Syllable weight, vowel length and focus in Lebanese Arabic

Research on a variety of languages has shown that vowel duration is influenced by phonological vowel length as well as syllable structure (e.g., Maddieson, 1997). Further, the phonological concept of a mora has been shown to relate to phonetic measurements of duration (Cohn, 2003; Hubbard, 1993; Port, Dalby, & O'Dell, 1987). In Levantine Arabic, non-final closed syllables that contain a long vowel have been described as partaking in mora-sharing (Broselow, Chen, & Huffman, 1997; Khattab & Al-Tamimi, 2014). The current investigation examines the effect of vowel length and syllable structure on vowel duration, as well as how this interacts with durational effects of prosodic focus. Disyllabic words with initial, stressed syllables that were either open or closed and contained either a long or a short vowel wereexamined when non-focused and in contrastive focus. Contrastive focus was associated with longer words and syllables but not vowels. Short vowels were shorter when in a syllable closed by a singleton but not by a geminate consonant, while long vowels were not shortened before coda singletons. An analysis is proposed whereby long vowels followed by an intervocalic consonant cluster are parsed as open syllables, with the first consonant forming a semisyllable (Kiparsky, 2003), while long vowels followed by geminate consonants partake in mora-sharing (Broselow, Huffman, Chen, & Hsieh, 1995). The results also indicate compensatory shortening for short vowels followed by a singleton coda.

Conceptualizations of the Heart in Jordanian Arabic: A Cognitive Perspective

The present paper examines the metaphorical and metonymical conceptualizations of the heart in Jordanian Arabic (JA) within the framework of Conceptual Metaphor Theory developed by Lakoff and Johnson (1980). The main aim is to explore how the human heart is conceptualized in JA, and to test the applicability of the different general cognitive mechanisms proposed by Niemeier (2003 and 2008) to those found in JA. The data were extracted from Idioms and Idiomatic Expressions in Levantine Arabic: Jordanian Dialect (Alzoubi, 2020), and other resources including articles, dissertations and books of Arabic proverbs. The findings revealed that all the four general cognitive mechanisms suggested by Niemeier (2003 and 2008) are applicable to JA. The findings also showed that the similarity derives from the universal aspects of the human body, which lends tremendous support to the embodiment hypothesis proposed by cognitive linguists.

The syntax of the addressee in imperatives: What Levantine Arabic attitude datives bring to the table

The imperative subject constitutes a special category compared to the subjects of other types of clauses in that it is required to be the addressee. Zanuttini (2008) argues that this requirement follows from a special syntactic status: imperative subjects enter the computation with gender and number but no person features. They acquire a second-person specification later by entering an agreement relation with the head of a jussive phrase, a functional projection that is unique for imperative clauses and that occupies the left periphery. This paper provides independent evidence from attitude dative constructions in Levantine Arabic in support of this approach. Attitude datives are optional pronominal elements that make pragmatic contributions to utterances without altering their meaning. The paper shows that attitude datives whose referent coincides with the referent of the subject are less restricted in terms of the interpretation they may receive in imperative versus other types of clauses. Imperative clauses are more permissive, a characteristic that follows from the special status of their subject.

Counter-cyclic merge as a last resort for adjuncts

It has been argued that adjunction as pair merge, unlike substitution or set merge, may or even must occur counter-cyclically. I present evidence from optional datives in Levantine Arabic, a category of pronouns that merge as applicative adjuncts, to show that adjunction may behave on a par with set merge and give priority to cyclicity. More specifically, I show that Levantine Arabic Attitude Datives as applicative adjuncts must merge cyclically by default and that they only opt for counter-cyclic merge as a last resort.

Phonetics and Phonology Paradox in Levantine Arabic: An Analytical Evaluation of Arabic Geminates’ Hypocrisy

This paper explores the phonetic and phonological paradox between two categories of Levantine-Arabic long consonants—known as geminates by looking closely at the hypocrite Arabic geminates. Hypocrite geminates are phonetically long segments in a sequence that are not contrastive. The paper seeks to demonstrate that Arabic geminates can be classified into two categories—true vs. fake geminates—based on the phonological process of inseparability and the Obligatory Contour Principle (OCP). Thirty Levantine Arabic speakers have taken part in this case study. Fifteen participants were asked to utter a group of stimuli where the two types of geminates interact with the surrounding phonological environment. The other fifteen participants were recorded while reading target word lists that contained geminate consonants and medial singleton preceded by short and long consonants and engaging in naturalistic conversations. Auditory and acoustic analyses of long consonants were made. Results from the word lists indicated that while Arabic true geminates embrace the phonological process of inseparability, Arabic fake geminates do not. The case study also shows that the OCP seems to bridge the contradiction between these two categories of Arabic geminates.