Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Dialect Transfer For L2 Arabic Learners, Jozeca Lathrop

Theses and Dissertations

With rising numbers of Arabic language learners studying abroad, language programs face two challenges that are unlike many other commonly-studied languages. First, dialects of spoken Arabic vary significantly across the span of North Africa and the Middle East, so in choosing a location to study abroad, learners are also choosing a particular dialect of Arabic on which to focus their attention. Second, Arabic is diglossic, so written and spoken varieties are significantly different from each other. Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) is used for most written material, media, and some formal settings, while Colloquial Arabic (CA) is used for informal spoken …

Modality, Control And Restructuring In Arabic, Yasser Albaty

Theses and Dissertations

The dissertation examines theories of modality and control with data from Standard Arabic (SA). In particular, I show that complementations of particular modal and control verbs in SA are not clausal, but smaller phrases. This challenges proposed accounts in the literature of modality in SA as well as theories of control within Minimalism. I alternatively argue for a novel account of both constructions that posits a monoclausal (i.e., restructuring) structure.

First, Chapter 2 investigates modality verbs in SA and shows that subjunctive complements of modality do not exhibit the properties of clausal complementation. I examine the syntax-semantics properties of modality …

Acquisition Of The English Copula By Arabic Speaking Esl Learners: Evidence For Feature Reassembly, Jenna Steiner

Theses and Dissertations

This study aims to identify whether the acquisition of the English copula by Arabic- speaking learners of English provides evidence for a performance or representational- based account of errors. The representational theory tested in this study is the Interpretability Hypothesis (Tsimpli & Mastropavlou, 2007) which proposes that language learners have only partial access to Universal Grammar (UG), making some language structures unacquirable for second language learners. The performance theory tested in this study is Feature Reassembly (Lardiere, 2008), which proposes that the source of errors lies with the mapping of features onto morphology rather inside the core computational component of …

The Syntax Of Copular Clauses In Arabic, Bader Yousef Alharbi

Theses and Dissertations

Copular clauses in several languages have received much attention in recent years, however in Arabic they have been largely overlooked. In general, copular clauses have been classified into four types: the predicational clause, the specificational clause, the identificational clause, and the identity clause. This thesis aims to characterize and analyze the various copular clause types in Arabic, and goes further to discuss the taxonomic status of the copular clause with a postcopular definite description and the nature of the pronominal element (PE) in Arabic copular clauses. The thesis then explores the predicational clause type in more depth, focusing specifically on …

The L2 Perceptual Mapping Of Arabic And English Consonants By American English Learners, Zafer Lababidi

Theses and Dissertations

There has been rapid growth in Arabic learning in the United States. With that increase, many learners of Arabic often experience difficulties in learning some Arabic sounds. Among these are the Arabic plain sounds /t, d, ð, s/ and emphatic sounds /tʕ, dʕ, ðʕ, sʕ/. Many studies have proposed that these difficulties are related to the relationship between sounds in learners’ first language (L1) and those in the target language (L2) (Flege, 1987 and 1995; Best, 1995 and 1999; Best, McRoberts, & Sithole, 1988; Best & Tyler, 2007). Previous studies have examined the perceptual patterns of these sounds by relying …

The Syntax Of Elliptical Constructions In Jordanian Arabic, Juman Albukhari

Theses and Dissertations

ABSTRACT

THE SYNTAX OF ELLIPTICAL CONSTRUCTIONS IN JORDANIAN ARABIC

by

Juman Al Bukhari

The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, 2016

Under the Supervision of Professor Nicholas Fleisher

The syntax of Arabic elliptical constructions is unsettled, as there are few studies that have been done in the Arabic descriptive literature, as well as in Jordanian Arabic (henceforth, JA) specifically. Therefore, this paper will investigate some elliptical constructions in JA in particular to figure out the analysis of these constructions. In order to pursue this research, it is crucial to determine how JA elliptical data behave inasmuch as some examples are diagnosed as gapping …

The Developmental Stages Of The Acquisition Of Arabic By Adult English-Speaking Learners: Processability Theory And The Formulaic Language, Abdellatif Oulhaj

Theses and Dissertations

The aim of this study is to look at the developmental stages of the acquisition of Arabic as a foreign language by adult English learners. Processability theory (Pienemann, 1998, 2005) is adopted to investigate in detail whether the acquisition development will follow the hierarchy as stated by PT. The study targeted agreement within seven grammatical structures. The structures belong to three procedural levels of the hierarchy (stages three to five).

Six adult learners participated in this study. They were tested via different tasks to elicit data either to support the predictions of PT hierarchy, or to disconfirm it. Two participants …

Six Discourse Markers In Tunisian Arabic: A Syntactic And Pragmatic Analysis, Chris Adams

Theses and Dissertations

The following study is a description and analysis of six discourse markers in Tunisian Arabic. In it I will attempt to determine the syntactic and pragmatic roles of each marker, describing its function in discourse. The final analysis will be based on the pragmatic model of relevance theory.

I have based my study on thirty-two (32) texts in Tunisian Arabic, looking at frequently-occurring discourse markers in these texts and analyzing them based on their discourse roles in terms of local cohesion and pragmatic inference.

The conclusions of this study focus on the conceptual and procedural content of each discourse marker. …