Plural and Gender Inflection of English Loanwords in Colloquial Saudi Arabic

This study aims at investigating how borrowed nouns from English are inflected for plural and gender in Colloquial Saudi Arabic (CSA). The attempt is also made to account for the possible linguistic factors which may affect this inflection in light of some theories in morphology. The analysis is based on more than 250 loanwords collected from different sources (dictionaries, social, media, and TV series). The results showed that foreign nouns are found to be marked for all types of plural (broken plural (BP), female sound plural (FSP), and masculine sound plural (MSP)). More than 77% of borrowed nouns are inflected for FSP. However, this result disagrees with the plural formation rule operating in native nominal stems, which states that BP is the most common, and SP seldom occurs. Views from morphology theory as proposed by Abd-Rabbo (1990) and McCarthy and Prince (1990a; 1990b) were employed to account for this phenomenon. Another feature which is also peculiar to FSP formation is related to the attachment of –ha:t and –ya:t to singular borrowed nouns to form FSP instead of -a:t. Like plural marking, gender assignment to borrowed nouns is also subject to the CSA rules. All English loan nouns are inflected either for masculine by attaching the f morpheme (the unmarked) or feminine gender by attaching –ah (the marked). Out of the three functions of the feminine marker –ah introduced by Drozdík (1998), the inflectional function is the only function that is found at work within foreign nouns. The study concludes with recommendations for further research on loanword variation with regard to plural formation and other morpho-syntactic processes across the different dialects of Arabic. discourse intonation, dominance/non-dominance, pitch level, proclaiming tone, praat program, referring tone

The Experimental-Phonetic Analyses of the Discourse Intonation in the English and Azerbaijan Languages

The article deals with the experimental-phonetic analyses of the discourse intonation in the English and Azerbaijan languages. Having researched the article, it becomes clear that discourse intonation (DI) is an approach to the teaching and analysis of everyday speech. The characteristics of intonation components in the formation of discourse have been touched upon in the article. The intonation is mentioned to be one of the main means in the formation of the discourse. It is a known fact that speech styles can be characterized by their lexical, syntactic and phonetic features. The attention is drawn to the distinguishing points of the speech of the people having various professions such as the speech styles of a teacher and a driver should be different not only from the lexical point of view but also from the phonetic point of view. During the conversation, one can come across some nuances of the speaker’s intellectual level, life experience and social status. It is also important to remember that the subject of the conversation is meant to be an important factor too. The object of the conversation ensures the stylistic formation of the idea. The importance of the experiment has been taken into a special consideration in the article as well. The opinion of academician L. V. Sherba that stresses the importance of the experiment has been analyzed by the author. The factors that are needed to be followed by while carrying out the language facts have been fulfilled in the article. The author tries to prove that DI is concerned with the speakers’ moment-by-moment context-referenced choices. It recognizes four systems of speaker’s choice: prominence, tone, melodicy, and termination. The discourse samples having been chosen for the experiment are fulfilled by using various sentence types. Besides, the inside structure of the sentences and their lexical contents are also taken into account in the article. Some discourse samples have been chosen in the comparable languages to be experimented in order to distinguish the intonation nature of the discourse. The experiment has been carried out by using the program “Praat”. It is noteworthy to mention that the program “Praat” is known to be a computer operation used to analyze speech sounds.

Intonation of Classroom Interaction in the Primary School of Scotland

Intonation of classroom communication is viewed within the framework of discourse approach. The study investigates intonation in interactional dimension with regard to speech situation, specific features of pedagogical discourse in primary school, social and cultural parameters. Basing on the data of perception analysis the authors focus on the extralinguistic factors that determine frequent use of rising terminal tones in the discourse addressed to young children. Special attention is given to the institutional principles and norms of teacher-student interaction in primary schools of Scotland. The article contains an overview of the main tendencies in the intonation of primary school teachers, determined by their professional background, regional accent and new pronunciation trends. Approaches to multidisciplinary study of discourse intonation are outlined.

The Use of Information Tones in Obama’s Speech: A Phono-Pragmatic Analysis

Intonation plays an important role in understanding the intended meaning of speech since neglecting the study of intonation in the discourse leads to a misunderstanding of some pragmatic meaning. This study attempts to answer these two questions: what is the pragmatic function of the information tone types that are employed in Obama’s speech concerning the termination component? and what are the pragmatic function of the proclaiming and referring tones that are employed in Obama’s speech concerning the dominance and non-dominance factor?. It aims to investigate the types of information tones in Obama’s speech concerning the termination component and dominance/non-dominance factor based on Brazil’s model (1997) of discourse intonation. This study confines itself to the American political interview and it is a qualitative study. The findings show that all the information tone types (proclaiming, referring, and level) are used in Obama’s speech and the high termination is most common level, which is used by Obama in his speech in order to emphasize the information and capture the attention of the interviewer. Generally, it was found that the dominance factor was higher than the non-dominance factor, which reflects that Obama took his status as the controller of the discourse during his speech with the interviewer and most of his speech carries contrastive information, which contradicts the interview’s expectation. This study is beneficial for foreign learners and those who are specialists in phonology and pragmatics since it can clarify the function of intonation through the interaction of participants in context.