Responses within activities

Large conversational activities (e.g., storytelling) necessitate a suspension of ordinary turn-taking rules. In the resulting constellation of main speaker and recipient, minimal displays of cooperative recipiency become relevant at particular junctures. We investigate this mechanism by focusing on the Egyptian Arabic particle ʔāh ‘yeah’ when thus used. We observe that tokens of ʔāh are mobilized by main speakers via the opening of prosodic slots at local pragmatic completion points. The prosodic design of the particle at these points is sensitive to prior talk and displays recipients’ alignment at the structural, action-sequential, and relational levels. This is done through variation of three prosodic features, namely, rhythm-based timing, pitch configuration, and prominence. The measure of alignment proposed by ʔāh is implicative for the continuation of the turn. While smooth progression suggests that ʔāh is understood to be sufficiently fitted and aligned, expansions are traceable to a departure from the terms set by prior talk, which can be heard to indicate lesser alignment. We propose to view ʔāh response tokens as a subset of positionally sensitive responses to part-of-activity actions that are crucial for the co-accomplishment of a large activity.

The Impact of the Age at the Cochlear Implantation on the Pragmatic Development of the Prelingual Hearing Impaired Egyptian Arabic Speaking Children

Background Hearing impaired children have delayed development of pragmatic skills as hearing impairment (HI) deprives them from exposure to natural communication interactions. The rehabilitation of children with HI aims to improve their listening skills for better language development and better communication and social interactions. Aim of this work to compare the pragmatic language development of the prelingual hearing impaired children who were cochlearly implanted before the age of 3 years and those who were cochlearly implanted after the age of 3 years. Methods Sixty Egyptian Arabic-speaking children with prelingual severe to profound sensory neural hearing loss, thirty children who were cochlearly implanted before the age of 3.0 years compared to thirty children who were cochlearly implanted after the age of 3.0 years. Language assessment was done by Modified Preschool Language Scale – 4th edition (PLS–4), the Arabic version and pragmatic development was assessed by Standardized Egyptian Arabic Pragmatic Language Test (EAPLT). Results The two study groups showed no significant differences regarding the receptive, expressive, and total language test scores by PLS-4. Group I showed a significant difference (improvement) regarding the pragmatic factors while there were no significant differences between the two study groups regarding the rest of the pragmatics scores by EAPLT. Conclusion The pragmatic language of cochlearly implanted children either who have been implanted before or after 3 years old is affected. This higher susceptibility to pragmatic impairment in prelingual cochlearly implanted children, as well as the importance of pragmatic skills for further social-communicative and academic careers, should be considered in their rehabilitative plan and advocate the importance for early incorporation of pragmatic behaviors into their intervention programs.

The Social Stratification of Qaf in Egyptian Arabic

The present study aims to investigate the phonological behaviour of Egyptian speakers stratified by age, gender and region in the pronunciation of the voiceless uvular plosive /q/ sound. The application of sociolinguistic methodology shows that the study has observed the role of some social variables such as age, gender and region in language change. The study has concluded that the /q/ sound is used by men more than women and the older generation more than the younger generation. Furthermore, the study points out the role of regional differences in the speech of Egyptian speakers as the /q/ sound is used by those speakers who live in rural areas more than those who come from urban areas. In sum, this study helps to enrich our understanding of language variation and change in Arabic dialect, more specifically Egyptian Arabic.

Descriptive analysis of the development of the Arabic speech sounds among typically developing colloquial Egyptian Arabic-speaking children

Background Literature only mentioned a few kinds of research that did study the development of the speech sounds of the Colloquial Egyptian Arabic dialect. Moreover, these studies focused on describing the phonological processes that children undergo in early childhood rather than describing the exact time of acquisition of these sounds. Besides, no study involved a statistically enough sample size of children across the different age ranges. Thus, this study aimed to explore the development of the Arabic phonemes among 360 typically developing Egyptian children who speak the CEA dialect, between the ages of 1.6 years and ≤ 7.4 years. Results The results of a 93-picture-naming test of children were analyzed. A phoneme is considered acquired when 90% of the children could properly utter the target phoneme in all word positions and mastered when 100% of children could correctly pronounce the target phoneme in all word positions. The results revealed that by the age of 1.6–2.0 years, the 6 long vowels of the CEA dialect, besides the /h/,/ʔ/, /b/, /w/, /j/, /m/, and /n/ were mastered. /t/ and /d/ sounds were mastered by the age of 2.6 years followed by /l/ sound by the age of 3.0 years. Then, /ħ/, /ʕ/ sounds were mastered followed by /k/, and /g/ at the age of 3.0 and 3.6 years, respectively. At the age of 5.0 years, /f/ sound was mastered, then /x / and /ʃ/ sounds were mastered by the age of 4.6 years, followed by /s/, /sˁ/, /tˁ/, /dˁ/. By the age of 5.6 and 6.0 years, /ɣ/, /r/, and /z/ were mastered. The /q/, /θ/, /ð/, and /ðˁ/ sounds were mastered by the age of 6.0–6.6 years. This study revealed that fricative sounds developed before the stop sounds and front stops before the back stops, and emphatic Arabic sounds were the last to develop at the school age (> 5 years). Conclusions This study presented a chart of the development of the Arabic phonemes of the CEA to be used as a guide to decide upon the correct trimming to start articulatory therapy for children with articulation and/or phonological disorders.

Interplay between perceived cross-linguistic similarity and L2 production

The present study aims to investigate the relationship between perceived cross-linguistic similarity and second language (L2) production. To this purpose, Egyptian Arabic learners of Greek in Cyprus who took part in a previous cross-linguistic perceptual study, completed a production test with respect to the Cypriot Greek vowels. The findings showed that perceived cross-linguistic similarity was linked with L2 production since along with the consideration of first language (L1)-L2 acoustic differences, it predicted most of the L2 vowel productions. Also, many L2 vowels were considerably longer than the corresponding L1 vowels. This can be interpreted as an L1 transfer since Egyptian Arabic vowels are longer in duration than the Cypriot Greek vowels. An interesting finding was that the production of the L2 vowels had only partial overlap with the productions of the L1 vowels, a finding that provides support for the hypotheses of the Speech Learning Model.