudi participants responded to a forced-choice memory test with 24 yes-no questions (3 per advertisement) asking participants to report whether they heard a specific key word in eight advertisements that utilized different language varieties. The findings show that Arabic speakers tend to perceive both Modern Standard Arabic and dialectal Arabic in commercial advertisements similarly, but tend to recall the presence of a key word in an advertisement better than its absence. Future research may increase the sample size and examine more Arabic varieties.


2013 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 156-180 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lior Laks

This study compares the formation of passive verbs in Modern Standard Arabic and Palestinian Arabic. It examines the morphological differences between the two types of verb formation, arguing that they result from the component of the grammar where passivization takes place, the lexicon and the syntax. It addition, the paper examines gaps in passive formation in Palestinian Arabic showing that these gaps are not always accidental but can be explained by morphological criteria and can be accounted for only in a word based view.


Author(s):  
Gretchen McCulloch

In most Arabic-speaking nations, almost everyone speaks two distinct but related dialects, an informal dialect unique to a particular region such as Egyptian or Jordanian Arabic, and a more formal variety found across the Arabic-speaking world, known as Modern Standard Arabic. This common dialect is maintained despite pressure from the regional dialects in large part because of the prestige that Classical or Koranic Arabic has among Muslims, in addition to the practical benefits of being able to communicate across regional boundaries. However, this continued bidialectism also has interesting linguistic implications, in terms of how the use of one dialect or another can reflect social and political realities both through history and in the modern world. For example, one sign in the recent Egyptian protests read “irhal means imshi,” (roughly, “go away” means “beat it”), pretending to translate between the two dialects to reinforce the protester’s message to Mubarak. This presentation draws from a variety of sources, including recent Middle Eastern politics and theories of structural and historical linguistics to examine how regional dialects of Arabic and the standard interact with each other.


2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 61-82
Author(s):  
Ayah Farhat ◽  
Alessandro Benati

The present study investigates the effects of motivation and processing instruction on the acquisition of Modern Standard Arabic gender agreement. The role of individual differences (e.g. age, gender, aptitude, language background and working memory) on the positive effects generated by processing instruction has been investigated in the last few years. However, no previous research has been conducted to measure the possible effects of motivation on L2 learners exposed to processing instruction. In addition, a reasonable question to be addressed within the processing instruction research framework is whether its positive effects can be generalised to the acquisition of Modern Standard Arabic. The Academic Motivation Scale (AMS) and the Attitude Motivation Test Battery (AMTB) motivation questionnaires were used to capture different variables that influence motivation in order to create the two different groups (high and low motivated). In this experimental study, forty-one native English school-age learners (aged 8–11) were assigned to two groups: ‘the high motivated group’ (n = 29): and the ‘low motivated group’ (n = 12). Both groups received processing instruction, which lasted for three hours. Sentence-level interpretation and production tasks were used in a pre-test and post-test design to measure instructional effects. The learners were required to fill in gaps in both written and spoken mode for the activities. The study also included a delayed post-test administered to the two groups four weeks later. The results indicated that both groups improved equally from pre-test to post-test in all assessment measures and they both retained the positive effects of the training in the delayed posttests. Processing instruction was proved to be the main factor for the improvement in performance regardless of the learner’s level of motivation.


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