Perspectives on Arabic Linguistics: Papers from the Annual Symposium on Arabic Linguistics. Volume VII: Austin, Texas 1993

201 Pages·1995·2.44 MB·English

by  Mushira Eid (Ed.)

PERSPECTIVES ON ARABIC LINGUISTICS VII
AMSTERDAM STUDIES IN THE THEORY AND
HISTORY OF LINGUISTIC SCIENCE
General Editor
E.F. KONRAD KOERNER
(University of Ottawa)
Series IV - CURRENT ISSUES IN LINGUISTIC THEORY
Advisory Editorial Board
Henning Andersen (Los Angeles); Raimo Anttila (Los Angeles)
Thomas V. Gamkrelidze (Tbilisi); John E. Joseph (Hong Kong)
Hans-Heinrich Lieb (Berlin); Ernst Pulgram (Ann Arbor, Mich.)
E. Wyn Roberts (Vancouver, B.C.); Danny Steinberg (Tokyo)
Volume 130
Mushira Eid (ed.)
Perspectives on Arabic Linguistics VII
PERSPECTIVES ON
ARABIC LINGUISTICS VII
PAPERS FROM
THE SEVENTH ANNUAL SYMPOSIUM
ON ARABIC LINGUISTICS
Edited by
MUSHIRA EID
The University of Utah, Salt Lake City
JOHN BENJAMINS PUBLISHING COMPANY
AMSTERDAM/PHILADELPHIA
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements
American National Standard for Information Sciences — Permanence
Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984.
Mushira Eid (ed.)
Perspectives on Arabic Linguistics VII
Amsterdam studies in the theory and history of linguistic science. Series IV, Current issues in
linguistic theory, ISSN 0304-0763 ; v. 130)
ISBN 90 272 3633-X (Eur.) / 1-55619-584-2 (US) (alk. paper)
© Copyright 1995 - John Benjamins B.V.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any
other means, without written permission from the publisher.
John Benjamins Publishing Co. • P.O.Box 75577 • 1070 AN Amsterdam • The Netherlands
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Table of Contents
Foreword vii
Introduction 1
L AGREEMENT IN ARABIC
Arabic and Parametric VSO Agreement 7
Naomi Bolotin
Internal and External Agreement in Quantified Construct States 29
Mark S. LeTourneau
Parasitic Gaps in Arabic 59
Wafaa Batran Wahba
Negation and Modality in Early Child Arabic 69
Ibrahim Mohamed & Jamal Ouhalla
H. PERSPECTIVES FROM EXPERIMENT-BASED STUDIES
Morphological Structure and Lexical Processing:
Evidence from Arabic 93
Sabah Safi-Stagni
Experimental Investigations of Arabic Syllable Structure 107
Bruce L. Derwing, Dilworth B. Parkinson
& Richard A. Beinert
The Timing Structure of CVVC Syllables 119
Ellen Broselow, Marie Huffman, Su-I Chen
& Ruohmei Hsieh
III. DISCOURSE AND PHONOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES
Topic Continuity in Arabic Narrative Discourse 141
Ahmed Fakhri
On Vowel Shortening in Palestinian Arabic 157
Munther A. Younes
Morpheme Edges and Arabic Infixation 173
Michael L. McOmber
Index of Subjects 191
FOREWORD
On March 5-6, 1993, the Seventh Annual Symposium on Arabic
Linguistics was held at the University of Texas at Austin. The
symposium was sponsored by the Arabic Linguistic Society, The
University of Texas College of Liberal Arts, its Middle East Center,
and its Departments of Linguistics and Oriental and African Languages
and Literatures, and by the University of Utah's College of Humanities
and the Department of Languages and Literature.
A total of eighteen papers were presented at the symposium; of
these, eight are published in this volume. Two other papers (Safi &
Broselow et. al) were presented at the Eighth Annual Symposium but
are included here for thematic reasons. The papers presented at the
symposium were selected on the basis of an anonymous review of
abstracts submitted to the Program Committee. The papers included in
the volume were further reviewed by the editor before their final
acceptance for publication.
The transcription of all Arabic materials in the body of the papers
follows the International Phonetic Alphabet or standard equivalents.
The Arabic emphatics, however, are represented by a dot underneath
the symbol, and long vowels as sequences of two vowels. The
transliteration of Arabic names and titles follows accepted formats,
with some simplification in the use of diacritics. We have used ' and '
for hamza (glottal stop) and 'ayn (pharyngeal approximant),
respectively.
The preparation and printing of the final manuscript was done using
facilities available at the Middle East Center of the University of Utah,
Salt Lake City. I would like to thank Joseph Aoun and Keith Walters
for reading and commenting on some of the papers in this volume. I am
also indebted to Tessa Hauglid, who has served as assistant editor as
well as copy editor for this volume.

(
INTRODUCTION
MUSHIRA EID
University of Utah
For the first time in this series we have a volume that includes a
section devoted to experiment-based studies of Arabic. Section Two
consists of three such studies, reporting on results from different types
of experiments designed to test the status of certain aspects of Arabic
morphology (Safi-Stagni) and phonology (Derwing et al., Broselow et
al.), and their implications for Arabic and other languages as well.
Sabah Safi-Stagni's experiment is designed to provide evidence
regarding the nature of morphological representation, i.e., how
morphological information is stored in the (mental) lexicon, and the
status of inflectional and derivational mophemes in Arabic. She focuses
on the lexical processing of Arabic during a reading task performed by
an aphasic patient suffering from both a reading disorder (Alexia) and a
writing disorder (Agraphia). On the basis of the types of errors
produced by this patient, she argues that lexical items are represented in
their morphemic constituents. But, as she points out, her results are not
as conclusive with respect to the second question she raises in her
paper, namely, the status of inflectional vs. derivational morphemes.
The experiments conducted by Bruce Derwing, Dilworth Parkinson,
& Richard Beinert are designed to assess the status of various
phonological units, e.g., segment, syllable, and tiers, cross-
linguistically. Their paper reports on three experiments they carried out
in Cairo, using Arabic disyllabic words to determine, among other
things, the status of intervocalic consonants, both single and double,
within syllable structure. The results point to an interesting difference
in the contribution made by consonants vs. vowels: consonants appear