Arabic Cross-dialectal Conversations with Implications for the Teaching of Arabic as a Second ...

228 Pages·2015·2.36 MB·English

Arabic Cross-dialectal Conversations with Implications for the
Teaching of Arabic as a Second Language

Rasha Kadry Abdelatti Mohamed Soliman
Submitted in accordance with the requirements for the degree of
PhD in Arabic Linguistics

The University of Leeds
Linguistics and Phonetics
School of Modern Languages and Cultures

July, 2014
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The candidate confirms that the work submitted is her own and that appropriate
credit has been given where reference has been made to the work of others.

This copy has been supplied on the understanding that it is copyright material and
that no quotation from the thesis may be published without proper
acknowledgement.

The right of Rasha Kadry Abdelatti Mohamed Soliman to be identified as Author of
this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and
Patents Act 1988.

© 2014 The University of Leeds and Rasha Kadry Abdelatti Mohamed Soliman
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Dedication

To my parents
Hend El-Naggar and Kadry Soliman
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Acknowledgements

"In the name of Allah, the most gracious, the most merciful. All praise to Allah by
whose grace good deeds are achieved"

I wish to express sincere gratitude and deep thanks to my supervisor, Dr. Melinda
Whong for her advice, patience and encouragement. I owe her much for her
intellectual guidance and moral support throughout every stage of my study and
for all the invaluable skills she taught me which I know I will continue to grow and
utilise.
From the School of Modern Languages and Cultures at the University of Leeds, I
would like to thank Ms. Karen Priestley for her excellent and prompt administrative
support and Dr. Diane Nelson as my postgraduate tutor for encouraging me as well
as many postgraduate students to participate in the organised annual PG
conferences in which I received insightful feedback.
I am indebted to all the Arabic speaking individuals who agreed to take part in this
study, giving their time and effort and allowing me to record their conversations.
Their participation is greatly appreciated. Special thanks to all those who helped
me to record high quality dialectal sentences to use in my case study; Mr. Aimen
Ghummed and Mr. Abdurraof Shitaw for their input in the Libyan dialect, Ms. Arwa
Gandeel for her input in the Hijazi dialect and to my dear sister-in-law Asmaa
Soliman for her input in the Levantine dialects. I am also very grateful to Professor.
Dilworth Parkinson at Brigham Young University for allowing me to join the online
Arabic-L mailing list through which I reached many Arabic linguists who provided
me with support and references in analysing the urban dialects I used in my study.
I am grateful to the Arabic students at the University of Manchester who
wholeheartedly participated in the case-study of my research and to all those who
gave me insight into their Arabic language learning needs.
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I am heavily indebted to my beloved husband, Najeeb, for his support of my Ph.D.
endeavour and for always being there for me throughout the exciting times of my
study as well as the stressful ones.
My love and thanks to my sweet children, Yusuf, Ismail and Haroon for innocently
allowing me to take some of our time together to spend on my research and for
always bringing smiles on my face when needed. My appreciation also goes to my
sisters, brothers and friends for all their love, prayers and good wishes.
Last but not least, I will always be grateful to my parents who always had
confidence in me. I am grateful for the opportunities they opened up encouraging
me to get into the field of Arabic language teaching and linguistics, for their trust
and support in sending me to do my M.A. far away from them and for encouraging
me to pursue my Ph.D. study. My deepest appreciation and heartfelt thanks go to
them for their patience, their prayers, their sacrifice, their endurance, and for their
love and endless support of my education.
Thanks to all of you. Without your support this work would have never been
possible.
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Abstract
This research is divided into two interlinked parts. The first part reviews literature
on the diglossia and variability of the Arabic language and investigates how mutual
intelligibility is achieved in informal conversations between speakers of different
Arabic dialects. 11 conversations were recorded between speakers of 12 Arabic
dialects. Instances of borrowing from Modern Standard Arabic were observed and
analysed. The participants were also interviewed after the recorded conversations
in order to get more insight into the listening comprehension strategies that they
applied to achieve intelligibility. The results show that the native speakers tend to
rely mostly on their native dialect in cross-dialectal interaction with a much smaller
number of borrowings from Modern Standard Arabic in comparison with previous
studies. A number of listening strategies were observed to be used in order to aid
intelligibility. These strategies included making use of the context, ignoring non-
content words and making use of their linguistic knowledge and the root and
pattern system in Arabic as a frame of reference in comprehending unfamiliar
cognates. The analysis also showed that dialect familiarity has a major role in
aiding comprehension between the native speakers of different Arabic dialects.
The second part, first, examines the needs of learning Arabic as a second language
in Higher Education, then presents a case study that tests the advanced Arabic
learners’ level of cognate recognition in unfamiliar dialects and whether explicit
strategy teaching and lexical training can improve their dialectal lexical
comprehension. Five final year university students of Arabic with an advanced
level in MSA and exposure to a dialect participated in this study. Pre and post-tests
of dialectal listening comprehension were administered. The results of a higher
score in the post-test confirmed that the explicit strategy training helped the
Arabic students to achieve better comprehension of cognates in unfamiliar
dialects.
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Table of Contents
Dedication ......................................................................................................... iii
Acknowledgements ........................................................................................... iv
Abstract ............................................................................................................. vi
Table of Contents ...............................................................................................vii
List of Tables ...................................................................................................... xi
List of Figures .................................................................................................... xiii
List of Abbreviations ......................................................................................... xiv
Transliteration Scheme ...................................................................................... xv
Chapter 1: Introduction: The Arabic language and its diglossic nature .................. 1
1.1 What is Diglossia? ........................................................................................ 2
1.1.1 Views on diglossia ............................................................................ 5
1.1.2 Diglossia versus standardisation ...................................................... 7
1.1.3 Diglossia versus bilingualism ............................................................ 8
1.1.4 Diglossia versus code-switching and code-mixing ........................... 9
1.1.5 Diglossia versus register ................................................................. 10
1.1.6 Diglossia and dialects ..................................................................... 11
1.2 Arabic Diglossia .......................................................................................... 12
1.2.1 Brief history of Arabic diglossia and its emergence ....................... 12
1.2.2 The standardisation of Arabic ........................................................ 13
1.2.3 The languages of the occupied lands ............................................. 14
1.2.4 The current Arabic varieties ........................................................... 15
1.2.4.1 Classical Arabic (CA) ........................................................... 15
1.2.4.2 Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) ......................................... 16
1.2.4.3 The Arabic dialects ............................................................. 17
1.2.4.4 Educated Spoken Arabic (ESA) ........................................... 19
1.3 Overview of this research project .............................................................. 21
Chapter 2: Cross-dialectal conversations: Literature Review .............................. 24
2.1 Cross-dialectal conversations and mutual intelligibility ............................ 24
2.2 Arabic cross-dialectal conversations .......................................................... 26
2.2.1 Blanc’s study (1960) ....................................................................... 28
2.2.2 Ezzat’s study (1974)........................................................................ 29
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2.2.3 Abu-Melhim’s study (1992) ............................................................ 31
2.2.4 Abu-Haidar’s study (1994) ............................................................. 33
2.2.5 Shiri’s study (2002) ......................................................................... 34
2.2.6 Limitations in the studies on Arabic cross-dialectal
communication .............................................................................. 35
2.3 Language variability in TASL ....................................................................... 39
2.4 Conclusions ................................................................................................ 43
Part I Cross-dialectal conversations in Arabic: language choice and
comprehension strategies ......................................................................... 45
Chapter 3: Investigating native Arabic cross-dialectal conversations:
Methodology ............................................................................................ 46
3.1 The research questions .............................................................................. 47
3.2 Methodology .............................................................................................. 48
3.2.1 The participants ............................................................................. 49
3.2.2 The settings and instructions given to the participants ................ 51
3.2.3 The data collection and analysis .................................................... 53
Chapter 4: The language of cross-dialectal conversations: Results and
Discussion ................................................................................................ 58
4.1 Results ........................................................................................................ 58
4.1.1 Borrowings from MSA by participant and by conversation ........... 59
4.1.2 Cognate borrowings ....................................................................... 61
4.1.3 Non-cognate borrowings ............................................................... 64
4.1.4 Variables influencing MSA borrowings .......................................... 70
4.2 Discussion ................................................................................................... 73
4.2.1 Research question 1: Which linguistic elements are
borrowed from MSA in informal cross-dialectal
communication? ............................................................................ 73
4.2.2 Research question 2: Are there any linguistic or non-
linguistic variables that may influence MSA borrowings? ............. 76
Chapter 5: Native listening comprehension strategies in Arabic cross-
dialectal conversations: Results and Discussion ......................................... 79
5.1 Results ........................................................................................................ 80
5.1.1 Successful comprehension ............................................................. 80
5.1.1.1 Strategies applied by the speaker ...................................... 81
5.1.1.2 Strategies applied by the listener ...................................... 83
5.1.2 Comprehension failure ................................................................... 92
5.2 Discussion ................................................................................................... 96
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5.2.1 Research question 3: What are the strategies that the NSs
apply and the factors that influence comprehensibility in
cross-dialectal communication? .................................................... 97
Chapter 6: Arabic cross-dialectal conversations: Conclusions ........................... 101
6.1 Findings .................................................................................................... 102
6.2 Implications for TASL ................................................................................ 108
6.3 Limitations and areas for further research .............................................. 109
Part II Implications for the Teaching of Arabic as a Second Language ............... 113
Chapter 7: Arabic as a Second language: Learners’ needs in Higher
Education ............................................................................................... 114
7.1 Previous studies on the learning needs of Arabic language students ..... 114
7.2 The learning needs of students of Arabic at the University of
Manchester: A pilot study ..................................................................... 120
7.2.1 A description of the questionnaire and its administration .......... 120
7.2.2 The Results ................................................................................... 124
7.2.3 Discussion of the results of the questionnaire ............................ 132
7.3 Conclusions .............................................................................................. 138
7.4 Points to consider if administering the questionnaire in the future ....... 139
Chapter 8: A multi-case study on L2 listening comprehension of cross-
dialectal Arabic: Methodology ................................................................ 141
8.1 The study design ...................................................................................... 142
8.2 The participants........................................................................................ 143
8.3 The setting ................................................................................................ 146
8.4 The test instrument .................................................................................. 146
8.5 Procedure and ethical considerations ..................................................... 154
8.6 The dialectal training intervention and the group discussions ................ 154
8.7 Procedures for the data analysis .............................................................. 156
Chapter 9: A multi-case study on the L2 listening comprehension of cross-
dialectal Arabic: Results and Discussion .................................................. 160
9.1 Results ...................................................................................................... 161
9.1.1 Correct pre-test responses by dialect .......................................... 161
9.1.2 Correct pre-test responses by type of morpheme ...................... 162
9.1.3 The effects of the training on their recognition of cognates in
unfamiliar dialects ........................................................................ 165
9.1.4 The effects of the training on their recognition of root and
functional morphemes ................................................................. 167
9.1.5 Results of the interviews .............................................................. 168
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9.1.5.1 The importance of learning about the pronunciation
rules and the corresponding sounds in the Arabic
varieties ............................................................................... 168
9.1.5.2 Combining morphemes in the dialects ............................ 169
9.1.5.3 Linking between the unfamiliar and the familiar
varieties ............................................................................... 169
9.1.5.4 The effectiveness of the strategy training ....................... 171
9.2 Discussion of the results .......................................................................... 171
9.2.1 Research question 4: To what extent can the advanced
university Arabic students achieve successful dialectal
comprehension? .......................................................................... 172
9.2.2 Research question 5: Can explicit instruction of the NSs’
listening strategies affect the level of L2 dialectal lexical
comprehension? .......................................................................... 175
Chapter 10: Conclusions .................................................................................. 179
10.1 Findings: L2 comprehension of lexis in unfamiliar dialects ................... 180
10.2 Limitations of the case-study ................................................................. 182
10.3 Conclusions of both parts of this study project ..................................... 183
10.4 Questions for further research .............................................................. 185
List of References ............................................................................................ 188
Appendix A: Consent form for recording the NSs cross-dialectal
conversations ......................................................................................... 195
Appendix B: Resources used to verify the MSA borrowings into the dialects
of the participants .................................................................................. 196
Appendix C: Needs Analysis Questionnaire ...................................................... 198
Appendix D: Consent Form for the needs analysis questionnaire ..................... 203
Appendix E: The tested words in the case study .............................................. 204
Appendix E.1: The tested words in the pre-test of the case-study and
their cognates in MSA ........................................................................... 204
Appendix E.2: The tested words in the post-test of the case-study and
their cognates in MSA ........................................................................... 205
Appendix F: The sentences used in the case-study test .................................... 207
Appendix F.1: The sentences used in the pre-test ......................................... 207
Appendix F.2: The sentences used in the post-test ....................................... 209
Appendix G: The consent form and answer sheet for the dialectal L2
recognition case-study ............................................................................ 211