Arabic Language and Linguistics

Arabic, one of the official languages of the United Nations, is spoken by more than half a billion people around the world and is of increasing importance in today’s political and economic spheres. The study of the Arabic language has a long and rich history: earliest grammatical accounts date from the 8th century and include full syntactic, morphological, and phonological analyses of the vernaculars and of Classical Arabic. In recent years the academic study of Arabic has become increasingly sophisticated and broad.

This state-of-the-art volume presents the most recent research in Arabic linguistics from a theoretical point of view, including computational linguistics, syntax, semantics, and historical linguistics. It also covers sociolinguistics, applied linguistics, and discourse analysis by looking at issues such as gender, urbanization, and language ideology. Underlying themes include the changing and evolving attitudes of speakers of Arabic and theoretical approaches to linguistic variation in the Middle East.

Table of Contents

Preface
Transliteration conventions
Introduction

Part I: Theoretical and Computational Linguistics

1. Negation in Moroccan Arabic: Scope and Focus
Nizha Chatar-Moumni

2. On the Syntax and Semantics of Arabic Universal Quantification
Kamel A. Elsaadany and Salwa Muhammed Shams

3. Statistical and Symbolic Paradigms in Arabic Computational Linguistics
Ali Farghaly

4. Raising in Standard Arabic: Backward, Forward, and None
Youssef A. Haddad

5. Construct State Nominals as Semantic Predicates
Sarah Ouwayda

6. On Licensing Wh-Scope: Wh-Questions in Egyptian Arabic Revisited
Usama Soltan

7. The Notion of ‘Complete’ and ‘Incomplete’ Verbs in Early Arabic Grammatical Theory: Kāna and Its Sisters
Hana Zabarah

Part II: Sociolinguistics and Applied Linguistics

8. Women and Politeness on Egyptian Talk Shows
Reem Bassiouney

9. Bonjour, ça va ? Labas ale-ik? French and Arabic in Casablanca
Elena Canna

10. Nominalization in Arabic Discourse: A Genre Analysis Perspective
Ahmed Fakhri

11. The Elusiveness of Luġa Wustā—or, Attempting to Catch Its “True Nature”
Gunvor Mejdell

12. Mexicans Speaking in Dârija (Moroccan Arabic): Media, Urbanization, and Language Changes in Morocco
Catherine Miller

13. Critical Languages and Critical Thinking: Reframing Academic Arabic Programs
Karin Christina Ryding

14. Ideology and the Standardization of Arabic
Yasir Suleiman

15. The Ditransitive Dative Divide in Arabic: Grammaticality Assessments and Actuality
David Wilmsen

Reviews

"A highly readable book, innovative in both coverage and content. Sure to be read with interest and profit by scholars of Arabic language and linguistics."—Alison Mackey, professor and head of applied linguistics, Georgetown University

"One of the challenges facing today's research in Arabic linguistics is to connect with recent developments in general linguistics and sociolinguistics. In this volume, Bassiouney and Katz have brought together an impressive collection of articles that take up this challenge."—Kees Versteegh, emeritus professor, University of Nijmegen

"A challenging collection of papers providing a snapshot of advanced research in various areas of contemporary Arabic linguistics by scholars in the vanguard of the field."—Daniel Newman, professor of Arabic, University of Durham

Contributors

Reem BassiouneyElena CannaNizha Chatar-MoumniKamel A. Elsaadany Ahmed FakhriAli FarghalyYoussef A. Haddad Gunvor MejdellCatherine MillerSarah OuwaydaKarin Christina RydingSalwa Muhammed ShamsUsama SoltanYasir SuleimanDavid WilmsenHana Zabarah

Supplemental Materials

Awards

About the Author

Reem Bassiouney is an associate professor of Arabic linguistics at Georgetown University. She is the author of Arabic Sociolinguistics: Topics in Diglossia, Gender, Identity, and Politics.

E. Graham Katz is an assistant professor in the Department of Linguistics at Georgetown University.