Browsing by Subject "Dialects"
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Item Dialects in the Arabic classroom : a pedagogical survey of Arabic language learners(2012-08) Weinert, John Orbison; Al-Batal, Mahmoud; Brustad, KristenThe study of Arabic as a foreign language in the US has witnessed a tremendous increase in recent decades, especially in the wake of the events of September 11, 2001. Implementation of modern communicative language teaching methodologies has been complicated by the diglossic nature of the Arabic language, as well as the wide variations between the many varieties of spoken colloquial Arabic; only recently has the field seen a widespread shift towards the teaching of the Arabic dialects at beginning levels of study. As a result of this shift, there exist increasing numbers of Arabic learners who have been exposed to one or more Arabic dialects in addition to the formal written language. This thesis presents the results of an interview-survey of Arabic learners who had studied more than one dialect of Arabic in structured classroom contexts, either in the US or the Arab world, with the goal of determining to what extent such instruction had helped or hindered their progress in the language. Results indicated that a majority of participants believe that despite increased challenges, exposure to multiple Arabic dialects was beneficial to their learning experience, and would advocate for such exposure in beginning and intermediate-level Arabic courses. However, many respondents also cautioned that alternate dialect forms should not be presented with the expectation of active production in class. Participants also commented on the ways in which they felt Arabic dialect instruction could be improved; frequently mentioned issues included further development of formal written materials for dialect study, and increased flexibility and understanding on the part of instructors with regard to classroom use of alternate dialectal forms.Item Durative aspect markers in modern Arabic dialects : cross-dialectal functions and historical development(2017-05) AlShihry, Mona Abdullah; Brustad, Kristen; Huehnergard, John; Al-Batal, Mahmoud; Bullock, BarbaraThis study explores the durative aspectual forms in modern spoken Arabic dialects. It analyzes and compares the synchronic functions and proposes possible paths of diachronic development for the majority of attested durative forms. For the synchronic analysis, the study promotes the role of context in understanding the functions of aspectual forms. It is only through context that we can interpret meanings that forms alone do not express. Observing this principle, the study examines the use of durative markers in a database that is composed of various contextualized texts. Diachronically, the study proposes a refinement of the theory of the locative source for the grammaticalization of durative marking that has become standard cross-linguistically. The approach presented here corresponds semantically with the functions expressed by the durative markers and allows for multiple membership of source lexemes. The major sources that are proposed are stative-continuous, temporal prepositions and emphatic forms. Then, an outline of diachronic development is synthesized from the findings of the synchronic analysis and historical reports of constant population contact to speculate on the possible paths of development for each durative marker from the proposed sources. These paths are considered according to the principles of functional grammar development; i.e., grammaticalization, borrowing and contact-induced grammaticalization. The study examines these different proposals and provides justifications for supporting the most likely cases of development while ruling out the less possible paths. This study concludes with a summary of the most probable paths of development for durative markers in modern spoken Arabic.Item A perceptual and experimental phonetic approach to dialect stereotypes : the tonada cordobesa of Argentina(2014-05) Lang-Rigal, Jennifer R; Toribio, Almeida Jacqueline, 1963-This study investigates the perception of vowel lengthening in the tonada cordobesa, a feature of the Spanish spoken in Córdoba, Argentina. Unlike other dialects of Argentine Spanish, lengthening occurs in the pre-tonic syllable (Fontanella de Weinberg 1971; Yorio 1973; Lang 2010) and is believed to be accompanied by a pitch peak (Fontanella de Weinberg 1971). The goals of this dissertation are to determine if duration alone (i.e., without intonational changes) is significant in identifying a speaker’s Cordoba provenance, and to discover what listener features affect perception. A matched-guise methodology presents speech tokens with natural and manipulated pre-tonic vowel durations to Argentine listeners in a dialect identification task. Results show a main effect of speaker region and token type (natural versus manipulated). Shorter durations made Córdoba speakers difficult to identify, reducing accuracy from 59% for natural tokens to 28% for manipulated tokens with shortened pre-tonic syllables. Buenos Aires speakers received the highest identification accuracy for natural tokens (80%) and Tucumán speakers the lowest (43%). Longer pre-tonic vowel durations are associated with a Córdoba identity, regardless of speaker origin and other linguistic cues. Control tokens produced by speakers from Buenos Aires and Tucumán confirmed this effect: these tokens, when manipulated to have a longer pre-tonic vowel, induced the perception of a Córdoba identity. Listener experience is also shown to improve accuracy of dialect identification: listeners of more geographically distant provinces, relative to the speaker’s province of origin, present significantly reduced identification rates. Acoustical analyses of the Cordoba samples confirm pre-tonic lengthening as well as an early peak rise within the stressed syllable, and valley alignment before the onset of this syllable. Pre-tonic, tonic and post-tonic syllable durations are lengthened, resulting in a segmentally unbalanced intonational phrase for which prominence is disproportionately concentrated in these final segments. The durational, intonational, and rhythmic properties make the Cordoba dialect unique among regional lects within Argentina and across the Spanish-speaking world. This research contributes experimental evidence for the prosodic features marking this dialect and supports its saliency and social significance within Argentina.Item Word-final imaala in contemporary Levantine Arabic : a case of language variation and change(2011-05) Durand, Emilie Pénélope; Brustad, Kristen; Al-Batal, MahmoudThe phenomenon of word-final imaala, or taa-marbuuTa raising, in the Levantine dialects of Arabic was well documented about 50 years ago by renowned Arabists who described the phenomenon as a purely phonological one. Today, after some major historical and sociological changes have taken place in Arab societies, this feature deserves to be revisited since this might shed some light on the processes of language change in those societies. The scope of this paper is to look into the issue of word-final imaala in contemporary Levantine Arabic (specifically after raa) through a wide lens, and to establish 1) whether there are patterns governing the production of taa marbuuTa after raa, and 2) whether the existing phonological rules account for all instances of word-final imaala as they appear in the speech of Levantine speakers nowadays. In order to do that, instances of all word tokens ending in -ra were extracted from 252 phone conversations recorded in 2004 and found in the LDC Levantine database. Those tokens were analyzed and the word-forms they represent were divided based on whether they exhibit any instances on word-final imaala. It soon became clear that the existing sound rules cannot account for all current instances of taa-marbouTa raising. Two main factors were identified as having a possible effect on the production of taa marbuuTa after raa: word frequency and phonological word classes. Because of a lack of speaker-related information in the database coupled with some imaala-related discrepancies found in the transcriptions of the conversations, it was impossible to determine the exact social meaning(s) of word-final imaala in Levantine communities. However, this study shows that enough changes have taken place since the 1960’s in terms of taa-marbuuTa raising, to consider it a case of language change in progress. This study also establishes some hypotheses which can be used as the base for a future sociolinguistic study whose scope will be to assign social meaning to word-final imaala in Levantine dialects.