A web-based interface to calculate phonological neighborhood density for words and nonwords in Modern Standard Arabic

The availability of online databases (e.g., Balota et al., 2007) and calculators (e.g., Storkel & Hoover, 2010) has contributed to an increase in psycholinguistic-related research, to the development of evidence-based treatments in clinical settings, and to scientifically supported training programs in the language classroom. The benefit of online language resources is limited by the fact that the majority of such resources provide information only for the English language (Vitevitch, Chan & Goldstein, 2014). To address the lack of diversity in these resources for languages that differ phonologically and morphologically from English, the present article describes an online database to compute phonological neighborhood density (i.e., the number of words that sound similar to a given word) for words and nonwords in Modern Standard Arabic (MSA). A full description of how the calculator can be used is provided. It can be freely accessed at https://calculator.ku.edu/density/about.

Effects of Language Variety and Word Availability in Commercial Advertisements on Listener’s Lexical Recall

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.

Effects of Language Variety and Word Availability in Commercial Advertisements on Listener’s Lexical Recall

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.

The Morpho-Phonology-Semantics Interface in Modern Standard Arabic

The issue of the interface between linguistic components has got much interest in contemporary linguistics especially after the advancements that took place in the discipline of Conceptual Semantics. In essence, linguistics components have all been considered to be equal in terms of deriving meaning. In this article, the researcher scrutinized how the component of morpho-phonology interfaces with semantics. This aim was achieved through the analysis of intransitive verbs in Modern Standard Arabic (MSA, henceforth). It was found that intransitive verbs serve well in terms of demonstrating the interface between morpho-phonology and semantics. The morphological and phonological alternations of intransitive verbs result in changes in meaning. Cognition has a central role in generating causative verbs from intransitive ones.

Serial verbs in modern standard Arabic

This paper aims to discuss serial verb constructions in Modern Standard Arabic (MSA). It argues against the claim that this structure does not exist in MSA. We examined parallel structures in this paper: being verbs and what is called albadal ‘apposition’ in the traditional grammar of the Arabic language. This paper argues that the first structure should be analyzed as an auxiliary structure that contains two clauses, while the second structure should be analyzed as a serial verb structure as it denotes, among others, a complex situation, shares the same subject, and contains one clause. Finally, this paper provides a brief syntactic analysis for being verbs and serial verbs in MSA within the lexical functional grammar (LFG) framework, showing the differences between the two structures.

Prepositional Phrases in Modern Standard Arabic: An Agree-Based Analysis

Prepositions, in Arabic traditional grammar literature, have been analyzed as Genitive Case assigners (Hasan, 1976; Sibaweihi, n.d.). This paper presents a phase-based analysis for prepositions (Ps) in Modern Standard Arabic (MSA). The analysis is built on Chomsky's (2005, 2008) Feature-Inheritance model of Agree. In this proposed analysis, Prepositional Phrases (PPs) in MSA are analyzed as phases, where a Probe-Goal relation is established between the prepositional Probe p-P and the DP in its searching domain (i.e., its complement). The outcome of this relation is valuation of the unvalued Case feature on this DP complement (i.e., Genitive Case), and a similar valuation to the unvalued phi-features (φ-fs) on the Probe p-P.

Reflexives and Reciprocals in English and Modern Standard Arabic: An Investigation and a Comparison

The aim of this paper is to investigate the typology of reflexives and reciprocals in English and MSA, which is a variety of standardized, literary Arabic used throughout Arab countries. It has shown that MSA morphologically encoded reflexives and reciprocals are in fact syntactically and semantically asymmetrical. It will be argued that morphologically encoded reflexives do not project an anaphor (an internal argument) syntactically and their morphological marker semantically serves as a reflexivizer, whereas morphologically encoded reciprocals do project an anaphor syntactically, realized either overtly or covertly. Concerning the distribution of such anaphor, the paper elucidates the admissible and in admissible environments. It is argued that MSA does not allow possessive reflexives, but allow possessive reciprocals such as the construct-state, whether it be a noun phrase or a locative prepositional phrase. This variation is accounted for by assuming that reciprocals occupy Spec of DP and therefore can be bound by an NP from a higher phase, whereas reflexives occupy a position lower than the D head and thus must be bound within their DP phase. Finally yet importantly, MSA override reflexives and reciprocals unlike their English counterparts, are always subject to the Principle A of the Binding Theory.