An Approach for Pronunciation Classification of Classical Arabic Phonemes Using Deep Learning

A mispronunciation of Arabic short vowels can change the meaning of a complete sentence. For this reason, both the students and teachers of Classical Arabic (CA) are required extra practice for correcting students’ pronunciation of Arabic short vowels. That makes the teaching and learning task cumbersome for both parties. An intelligent process of students’ evaluation can make learning and teaching easier for both students and teachers. Given that online learning has become a norm these days, modern learning requires assessment by virtual teachers. In our case, the task is about recognizing the exact pronunciation of Arabic alphabets according to the standards. A major challenge in the recognition of precise pronunciation of Arabic alphabets is the correct identification of a large number of short vowels, which cannot be dealt with using traditional statistical audio processing techniques and machine learning models. Therefore, we developed a model that classifies Arabic short vowels using Deep Neural Networks (DNN). The model is constructed from scratch by: (i) collecting a new audio dataset, (ii) developing a neural network architecture, and (iii) optimizing and fine-tuning the developed model through several iterations to achieve high classification accuracy. Given a set of unseen audio samples of uttered short vowels, our proposed model has reached the testing accuracy of 95.77%. We can say that our results can be used by the experts and researchers for building better intelligent learning support systems in Arabic speech processing.

The Regional Recitations of al-Jazūlī’s Dalāʾil al-Ḫayrāt as Reflected in Its Manuscript Tradition

Muḥammad al-Jazūlī’s Dalāʾil al-Ḫayrāt is one of the most popular and widespread Islamic prayer books in the Sunni Islamic world; consequently, most library collections around the world have many copies of this manuscript. Despite its prolific written form, it is its recitation that should probably be considered the most prominent expression of the text. This paper undertakes a careful analysis of the vocalization and orthoepic signs added to three vocalized copies of 18th-century Dalāʾil al-Ḫayrāt manuscripts from Mali, the Maghreb, and Turkey. It reveals that they each have distinct recitation styles with their own phonological and morphological features, distinct from the rules applied in Classical Arabic prose text. Moreover, it is shown that these recitation styles clearly draw upon the rules of local Quranic reading traditions, while not entirely assimilating to them, thus giving a distinct local orthoepic flavour to the manner in which this text was recited.

The functions of the dative in the Jewish Arabic dialect of Baghdad

Like in Classical Arabic and other modern Arabic dialects, the preposition l- marks the dative also in the Jewish Arabic dialect of Baghdad (JB). Under the scope of the syntactic category of dative, one finds different semantic roles like recipients, benefactives, possessors, experiencers, and others. Moreover, some datives operate on the pragmatic rather than the semantic level of the clause. This paper defines and exemplifies seven different dative roles in JB based on their interpretive properties and accounts for their distinctive syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic features.

“The Sketch of the Arabic Literature” by V. F. Guirgass (1835–1887) in the context of the Russian Arabic Studies d the 19th century and the present situation in our branch of scholarship

Professor of the Oriental Faculty of the Imperial University of St. Petersburg Vladimir F. Guirgass (1835–1887) is one of the founders of the Academic Arabic Studies in Russia and the first Russian Arabist of the European level. As a young man V. F. Guirgass carried out an extremely fruitful Academic journey to the Arab Orient, which was also eminent for him from the vie-point of areal studies. The results of this travelling experience produced a substantial effect upon the rest of the life of Guirgass as a scholar and as a professor. The legacy of Guirgass appears to be to a high degree fundamental. Among his exploits are educational supplies (on the Muslim Law and the Arabic Literature), readers for beginners in Arabic, as well as for advanced students (the latter is aimed at instructing future experts in divers genres of the Classical Arabic Literature) and the first Arabic-Russian Vocabulary, which still remains unique as a dictionary of the Classical Arabic in Russia. At the termination of his earthy life V. Guirgass prepared for the publication the text of a major classical Arabic Medieval work on History, that is Kitab al-Akhbar al-Tiwal (The Book of the Long Narrations) by al-Dinawari (9th c.). Some of the attainments carried out by V. Guirgass are shared by his disciple, who later was promoted to the membership of the Russian Imperial Academy of Sciences, V. R. Rosen (1849–1908). The two scholars were active at those times, when the essential Arabic sources, that they were anxious about, still remained unpublished in the form of manuscripts. All these items are under the discussion in the present article. In the course of the presentation, the Author analyses the works by Guirgass that became available to him for a study lake that. Special attention is paid to “The Sketch of the Arabic Literature” (1874), as there is a project of carrying out its new edition. The work is of a special importance, as it has been for a long time the only complete account of the Classical Arabic Literature in the Russian Language, aimed at the purposes of the Higher Education in the field of the Arabic Studies. While informing the present-day Arabists about the life and acts of a for-father of our contemporary Studies, the Author was striving to reveal their continual value for our profession.

Language evolution from a cognitive-grammar perspective

This paper considers language evolution from a cognitive-grammar (CG) perspective taking Classical Arabic Case Marking (CACM) as a case in point and a departure point. It is argued that the accusative case is diachronically the baseline case mark, designating the Objective Scene (OS) and demarcating an object of perception in the initial stage of maximal subjectivity in which the ground (G) is totally implicit. Such maximum is then attenuated through a process of objectification such that g entities are gradually put onstage to fulfill the functions of identification and predication. The nominative case, then, figures to mark such emerging entities in their baseline, immediate status. This conception of G with its functions is later extended to mark entities external to G, which gives rise to the full, nominative-marked, baseline existential core (C∃) comprising the existential predicate (P∃) and the existential subject (S∃). The truncation (T) of a verb’s nominative case is argued to fulfill the semantic function of situating a process out of existential reality yielding the existential predicate minus (P-∃), which represents a basic elaboration on baseline C∃. Processes being extensions from perception, the accusative case attenuates to mark entities (D) that demarcate processes, implementing the semantic function of processual modification. Finally, a genitive-marked entity (RP) is proposed to implement the semantic function of referential modification, anchoring and referencing the conceptions of all those facets of reality.

Alternation of consonants in the Iraqi "Baghdad" dialect

This article discusses the most beloved and creative dialect of the Arabs - the Iraqi dialect, despite its complexity, but it has a lot of beautiful foreign vocabulary. We followed a descriptive and historical approach, also tracked phonetic changes in this dialect, and then gave phonological explanations for these phenomena, trying to connect most of the phenomena with their historical roots in the standard Arabic "al-Fussha" and in ancient Arabic dialects. Most modern linguists have realized the need to study these dialects, since many of the modern dialect characteristics are only extensions of some ancient Arabic dialects, and do not refer them to the classical language. The study of modern Arabic dialects may be faced with a number of obstacles being in this important area of linguistic investigations, including the feeling that the study of modern dialects is a kind of encouragement and the desire to demonstrate and replace them with Classical Arabic.

The Phonosemantics of the Sibilant Sounds of the Arabic and English Languages

Understanding the general meaning of phonemes and their combinations helps to guess the meaning of unknown words intuitively. The aim of this paper is to examine a group of Arabic as well as English phoneme combinations as examples to prove they have some specific common meaning, a so-called DNA that can be traced in all given words. Thus, a group of selected words were chosen from the Holy Qur'an whose language represents the Classical Arabic variety. It has been assumed that the relationship between phonemes and what they signify is non-arbitrary. It is determined that certain consonant combinations retain their meanings. Thus, upon closer examination, words that are not similar to one another but which have identical consonant phonemes combinations bear an element of meaning which is absent in words not containing such combinations.

THE VERBAL SIGNIFIERS IN ARABIC LANGUAGE-A STUDY IN THE IDEATIONAL COMPONENT AND THE INTERPERSONAL COMPONENT-

Our familiarity with our teaching of Arabic grammar detect the state of phobia that infect the majority of students when they are studied the Arabic grammar (El-nahoo), but, when I analyzed this phenomenon as a teacher and - before - studying this science, I noticed that the beginner Arabic language learner may focus on the grammatical or morphological base independently of its linguistic and current context; as if His classical Arabic is other than the language used with its many names. From a dialect, to a daily language, etc, and it is in fact only one aspect of its development, and the strange thing is that the name of the language (Arabic) indicates "' Clarity' that may not be achieved with the same accuracy in other languages, and it is a miracle of rhetoric. The expression of the souls and their phenomena in this language may be in words with real connotations, and it is predominant in the language to achieve communication, and the meanings may arrive in a metaphorical form; some words deviate from the origin of their connotations using the linguistic and current contexts, and therefore it is clear that our understanding of language is not based on single words. Rather, by referring to the sentence or text in many times to determine the grammatical function of these words, and that is what has been suggested in this research to trace the actual functions based on the intellectual and reciprocal components, which are among the foundations of linguistic communication in all languages, including the Arabic language that is the subject of study. On the descriptive comparative approach in defining these functions, in order to be able to compare them with their interviews in French and English; To set the term and its origins first, and secondly to facilitate the translation of these verbs between the three languages.