Perspectives on Arabic Linguistics: Papers from the Annual Symposium on Arabic linguistics, Volume XXI: Provo, Utah, March 2007 (Amsterdam Studies in the Theory and History of Linguistic Science)

Perspectives on Arabic Linguistics XXI

AMSTERDAM STUDIES IN THE THEORY AND HISTORY OF LINGUISTIC SCIENCE General Editor E.F.K. KOERNER (Zentrum für Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft, Typologie und Universalienforschung, Berlin) Series IV – CURRENT ISSUES IN LINGUISTIC THEORY Advisory Editorial Board Lyle Campbell (Salt Lake City) Sheila Embleton (Toronto) Elly van Gelderen (Tempe, Ariz.) Brian D. Joseph (Columbus, Ohio) John E. Joseph (Edinburgh) Manfred Krifka (Berlin) Martin Maiden (Oxford) E. Wyn Roberts (Vancouver, B.C.) Joseph C. Salmons (Madison, Wis.)

Volume 301

Dilworth B. Parkinson (ed.) Perspectives on Arabic Linguistics XXI Papers from the twenty-first annual symposium on Arabic linguistics, Provo, Utah, March 2007

Perspectives on Arabic Linguistics XXI Papers from the twenty-first annual symposium on Arabic linguistics, Provo, Utah, March 2007

Edited by

Dilworth B. Parkinson Brigham Young University

JOHN BENJAMINS PUBLISHING COMPANY AMSTERDAM/PHILADELPHIA

4-

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American ­National Standard for Information Sciences — Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984.

Perspectives on Arabic linguistics XXI : papers from the twenty-first annual symposium on Arabic linguistics, Provo, Utah, March 2007 / edited by Dilworth B. Parkinson. (Amsterdam studies in the theory and history of linguistic science. Series IV, Current issues in linguistic theory, ISSN 0304-0763 ; v. 301) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978 90 272 4817 6 (Hb; alk. paper) © 2008 – 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 36224 • 1020 ME Amsterdam • The Netherlands John Benjamins North America • P.O.Box 27519 • Philadelphia PA 19118-0519 • USA

Contents Editorial Note

vii

Introduction Dilworth B. Parkinson

ix

Orthographic Unicode Variations in Arabic: A Case Study of Character Occurrences in News Corpora Zina Saadi

1

Toward an LFG Account of Agreement: Mismatches of Numerals within Arabic NPs Kamel A. Elsaadany

13

A Text-Pragmatic Approach to Moot Questions In Arabic Reda A. H. Mahmoud

43

The Pragmatics of Denial: An Information Structure Analysis of So-called “Emphatic Negation” in Egyptian Arabic Mustafa Mughazy

69

Yaʕni: What it (Really) Means Jonathan Owens & Trent Rockwood

83

Citations in Arabic Legal Opinion: ɁiftaaɁ versus qaḍaaʔ Ahmed Fakhri

115

Language Policy and Factors Influencing it in some Middle Eastern Countries and Morocco Abderrahmane Zouhir

133

The Perception of Arab-accented Speech by American Native Speakers and Non-native Speakers from East and Southeast Asia Selim Ben Said

149

vi

CONTENTS

Linguistic Losses in the Translation of Arabic Literary Texts Hanada Al-Masri

173

Index of Subjects

205

EDITORIAL NOTE On March 2-3, 2007, the Twenty-first Annual Symposium on Arabic Linguistics was held at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah. The symposium was sponsored by the Arabic Linguistics Society, and the Department of Asian and Near Eastern Languages, the Middle East Studies Arabic program, and the College of Humanities of Brigham Young University. Dilworth Parkinson was the local organizer of the symposium. A total of twenty-one papers were presented at the symposium; of these ten are published in this volume. 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. The preparation and printing of the final manuscript was done using facilities available at Brigham Young University. I am indebted to Zachary Queen, William Hyde, and Tessa Hauglid, who served as assistant editors for this volume.

Introduction Dilworth B. Parkinson The papers in this volume deal with a variety of topics in Arabic Linguistics, with a notable number of them emphasizing pragmatic aspects of their topic. All of the papers emphasize the collection and analysis of authentic language data and explore different approaches to the analysis of these data. The first paper, by Zina Saadi, explores the implications of the computationally annoying fact that writers of Arabic do not always choose the same Unicode character to represent a particular Arabic letter. This is an important issue in the processing of natural language texts, and the paper both explores and catalogues the scope of the problem, and calls for the incorporation of normalization schemes for electronic Arabic corpora. In his contribution, Kamel Elsaadany reviews the data on agreement mismatches in Arabic noun phrases that contain numbers, and then compares two possible accounts of these data within an LFG framework, demonstrating that the account which proposes a separate notation for INDEX and for CONCORD proves to be the most felicitous. Reda Mahmoud has examined the point/counterpoint type of Arabic television program on Al-Jazeera and other Arabic language satellite stations, in which a moderator discusses an issue with two participants who represent different points of view, and focuses on how the moderator of these debates generates controversy by asking a particular kind of question whose purpose is not to find an answer but rather to stimulate controversy. Syntactic, lexical and pragmatic features of these questions are examined to help explain how they manage to generate disagreement and debate. In his paper on emphatic negation (putting the negative markers around the pronoun instead of the verb, or instead of using ‘not’), Mustafa Mughazy shows that this alternative form of negation, which is often characterized simply as being more ‘emphatic’, is not actually emphatic, but rather a pragmatically distinct method of negation used for denial instead of plain negation. When viewed in a system with regular sentential negation, metalinguistic negation, and denial, we find an interesting distribution of pragmatic functions over the available structures. Jonathan Owens and Trent Rockwood have done a careful examination of the use of the form yaʕni in a corpus of Arabic speech, in order to determine what it actually means in usage. After reviewing a number of previous approaches to this discourse marker, they take a more minimalist approach, concluding that

x

INTRODUCTION

although its lexical meaning is minimal, its actual meaning ‘resides in its discourse organizing function’, and that the relationship it sets up between concepts invites the kind of inferences that give rise to the meanings ascribed to the form. In his piece comparing the legal language of religious vs. secular judges in Morocco, Ahmed Fakhri examines how writers encode references to outside texts in their judgements, demonstrating a clear contrast between the religious and secular modes in terms of their emphasis on authors vs. texts, whether the material is incorporated as a quote or a summary, the lexical items used to introduce the quote, and other related structures. This paper is a contribution to our understanding of how cultural rhetorical and thought patterns are embedded into Arabic texts. Abderrahmane Zouhir, in a comparative paper, examines the language policies of Lebanon, Turkey, Israel and Morocco, demonstrating that the discussion of language policy divorced from the social, economic, political, historical and cultural forces that have shaped it is not a fruitful enterprise. He shows how identical policies work out differently depending on those factors. Selim Ben Said gathered data on the perception of Arab-accented speech (compared to Latino, East European and Asian accented English) by native speakers of American English as well as by other groups. Subjects heard a passage read by speakers of English with various accents, and then rated both the performance and the speaker on a number of scales. The Arabic accents scored poorly (along with the Asian ones), and the male speakers of both were particularly disliked. Analysis of the data leads to a number of hypotheses about the source of these reactions. In her contribution, Hanada Al-Masri looks carefully at ‘what is lost in translation’. By examining a number of short story translations, she categorizes and illustrates the kinds of losses that occur, and what this means for our understanding of translated literature.

ORTHOGRAPHIC UNICODE VARIATIONS IN ARABIC

A CASE STUDY OF CHARACTER OCCURRENCES IN NEWS CORPORA

Zina Saadi Basis Technology Corporation 1. Orthographic Variations in NLP Orthographic variations within the Arabic script languages have been a major concern in the field of Natural Language Processing. Some issues of Arabic orthography were encountered while performing morphological analysis and Part-of-Speech (POS) tagging for certain news corpora at the Linguistic Data Consortium (LDC) (Buckwalter 2004) while others were discussed by Xu, Fraser & Weischedel when describing challenges of cross-lingual information retrieval at BBN (Xu, Fraser & Weischedel 2001). However, most of the issues discussed by Buckwalter and Xu, Fraser & Weischedel were identified to be “user-defined variants”. These variants include, for instance, the use of final Alef-Maksura instead of the final Yeh in Arabic, which can sometimes be selected by users or publishers. Such user-defined variations sometimes carry ambiguity and sometimes are recognized as misspellings. Look at this incomplete sentence “...‫قال لي على‬ ‫الكردي‬.” It can be read as either “He told me about the Kurdish person …” or “Ali Al-Kurdi told me …,” which illustrates that ‫ على‬in this example can either refer to a preposition and be read as ‫ على‬as in the first translation or it can refer to a proper noun and be read as ‫ علي‬in the second translation. The second type of orthographic variation observed in this study is introduced by non-Arabic language-specific characters within Arabic Unicode. Such languagespecific characters are often mistakenly encoded within Arabic text due to the use of non-Arabic keyboards. Watt has illustrated in his paper, “Computer Locale Requirements for Afghanistan,” the various layouts and Unicode mapping of language-specific keyboards which could be used within the Afghani territory (Watt 2003). Among all keyboard layouts described by Watt for Dari, Pashto, Uzbek and Brahui, the Unicode mapping for the plain Yeh keystroke for instance is (U+06CC), whereas the shifted Yeh keystroke mapping is (U+064A). In other words, the difference between obtaining the Arabic Unicode Yeh versus Farsi Yeh is to simply press the keystroke for Yeh with the one hand and pressing the same keystroke with the shift key with the other. In addition, Watt stated that Arabic specific characters can be retrieved from all of the keyboards used in Afghanistan

2

ZINA SAADI

by using some keyboard control specifications such as Shift, Ctrl-Shift and so on. However, if a user does not select the appropriate keyboard control, an error of inserting a variant character present in the non-Arabic languages used in Afghanistan is highly predictable. In this study, variants that might be introduced by non-Arabic keyboards or editors are referred to as “cross-lingual variations.” 1.1 Arabic unicode forms A and B Unicode provides three representations to encode Arabic script text: form A (FB50-FDFF) and Form B (FE70-FEFF) ― which are no longer used ― and Unicode (0600-06FF) which is currently the range of Unicode that is used to encode Arabic script languages (Unicode 4.0). In general, characters within Arabic Unicode have typical shapes called glyphs associated with units of textual information such as their position within a word (Constable 2000). The relationship between glyphs and characters as noted by Constable is defined to be many-to-many. For instance, Arabic Unicode forms A and B represent a one-to-one mapping between glyphs and code points per character or a combination of characters, whereas Unicode (0600-06FF) provides a mapping between a single code point and various glyphs for a single character. Table 1 illustrates such mapping for the possible Arabic letter Yeh glyphs. Unicode (0600-06FF) and forms A and B cannot be interchangeable due to the fact that forms A and B carry positional information in their glyphs and thus make the glyph selection process conditional (Constable 2000). Arabic Unicode representation forms A and B were developed at the time when software did not provide any other text-rendering mechanisms for languages with complex script such as the Arabic script languages (Constable 2000). Although these forms present some textual position distinctions, making textual rendering convenient, linguists can face more challenges encoding text using such forms. For instance, analyzing and processing phonetically transcribed speech has made the use of forms A and B less efficient, especially since word boundaries are not easily predictable in speech processing (Constable 2000). To overcome some of these, Unicode (0600-06FF) was introduced for Arabic script languages where it provided a better mechanism for enabling fonts to render characters into their positional glyphs automatically. This obviously discouraged uses of forms A and B (Unicode 4.0) (Constable 2000). Glyphs

‫ـي‬

‫ـيـ‬

‫يـ‬

‫ي‬

Form A

--

FBFF

FBFE

--

Form B

FEF4

FEF4

FEF3

FEF1

0600-06FF

064A

064A

064A

064A

0600-06FF

--

06CC

06CC

--

Table 1: Arabic unicode varations for Yeh



3

ORTHOGRAPHIC UNICODE VARIATIONS IN ARABIC

1.2 Cross-lingual variations Arabic Unicode (0600-06FF) introduces users to various selections of characters that could be mistakenly used among Arabic script languages. Kew noted the base characters which should be used in each language written in Arabic script such as the uses of (U+0643) for Kaf, (U+0647) for Heh, (U+064A) for Yeh as base letters in Arabic against other similar glyphs that are base characters in other languages such as Farsi, Kurdish or Urdu (Kew 2005). Users unaware of such specifications might select the wrong characters for encoding text of one language, especially if the surface forms of the characters appear identical. For instance, in the study by Solimanpour et al. about Optical Character Recognition (OCR) in Farsi, it has been noted that during the data collection of handwritten isolated letters, writers provided alternative glyphs for certain letters that should not have alternative glyphs, such as giving two forms for the letter Heh in isolation: namely ‫ ه‬and ‫( ھ‬Solimanpour et al., 2006). Although Farsi’s base Heh according to Kew is (U+0647) (Kew 2005), Farsi writers might use the Heh Doachashmee (U+06BE) that is used in Urdu and Sindhi. Therefore, writers would introduce Heh Doachashmee as a cross-lingual variant to obtain the alternative Heh glyph ‫ھ‬ while typing Farsi (Table 2). Given that the base Heh for Arabic and Farsi as noted by Kew are the same, a Farsi-Arabic translator might select alternative Unicode characters such as the Heh Doachashmee to represent the Heh in isolation. 1.3 User-defined variations The complex orthography of Arabic script languages has introduced various challenges in NLP. In Arabic, the use of final Heh sometimes causes ambiguity Glyphs

Kaf

Heh

Name

Languages

‫ك‬

‫كـ‬

‫ـكـ‬

‫ـك‬

U+0643

Kaf

‫ک‬

‫کـ‬

‫ـک‬

‫ـک‬

U+06AA

Swash Kaf

Sindhi

‫ک‬

‫ـک‬

‫ـک‬

‫ـک‬

U+06A9

Keheh

Urdu, Farsi

‫ه‬

‫هـ‬

‫ـهـ‬

‫ـه‬

U+0647

Heh

Arabic, Farsi

‫ہ‬

‫ہـ‬

‫ـہـ‬

‫ـہ‬

‫ھ‬

‫ھـ‬

‫ـھـ‬

‫ـھ‬

U+06C1

Heh Goal

Urdu

U+06BE

Heh

Urdu, Sindhi

U+06D5

Doachashmee

Kurdish

‫يـ‬

‫ـيـ‬

‫ـي‬

U+064A

AE

Arabic

‫ـى‬

U+0649

Yeh

Arabic

‫ـی‬

U+06CC

Alef Maksura

Urdu, Persian

‫ە‬ ‫ي‬ Yeh

Unicode

‫ـە‬

‫ى‬ ‫ی‬

‫یـ‬

‫ـیـ‬

Farsi Yeh Table 2: Common cross-lingual variations

Arabic

4

ZINA SAADI

especially because some writers use it in place of final Teh Marbuta such as ‫ مدرسه‬which could either refer to ‫مدرسه‬, meaning “his teacher” or ‫ مدرسة‬meaning “school.” Some additional possible Arabic variations that can be defined by users or publishers are summarized in Table 3. Buckwalter observed some orthographic variations encountered in the Arabic news corpora: AFP, Ummah, and Annahar. In addition, he illustrated the variations found: final Yeh in place of Alef Maksura (i.e. ‫ األعلي‬،‫)القري‬, the interchangeability of Hamza below and above the Alef (i.e. ‫ إسبانيا‬،‫)أسبانيا‬, and the use versus the omission of Madda, Hamza above or below Alef in various word positions. Finally, he noted that some of these variations were taken into account in the development of the LDC’s part-of-speech annotated corpora, which allows for possible orthographic variations (Buckwalter 2004). On the other hand, Xu, Fraser & Weischedel suggested the use of stemming to account for user-defined orthographic variations in Arabic (Xu, Fraser & Weischedel 2001). 2. Normalizing Arabic Orthographic Variants Previous studies have mainly discussed “user-defined” Arabic orthographic variations and not drawn attention to other orthographic variants discussed in this paper such as Arabic Unicode forms A and B as well as cross-lingual variants. Therefore, the current experiment was developed to explore the occurrences of all three orthographic variants in current news corpora and to study ways of handling all three kinds of variants for dictionary lookup. For this experiment, I used a multi-dimensional normalization approach to enhance dictionary lookup. For the first-level normalization, all Arabic Unicode forms A and B are normalized to their current corresponding (0600-06FF) Unicode values. Then the results go through a second-level normalization, which converts all cross-lingual variations to the most Glyphs

Alef

‫ا‬

‫ا‬

‫أ‬

‫أ‬

‫إ‬

‫إ‬

‫ٱ‬

‫ٱ‬

‫آ‬

‫آ‬

Yeh

‫ي‬

‫يـ‬

Teh

‫ه‬

Marbuta

Unicode U+0627 U+0623 U+0625 U+0671 ‫ـيـ‬

‫ـى‬

‫ى‬ ‫ة‬

‫ـي‬

‫هـ‬

‫ـهـ‬

‫ـه‬ ‫ـة‬

U+0622 U+06A U+0649 U+0647 U+0629

Table 3: Common user-defined variations



ORTHOGRAPHIC UNICODE VARIATIONS IN ARABIC

5

common characters utilized in Arabic, as illustrated by Kew (Kew 2005). Finally, the user-defined variations will be handled by allowing a second variant to be generated for words ending in Yeh vs. Alef Maksura, Heh vs. Teh Marbuta, and initial Alef variations used in Arabic as illustrated in Table 3. 3. Experiment The current experiment was designed to show the importance of handling all three types of orthographic variations found in Arabic news corpora. Figure 1 shows an overview of the experiment.

Figure 1: Overview of experiment

3.1 Data Data used for this experiment was collected in February 2007 and consists of online Arabic text obtained from major news sources grouped into two categories, Arabic-based and non-Arabic-based news. Each category was sub-categorized into TV or online-based news. For the Arabic-based news, sources included text from: Al-Jazeera1 and Al-Manar2 as the only Arabic TV news sources, and Al-Rai3, AlAhram4, and Djazair-News5 as the Arabic-based online news sources. The web crawler that was used to compile the Arabic online text corpora was able to collect about 249MB of Arabic-based news text with the distribution of each news source as illustrated in Figure 2.

6

ZINA SAADI







Figure 2: Distribution of news sources

On the other hand, the non-Arabic (based in a non-Arab country) news sources included: Arabic-CNN6, which was the only TV news source originating from a non-Arab country. As for the online news sources, Mehr-News7, Al-QudsAl-Arabi8 and Taqrir-Washington9 were used. The web crawler was able to collect about 122MB of non-Arabic-based news text in Arabic with the distribution of each news source as illustrated in Figure 3.

Figure 3: Non-Arabic news sources distribution Arabic channel based in Qatar (http://www.aljazeera.net). Arabic channel based in Lebanon but sponsored by Iran (http://www.manartv.com.lb). 3 Arabic newspaper published in Jordan (http://www.alrai.net). 4 Arabic newspaper published in Egypt (http://www.ahram.org.eg). 5 Online Arabic news based in Algeria (http://www.djazairnews.info). 6 TV news channel based in the U.S. (http://arabic.cnn.com). 7 Iranian online news website (http://www.mehrnews.com/ar). 8 An Arabic newspaper based in UK (http://www.alquds.co.uk). 9 An online news website based in the U.S. (http://www.taqrir.org). 1 2



7

ORTHOGRAPHIC UNICODE VARIATIONS IN ARABIC

3.2 Hypotheses The five hypotheses for this experiment are:

•



•



•



•

Since data is recent and was obtained from frequently updated web pages, Arabic Unicode forms A and B should not occur in any of the collected corpora. There will be fewer cross-lingual orthographic variations in Arabic-based news than in non-Arabic-based news. This is assuming that the editors of Arabic-based news would use an Arabic keyboard, which maps to the appropriate Arabic Unicode values restricted to the use of Arabic. In addition, since publishers of Arabic-based news should be aware of common Arabic misspellings, the online Arabic text obtained from news published in the Arab world will contain less orthographic variations in comparison to text obtained from countries outside the Arab world. Published newspapers or online-based news are more likely to be reviewed. Therefore, this study assumes that there will be fewer orthographic variations in published news based on either an online news agency or newspapers than in online news based on TV channels. Such assumption is due to the fact that TV news reviewers would concentrate more on correcting pronunciation of words (the use of diacritics to disambiguate words) rather than actual orthographic variations. Since both Mehr-News and Al-Manar TV news sources are influenced by Iran, we would expect to find a wide use of Perso-Arabic cross-lingual variants. However, Mehr-News was established in 2003 in Tehran, while Al-Manar TV was established in Lebanon.

Kaf

Char

Unicode

Al-Jazeera

Al-Manar

‫ك‬

U+0643

206479

67467

‫ک‬

U+06A9

249

97

U+0629

351411

132279

U+0647

243015

88517

‫ة‬

Heh vs. Teh Marbuta

‫ه‬

Yeh

‫ي‬

‫ه‬ ‫ى‬ ‫ى‬ ‫ا‬

Initial Alef

‫أ‬ ‫إ‬ ‫ٱ‬ ‫آ‬

U+06C1

0

0

U+064A

831166

338168

U+0649

82836

29585

U+06CC

860

0

U+0627

1628219

690325

U+0623

194592

55710

U+0625

87371

24937

U+0671

0

0

U+0622

12016

4729

Table 4: User-defined variants in Arabic-based sources

8



ZINA SAADI

•

According to the second hypothesis of this study, it will be assumed that there will be fewer Perso-Arabic cross-lingual variants in Al-Manar TV than in Mehr-News online Arabic text. Normalizing the three types of orthographic variations described in this paper will increase accuracy.

3.3 Pre-normalized cross-lingual and user-defined variants Measuring occurrences of pre-normalized cross-lingual variants illustrated in Table 2 showed that there were only few news corpora that contained such orthographic variants. Therefore, this study will analyze the occurrences of prenormalized variants based on corpora that contained cross-lingual variants, since user-defined variants are widely discussed in NLP research. The next two sections, namely 3.3.1 and 3.3.2, will discuss pre-normalized findings among Arabic and non-Arabic news corpora that contained cross-lingual variants. 3.3.1 Arabic based corpora. All of the Arabic-based news corpora that were compiled for this study contained uses of user-defined orthographic variants. However, corpora collected from Al-Jazeera and Al-Manar showed uses of crosslingual variants. Table 4 illustrates occurrences measured from Al-Jazeera and Al-Manar news corpora for Kaf, Heh, and Yeh as the cross-lingual variant types, as well as Heh vs. Teh Marbuta, Yeh vs. Alef Maksrua, and Alef Madda, Alef Wasla, Hamza above or below Alef, and plain Alef as the user-defined variants discussed previously. In terms of cross-lingual variants, findings showed minimal occurrences of Arabic Unicode Keheh (U+06A9), as well as Arabic Unicode Farsi Yeh (U+06CC) in Al-Jazeera compiled corpora versus a minimal finding of Arabic Unicode Keheh (U+06A9) as the only cross-lingual variant in Al-Manar compiled corpora. This finding is quite surprising since the fourth hypothesis stated that we would encounter more Perso-Arabic variants in Al-Manar TV since it represents news influenced by Iran and by the type of script that is used in Farsi. On the other hand, finding some occurrences of cross-lingual variants in Al-Jazeera corpora is quite surprising since Al-Jazeera has become a very popular news network from both their broadcast news and from their published online news. A report for the U.S. congress has noted that Al-Jazeera ― the first Arabic all-news network established in 1996, in Qatar ― had been considered as “a key player in covering issues of central importance to U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East” (Sharp 2003). Thus encountering some cross-lingual variants might have negative or positive implication by end users. While socio-linguists might consider occurrences of cross-lingual variants in corpora collected from the most popular Arabic news network Al-Jazeera as a proof of a diverse background of news network itself, computational linguists interested in developing tagged corpora might need to be aware of the possible existence of such variants.



9

ORTHOGRAPHIC UNICODE VARIATIONS IN ARABIC

Occurrences of user-defined variants among corpora collected from Al-Jazeera and Al-Manar websites show wider distribution among certain variants under the same group. For instance, uses of Arabic Unicode Heh (U+0647) appear to be more common than uses of Arabic Unicode Teh Marbuta (U+0629) in Al-Jazeera than in Al-Manar news corpora, while Arabic Unicode Yeh (U+064A) has been used more frequently than Arabic Unicode Alef Maksura (U+0649) among both corpora. As for initial Alef variants, Table 4 shows: a lack of the use of Alef Wasla (U+0671), higher use of plain Alef (U+0627) followed by mid-high uses of Hamza above Alef (U+0623), then by less uses of Hamza below Alef (U+0625), and last by the fewer uses of Alef Madda (U+0622) among both corpora. 3.3.2 Non-Arabic based corpora. All of the non-Arabic-based news corpora collected for this study contained uses of user-defined orthographic variants; however, corpora collected from Mehr-News, Taqrir Washington and Al-Quds online news showed some uses of cross-lingual variants. Table 5 illustrates occurrences measured from all three non-Arabic-based online news corpora for Kaf, Heh, and Yeh as the cross-lingual variant types, as well as Heh vs. Teh Marbuta, Yeh vs. Alef Maksrua, and Alef Madda, Alef Wasla, Hamza above or below Alef, and plain Alef as the user-defined variants discussed previously.

Kaf Heh vs.

Char

Unicode

Mehr

Taqrir

Al-Quds

‫ك‬

U+0643

29368

149971

22771

‫ک‬

U+06A9

854

4

0

U+0629

53528

205443

47751

U+0647

70403

100608

25915

‫ة‬

Teh Marbuta

‫ه‬

Yeh

‫ي‬

‫ه‬ ‫ى‬ ‫ى‬ ‫ا‬

Initial Alef

‫أ‬ ‫إ‬ ‫ٱ‬ ‫آ‬

U+06C1

0

0

18

U+064A

192489

576681

104831

U+0649

10287

35761

32

U+06CC

9412

2481

0

U+0627

402163

1012881

201207

U+0623

6293

6293

11863

U+0625

1313

58155

3442

U+0671

0

0

0

U+0622

3425

7024

880

Table 5: Cross-lingual variants from non-Arabic-based sources

10

ZINA SAADI Unicode

Al-Jazeera

Al-Manar

Mehr-News

Taqrir

Al-Quds

Final

U+0629

361244

134979

81805

203720

48637

105%

Heh

U+0647

229791

84205

40891

101215

24847

91%

Final

U+064A

834983

337989

196321

571413

95696

99%

Yeh

U+0649

7671

28360

15312

37231

8088

104%

U+0627

1723657

717538

405158

1062379

206743

104%

Initial

U+0623

94181

27924

4010

81187

5737

77%

Alef

U+0625

87135

24871

1308

56858

3435

99%

U+0671

0

0

0

0

0

NA

U+0622

3268

1679

990

1704

139

27%

Diff (%)

Table 6: Cross-lingual and User-defined variants After normalization

Regarding cross-lingual variants, findings according to Table 5 showed minimal occurrences of Arabic Unicode Keheh (U+06A9) in Mehr-News corpora in contrast with insignificant occurrences of the same character in Taqrir Washington news corpora. Occurrences of Arabic Unicode Heh Goal (U+06C1) were found to be insignificant in Al-Quds news corpora. On the other hand, occurrences of Arabic Unicode Farsi Yeh (U+06CC) seemed to be somewhat common in MehrNews and Taqrir Washington against no appearance of such Unicode character in Al-Quds news corpora. Although both Mehr-News and Taqrir Washington witnessed some occurrences of Perso-Arabic cross-lingual variants, Mehr-News seemed to be the leading corpora with the most occurrences. On the other hand, occurrences of user-defined orthographic variants among corpora collected from Mehr-News, Taqrir Washington, and Al-Quds websites show various distributions among certain variants under the same group. For instance, uses of Arabic Unicode Heh (U+0647) appear to be more common than uses of Arabic Unicode Teh Marbuta (U+0629) in Mehr-News, which is quite the opposite for Taqrir Washington and Al-Quds news corpora. This could be due to the fact that Mehr-News is based in Iran where Perso-Arabic script keyboards are widely used. In addition, Kew has noted that Arabic Unicode Heh could be a possible variant of Arabic Unicode Teh Marbuta for the Arabic text encoding, but he explicitly identified Arabic Unicode Heh (U+0647) as the base character for encoding Farsi text (Kew 2005). Findings according to Table 5 indicate that there are more uses of Heh than Teh Marbuta found in Mehr-News which could be justified by the fact that Heh is a base character used in encoding Farsi text whereas the Teh Marbuta is not defined as a legitimate base character in Farsi. In terms of final Yeh variants, findings showed that Al-Quds news corpora had



ORTHOGRAPHIC UNICODE VARIATIONS IN ARABIC

11

a count of 32 occurrences of Arabic Unicode Alef Maksura (U+0649) against 104,831 occurrences of Arabic Unicode Yeh, which is an interesting finding. This is interesting because occurrences of characters within this group in the other news corpora as shown in Table 5, indicate closely related occurrences between both final Yeh and Alef Maksura. As for initial Alef variants, Table 5 shows a lack of the use of Alef Wasla (U+0671), along with various distributions of occurrences of Hamza above or below Alef and Alef Madda among all three non-Arabic-based corpora. 3.4 Normalized cross-lingual and user-defined variations Table 6 illustrates the updated occurrences of cross-lingual and userdefined variants described by the previous section after normalization is applied as described in section 3. An additional column has been added to the table to indicate the percent increase (values >100%) or decrease (values < 100%) of the occurrences of user-defined variants before and after normalization among all five news corpora (Al-Jazeera, Al-Manar, Mehr-News, Taqrir Washington, Al-Quds). 3.5 Summary of findings Going back to the five original hypotheses, results indicate that:

•



•



•



•



•

Unexpectedly, there were some insignificant occurrences of Arabic Unicode representation form B mainly found in Al-Jazeera news corpora. There were no cross-lingual variants encountered in Arabic-based online news vs. TV news, as well as in non-Arabic based TV news. However, it seems that normalizing orthographic variants showed that there were many incorrectly used user-defined characters in non-Arabic based corpora than in Arabic-based corpora. This could be illustrated by the large increase in the number of occurrences of normalized Alef Maksura, from 32 occurrences to 8088 occurrences in Al-Quds news, which illustrated that many final Yeh were mistakenly used in place of final Alef Maksura. Although published newspapers are more likely to be reviewed, this study shows unexpectedly, that orthographic variants were very common in Al-Quds newspapers, especially in their systematic and very common use of final Yeh in place of final Alef Maksura. There were more Perso-Arabic cross-lingual variations found in Mehr-News and very few found in Al-Manar corpora. Al-Jazeera corpora seem to be placed second after Mehr-News in terms of its content of Perso-Arabic cross-lingual variants. Finally, handling all three types of orthographic variations showed a 90% error reduction for Arabic dictionary lookup. These findings imply that orthographic variations found in the current Arabic and non-Arabic based news corpora appear most frequently in AlJazeera and Mehr-News.

4. Conclusion The current experiment shows that there are three important types of orthographic variations found in Arabic Unicode, which need to be handled in NLP by normalizing processed text. Normalizing such orthographic variations reduces the errors for dictionary lookup.

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References Buckwalter, Tim. 2004. “Issues in Arabic Orthography and Morphology Analysis”. Proceedings of the Workshop on Computational Approaches to Arabic Scriptbased Languages, COLING 2004, Geneva, August 28, 2004. Constable, Peter. 2000. “Unicode Character Encoding of Archived Linguistic Data”. Paper presented at the workshop on Web-Based Language Documentation and Description, Philadelphia, December 12-15, 2000. Kew, Jonathan. 2005. “Notes on Some Unicode Arabic Characters: Recommendations for usage, 2005-04-21”. Retrieved on March 4th, 2007, from http://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page.php?site_id=nrsi&item_ id=PCUnicodeDocs#272ccb85. Sharp, Jeremy M. 2003. “The Al-Jazeera News Network: Opportunity or challenge for U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East?”. Retrieved on April 14th, 2007, from http://fpc.state.gov/documents/organization/23002.pdf. Solimanpour, F., Javad Sadri & C. Y. Suen. 2006. “Standard Databases for Recognition of Handwritten Digits, Numerical Strings, Legal Amounts, Letters and Dates in Farsi Language”. Proceedings of the 10th International Workshop on Frontiers in Handwriting Recognition (IWFHR 2006), Oct. 2006, pp. 3-7. Unicode Consortium, The. 2003. The Unicode Standard, version 4.0.0. Boston, MA: Addison-Wesley. Watt, Shah Mahmood Ghazi. 2003. “Computer Locale Requirements for Afghanistan”. United Nations Development Programme. Retrieved on March 14th, 2007, from http://www.evertype.com/standards/af/af-locales.pdf. Xu J., A. Fraser & R. Weischedel. 2001. “Cross-Lingual Retrieval at BBN”. TREC 2001, Gainbersburg: NIST 2001.

TOWARD AN LFG ACCOUNT OF AGREEMENT MISMATCHES OF NUMERALS WITHIN Arabic NPS Kamel A. Elsaadany Gulf University for Science and Technology 1. Introduction Agreement mismatches or asymmetries in Standard Arabic (henceforth SA) noun phrases (NPs) present a challenge to both old and recent syntactic frameworks. In particular, when NPs contain a numeral, the challenge becomes a real problem. In this respect, many studies have dealt with the notion of grammatical agreement in many languages from generative, transformational, functional, lexical, optimal and minimal syntax perspectives. Among these studies are King & Dalrymple (2004), Sadler (2003), Kremers (2000), Corbett (2001), Wechsler & Zlatić (2000, 2003), Kathol (1999), Benmamoun (1992, 2000), Aoun et al. (1994), Borer (1996), Holes (1995), Hurford (1987, 2001, 2003), Halle (1994), Lapointe (1985), Matrajy (2000), Abdul-Moneim (1989), among others. Zabbal (2005:8) points out that the syntactic and semantic literature on numerical expressions can be divided into three schools of thought. One proposal (Selkirk 1977, Hurford 1987, Gawron 2002,etc.) is that numerals are in specifier position of NumP or QP [Quantifier Phrase]. Another view (Ritter 1991, Zamparelli 2000) is that complex numerals enter the syntax as terminals of functional heads, Q or Num. A third proposal (Ionin & Matushansky 2004) has emerged which argues that all simple numerals are exclusively nominal heads in a cascading structure. There are other non-syntactic accounts of numerals, focusing on the semantics of counting (for instance, Krifka 1989). Still, very few studies dealt with the agreement phenomenon from a Lexical Functional Grammar (henceforth LFG) framework. This does not mean that there is no LFG work on agreement in general and on agreement mismatches in particular or that the work done in other frameworks is incompatible with LFG. Many of the above-mentioned works, as stated above by Zabbal, draw upon the insights of previous analyses of agreement. Because the basic design LFG involves, as King (2005:2) points out, a “modularity of the grammar such that different types of information (syntactic, semantic, prosodic, etc.) are represented differently but can make reference to each other in well-defined ways”, this makes

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LFG framework provide a way to account for a broader range of data than other theoretical frameworks. For an overview and introduction to LFG theory, see Bresnan (1996), Dalrymple (2001), and Falk (2001), among others. The present study analyzes agreement and agreement mismatches from an LFG perspective. It examines a problematic area of agreement in SA NPs which contain numerals and other types of modification and/or determiners. It considers how one might tackle it within the theory of LFG. LFG is an ideal theory to investigate agreement phenomena because its projection architecture provides both a clear division between grammar components and concrete notation with which to frame analyses within each component (King 2005:2). Accounting for agreement mismatches between nouns and numerals within NP constructions is the focus of this study. The analysis of agreement mismatches in MSA NPs is best accounted for within the LFG framework which differs from other syntactic frameworks that postulate syntactic movement of constituents in order to account for their surface realization. Neidle (1994/1996: 2148) argues that

LFG differs from both transformational grammar and relational grammar in assuming a single level of syntactic structure. LFG rejects syntactic movement of constituents as the mechanism by which the surface syntactic realization of arguments is determined, and it disallows alternation of grammatical relations within the syntax. A unique constituent structure, corresponding to the superficial phrase structure, is postulated. This is made possible by an enriched lexical component that accounts for regularities in the possible mappings of arguments into syntactic structures.

LFG postulates three distinct yet interrelated levels of representation. These three levels are: a lexical or semantic structure (s-structure) which includes lexical or semantic information of the lexical item, a constituent structure (c-structure) which “encodes linear order, hierarchical groupings, and syntactic categories of constituents, and is the input to the phonological component of the grammar” (Neidle 1994/1996), and a functional structure (f-structure) which integrates the data from both s-structure and c-structure. LFG claims that f-structure is universal. This LFG architecture makes it a suitable framework to account for the data in the current study whose analysis depends on the parallel projection-based architecture of LFG rather than a derivational process of movement proposed in other syntactic frameworks. The paper is structured as follows. Section 2 lays out the data containing NP internal agreement, including structures in which the head noun is not modified by a numeral. Section 3 introduces the data containing NP internal agreement including structures in which the head noun is modified by a numeral. It provides the corpus data of this study. Section 4 explores two possible analyses within an LFG framework. The first of these, in section 4.1, presents an approach which makes use of the distinction between INDEX and CONCORD features. Section 4.2 provides an alternative two-tier approach that treats the noun as an argument of the numeral. Section 5 considers other further grounds that help decide between



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these two alternative analyses for the SA agreement mismatches. Finally, section 6 provides conclusion and recommendations. 2. The Notion of Agreement within NPs: Basic facts The notion of agreement has long been a challenging topic for linguists. In many languages, it involves complex interactions between different grammar components including syntax, semantics, morphology, prosody, information structure, etc. Agreement in SA NPs is no exception. Katamba (1993:330) defines the notion of agreement as “a grammatical constraint requiring that if one word has a particular form, other words appearing in the same construction must take the appropriate corresponding form”. Moravcsik (1978:333) has a more technical, but equivalent definition:

A grammatical constituent A will be said to agree with a grammatical constituent B in properties C in language L if C is a set of meaning-related properties of A and there is a covariance relationship between C and some phonological properties of a constituent B1 across some subset of the sentences of language L, where constituent B1 is adjacent to constituent B and the only meaningrelated non-categorial properties of constituent B1 are the properties C.

Avgustinova & Uszkoreit (2003:167) provide a novel typological perspective of agreement and define agreement phenomena as “instances of co-variation of linguistic forms which is typically realized as feature congruity, i.e. compatibility of values of identical grammatical categories of syntactically combined linguistic items.” Hurford (2001:69) also discusses agreement by differentiating between grammatical number in a language and its numeral system where he points out that:

Grammatical number in a language is distinct from its numeral system. Grammatical number tends to be indicated in the morphology of nouns (e.g. by an affix), whereas numerals are distinct words or phrases. Grammatical number in fact has only a somewhat loose relationship with numeral expressions in a language. Nouns marked for grammatical number need not be accompanied by numerals. In Arabic, for instance, kitaab means “(a) book” and kitabeen [kitaabaan] means “two books.”

Strunk (2005) also points out that agreement means that “a head puts restrictions on one of its argument functions by projecting agreement features into this function. However, simple agreement morphology does not provide any semantic content, i.e. no PRED feature, for this function” (emphasis in the original). Strunk’s definition of agreement fits this study but it basically targets subject-verb agreement, which is not the focus of this study. Though these agreement definitions suffice for agreement phenomena in some languages, morphological gender-number agreement between nouns and adjectives in Semitic languages such as Arabic is rendered complex by the occurrence of agreement mismatches in the marking of these elements. Thus the primary aim of this paper is to account for these mismatches and why they show up differently in

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SA NPs. Section 2.1 illustrates the idea of total, full or ‘strict’ agreement between head nouns and their modified adjectives. Modifiers of these head nouns do not contain numerals. Head nouns that contain numerals are discussed in section 3. 2.1 Strict agreement in Arabic NPs Some languages show ‘strict’ agreement while others show ‘deflected’ agreement in noun-adjective agreement paradigms. Agreement is ‘strict’ when features of head nouns in NP constructions are identical to those of their adjectives or modifiers. In this sense, features of adjectives must agree in Gender (G), Number (N), Case (C) and Definiteness (D) (henceforth GNCD) with those of their head nouns; otherwise, they are ‘deflected’. SA NPs show both strict and deflected agreement. The following examples illustrate strict agreement in SA NPs. SA distinguishes two grammatical genders (FEM, MASC) and three numbers (SG, DU, PL). Number agreement is to be discussed in the next section. All the examples used in this study are transliterated in their pausal forms. Nominative Case [NOM] is used as default. (1) GCD Agreement: Singular (Human and Non-Human) a. walad-u-n kabi:r-u-n boy-MASC.SG-NOM-IND big-MASC.SG-NOM-IND “a big/old boy” b. Ɂal-walad-u Ɂal-kabi:r-u the-boy-MASC.SG-NOM-DEF the- big-MASC.SG-NOM-DEF “the big/old boy” c. bint-u-n jami:l-at-u-n girl-FEM.SG-NOM-IND beautiful-FEM.SG-NOM-IND “a beautiful girl” d. Ɂal-bint-u Ɂal-jami:l-at-u the-girl-FEM.SG-NOM-DEF the-beautiful-FEM.SG-NOM-DEF “the beautiful girl” e. kita:b-u-n mufi:d-u-n book-MAS.SG-NOM-IND useful-MAS.SG-NOM-IND “a useful book” f. Ɂal-kita:b-u Ɂal-mufi:d-u the-book-MASC.SG-NOM-DEF the-useful-MASC.SG-NOM-DEF “the useful book” g. majall-at-u-n mufi:d-at-u-n magazine-FEM.SG-NOM-IND useful-FEM.SG-NOM-IND “the useful magazine” h. Ɂal-majall-at-u Ɂal-mufi:d-at-u the-magazine-FEM.SG-NOM-DEF the-useful-FEM.SG-NOM-DEF “the useful magazine”



The same examples in (1) are rendered DUAL (DU) in (2).



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(2) GCD Agreement: Dual (Human and Non-Human) a. walad-a:n-i kabi:r-a:n-i boy-MASC.DU-NOM-IND big-MASC.DU-NOM-IND “two big/old boys” b. Ɂal-walad-a:n-i Ɂal-kab:ir-a:n-i the-boy-MASC.DU-NOM-DEF the- big-MASC.DU-NOM-DEF “the two big/old boys” c. bint-a:n-i jami:l-at-a:n-i girl-FEM.DU-NOM-IND beautiful-FEM.DU-NOM-IND “two beautiful girls” d. Ɂal-bint-a:n-i Ɂal-jami:l-at-a:n-i the-girl-FEM.DU-NOM-DEF the-beautiful-FEM.DU-NOM-DEF “the two beautiful girls” e. kita:b-a:n-i mufi:d-a:n-i book-MASC.DU-NOM-IND useful-MASC.DU-NOM-IND “two useful books” f. Ɂal-kita:b-a:n-i Ɂal-mufi:d-a:n-i the-book-MASC.DU-NOM-DEF the-useful-MASC.DU-NOM-DEF “the two useful books” g. majall-at-a:n-i mufi:d-at-a:n-i magazine-FEM.DU-NOM-IND useful-FEM.DU-NOM-IND “two useful magazines” h. Ɂal-majall-at-a:n-i Ɂal-mufi:d-at-a:n-i the-magazine-FEM.DU-NOM-DEF the-useful-FEM.DU-NOM-DEF “the two useful magazines”

Singular and dual nouns/nominals trigger strict GNCD agreement within the NP as do plural nouns denoting humans as illustrated in (3). (3) GCD Agreement: Plural (Human) a. Ɂawla:d-u-n boys-MASC.PL-NOM-IND “big/old boys” b. Ɂal-Ɂawla:d-u boys-MASC.PL-NOM-DEF “the big/old boys” c. ban-a:t-u-n girls-FEM.PL-NOM-IND “beautiful girls” d. Ɂal-ban-a:t-u the-girls-FEM.PL-NOM-DEF “the beautiful girls”

kiba:r-u-n big-MASC.PL-NOM-IND Ɂal-kiba:r-u the-big-MASC.PL-NOM-DEF jami:l-a:t-u-n beautiful-FEM.PL-NOM-IND Ɂal-jami:l-a:t-u the-beautiful-FEM.PL-NOM-DEF

Many Arab scholars and grammarians such as Matrajy (2000), Al-Rajhi (n.d.), Abdul-Mutalib (1998), Ilias & Nasif (1998), Omar et al. (1996), and many others have discussed strict and deflected agreement. In particular, they have argued that nonhuman nouns trigger feminine singular adjectives and modifiers. Nonhuman plural nouns illustrated in (4) trigger FEM.SG on adjectives and other modifiers.

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(4) GCD Agreement: Plural (Non-Human) a. kutub-u-n mufi:d-at-u-n books-MASC.PL-NOM-IND useful-FEM.SG-NOM-IND “useful books” b. Ɂal-kutub-u Ɂal-mufi:d-at-u the-books-MASC.PL-NOM-DEF the-useful-FEM.SG-NOM-DEF “the useful books” c. majall-a:t-u-n mufi:d-at-u-n magazines-FEM.PL-NOM-IND useful-FEM.SG-NOM-IND “useful magazines” d. Ɂal-majall-a:t-u Ɂal-mufi:d-at-u the-magazines-FEM.PL-NOM-DEF he-useful-FEM.SG-NOM-DEF “the useful magazines”

Al-Rajhi (n.d.) has provided a detailed explanation of numbers in Arabic in his Appendix 2. He has illustrated some of the problematic issues associated with using Arabic numerals on the part of both students and scholars. The above-mentioned examples show that adjectives in SA agree with their head nouns in GCD. If all adjective phrases (APs) and NPs are fully specified for GNCD, then one can provide the following LFG illustrations in (5) and (6) as an example for definiteness agreement and how it is handled along the lines of Gender, Number, and Case (GNC) agreement. (5)



(6) Ɂal-kabi:r-u



NP

→



N

↑=↓ (( ADJ є↑)

AP

↓є (↑ADJ ) DET)

=



(( ADJ є↑) CASE ) =



(( ADJ є↑)



(( ADJ є↑) CONC (↑PRED )

CONC =

DEF

NOM

GEND )

NUM )

“BIG / OLD”

= MASC

= SG

In (5), the arrows are variables; ‘­↑’ is to be instantiated by the node immediately dominating the constituent under which the arrow is placed, and ‘↓’ by the node itself. The ‘↑=↓’ equation beneath N indicates that the features of that node are shared with the higher node. This is the default assignment to phrasal heads, which share information with the dominating phrasal node. The ‘↓є (↑ADJ )’ equation beneath AP indicates that the feature of that node is shared with both the adjacent head N and the higher node dominating it. In LFG, the terminal nodes of the tree are lexical items. Accordingly, the LFG Lexical Integrity Hypothesis requires that fully formed lexical items are inserted into the syntax. Thus, syntactic rules are prohibited from moving any element into or out of lexical categories in LFG.



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In terms of basic agreement facts, then, the Arabic NP appears to be quite straightforward over the GEN, NUM, CASE, and DEF features of the f-structure of the NP. For instance, MASC.PL, FEM.PL, MASC.DU, FEM.DU, MASC.SG, and FEM.SG require the f-structure of the NP to be specified as masculine plural, feminine plural, masculine dual, feminine dual, masculine singular, and feminine singular respectively as shown in (7).

(7) a. Adjmasc



b. Adjfem



c. Adjmasc



d. Adjfem



e. Adjmasc



f. Adjfem



((ADJ є↑) GEND) ((ADJ є↑) NUM )

=c =c

((ADJ є↑) GEND ) =c ((ADJ є↑) NUM ) =c ((ADJ є↑) GEND) ((ADJ є↑) NUM )

=c =c

((ADJ є↑) GEND ) =c ((ADJ є↑) NUM ) =c ((ADJ є↑) GEND) ((ADJ є↑) NUM )

=c =c

((ADJ є↑) GEND ) =c ((ADJ є↑) NUM ) =c

MASC PL

FEM PL

MASC DU

FEM DU

MASC SG

FEM SG

3. Cardinality: Agreement within NPs 3.1 Combining numerals and nominals Numerals can be morphologically simple or complex. A simple numeral is a single morphological item. Arabic numerals ‘1-10’ are considered simple ones. A complex numeral is made up of a sequence of simple numerals with optional or obligatory intervening material. SA grammar constrains the internal formation of complex numeral. (8) and (9) illustrate simple and complex numerals, respectively. (8) Simple Numerals (in pausal forms): a. wa:ħid, ?iθna:n “one”, “two” b. θala:θa, Ɂarbaʕa, xamsa, sitta, sabʕa, θama:niya, “three”, “four”, “five”, “six”, “seven”, “eight” tisʕa, ʕašara “nine,” “ten” (9) Complex Numerals: a. θala:θat-u miɁat-in three hundred “305” b. θala:θat-u Ɂala:f-in three thousand-PL “3,005”

wa-xamsat-u and-five wa-xamsat-u and-five

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Combining numerals and nominals in SA NPs is particularly complex when nominals are modified by cardinal numerals. In SA, ordinals are postnominal adjectives and fully agree in GNCD with their head nominals. While ordinals are postnominal only, cardinals can be either prenominal or postnominal. Postnominal cardinals in SA are highly marked. Prenominal cardinals are the unmarked word order. Zabbal (2005:63) argues that:

The internal meaning of numerals is independent of their function: a numeral is the linguistic expression of a natural number; it is neither a cardinal nor an ordinal until it merges into a noun phrase. Numerals denote natural numbers. The term cardinal or ordinal refer[s] to the function of the numeral in the noun phrase and it is argued that this function is handled outside the numeral….The function of a numeral (cardinal or ordinal) designates the semantic relationship between the numeral and the counted noun. Cardinals and ordinals have a different semantics; however, they seem to have identical internal structure.

This study considers the analysis of cardinals since ordinals behave like any regular adjectives in SA, which show full GNCD agreement with their nominal heads. Many of the above-mentioned studies discuss GNCD agreement in Arabic NPs by positing left-node and right-node raising, which is a problem for any compositional analysis of numeral expressions. In the context of LFG, there are no such propositions of raising; therefore, it is the most appropriate theory for accounting for agreement and agreement mismatches in Arabic NPs. The present study thus focuses on cardinals and their agreement mismatches with their nominals in the same NP within the LFG framework. The following sub-sections illustrate the nature of numerals within NPs. 3.1.1 Simple numerals 3.1.1.1 Numerals ‘1’ and ‘2. Numerals for ‘1’ and ‘2’ are adjective-like elements. They behave like ordinals. Unlike the numerals from ‘3’ and up, they show full GNCD agreement with their head nominals. In SA, these two numerals are redundantly interpreted. Whenever they modify their head nominals, they express number emphasis. The numeral ‘2’ is not productive in numeral-noun phrases. (10) a. b. c. d.

kita:b-u-n book-MASC-SG-NOM-IND “a (one) book” risa:l-at-u-n letter- FEM-SG-NOM-IND “a (one) letter” kita:b-a:n-i book--MASC-DU-NOM-IND “(two) books” risa:l-at-a:n-i letter- FEM-DU-NOM-IND “(two) letters”

wa:ħid-u-n one- MASC-SG-NOM-IND wa:ħid-at-u-n one- FEM-SG-NOM-IND Ɂiθna:n-i two-MASC-DU-NOM-IND Ɂiθnat-a:n-i two-FEM-DU-NOM-IND



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Example (10) shows that numerals ‘1’ and ‘2’ follow their modified nominals and behave like any other ordinals or adjectives in SA. 3.1.1.2 Numerals ‘3 – 10’. These cardinals represent a very intricate behavior for GNCD agreement. They express agreement mismatches, the focus of the present study. As for gender agreement, these numeral expressions show what is termed in syntax gender ‘polarity’ or ‘polarization’. According to this polarization process, these cardinals take the FEM form if the nominal is MASC and the MASC form if the nominal is FEM. As for case agreement, they mismatch case with their modified nominals. Lecarme (2002:110) points out that “the concept of polarity, as a principle of grammar, is hardly plausible, and that a more articulate account is required”. She is right in her approach to polarity since she adopts “a purely syntactic approach to word formation” (ibid.). The present paper proves that this hard plausibility of the concept of polarity is not true if it is handled within the agreement tenets of LFG. Numerals ‘3-10’ show gender mismatches with their counted nominals. Because of polarity, they take the opposite gender of the nominals they are in construction with. Thus, numerals with a FEM ending are used with MASC nominals, as shown in (11a-b). Conversely, numerals with a MASC ending are used with FEM nouns, as illustrated in (11c-d). This gender mismatch is applied across-the-board with human and non-human plural nouns. (11) a. b. c. d.

xams-at-u five-FEM-NOM “five men” θala:θ-at-u three-FEM-NOM “three pens” xams-u five-MASC-NOM “five (female) students” θala:θ-u three-MASC-NOM “three magazines”

rija:l-in men-MASC.PL-GEN-IND Ɂaqla:m-in pens-MASC.PL-GEN-IND ṭa:liba:t-in students-FEM.PL-GEN-IND majall-a:t-in magazines-FEM.PL-GEN-IND

Numeral ‘8’ has a special status. When it is used with MASC counted nominals, it is fully inflected for Case since the FEM affix {-at} should be attached to it. If it is used with FEM counted nouns, it does not fully inflect for Case. Instead, it is parsed as a ‘defective’ noun (Matrajy 2000:550). Examples (12) and (13) illustrate these facts respectively. (12) Numeral ‘8’ with MASC nominals: a. ša:had-tu θama:niy-at-a watched-1STP.SG eight-FEM-ACC “I watched eight films.”

?afla:m-in films-MASC.PL-GEN-IND

(ACC Case)

22 b. c.

KAMEL A. ELSAADANY

taħadaθ-tu Ɂila: θama:niy-at-i ṭulla:b-in (GEN Case) talked-1STP.SG to eight-FEM-GEN students-MASC.PL-GEN “I talked to eight (male) students.” ja:?-a θama:niy-at-u came.PAST-3RDP.MASC-SG eight-FEM-NOM ṭulla:b-in (NOM Case) students-MASC.PL-GEN-IND “Eight (male) students came.”

(13) Numeral ‘8’ with FEM nominals: a. ša:had-tu θama:niy-a bana:t-in (ACC Case) watched-1ST.P.SG eight-MASC-ACC girls-FEM.PL-GEN “I watched eight girls.” b. taħadaθ-tu Ɂila: θama:ni: ṭaliba:t-in (GEN Case) talked-1ST.P.SG to eight-MASC-GEN students-FEM.PL-GEN “I talked to eight students.” c. ja:?-a θama:ni: came.PAST-3RD.P.MASC-SG eight-MASC-NOM ṭaliba:t-in (NOM Case) students-FEM.PL-GEN “Eight students came.” d. ša:had-tu θama:niy-a min al-bana:t-i (ACC Case) watched-1ST.P.SG eight-MASC-ACC of the girls-FEM.PL-GEN “I watched eight of the girls.” e. taħadaθ-tu Ɂila: ṭaliba:t-in talked-1ST.P.SG to students-FEM.PL-GEN θama:n-in (GEN Case) eight-MASC-GEN “I talked to eight (female) students.” f. ja:Ɂat ṭaliba:t-un came.PAST-3RD.P.FEN-SG students-FEM.PL-NOM θama:n-in (NOM Case) eight-MASC-GEN “Eight (female) students came.”

As (13) shows, when the numeral for “eight” is used before FEM nominals in the Construct State, it keeps its final /-y/. However, it takes a case vowel (/a/) only in the ACC case, taking nothing in the NOM and GEN cases. When not in the Construct State, the /-y/ disappears in the NOM and GEN cases, and remains only in the ACC case. 3.2 Compound/complex numerals A compound/complex numeral is the one that is used with the numeral ‘10’. It consists of two numerals. Its counted nominal is always SG and ACC. Numerals ‘11’ and ‘12’ have their own formation rules of agreement that are similar to numerals ‘1’ and ‘2’ and to other Arabic adjectives. Numerals ‘13-19’ also have their own polarity agreement system.



AN LFG ACCOUNT OF AGREEMENT MISMATCHES

23

3.2.1 Numerals ‘11 – 12’. Numerals ‘11’ and ‘12’ agree with their counted nominals in gender. They do not show any gender polarity as do numerals ‘3-10’ or the units of numerals ‘13-19’. (14) a. b. (15) a. b. c. d.

Ɂaħad-a one-MASC.SG-ACC “11 books” Ɂiħd-a: one-FEM.SG-ACC “11 magazines” Ɂiθna: two-MASC.DU-ACC “12 books” Ɂiθnata: two-FEM.DU-ACC “12 magazines” qaraɁ-tu read-1ST.P.SG-PAST ʕašar-a ten-MASC-ACC “I read 12 books.” qaraɁ-tu read-1STP.SG-PAST ʕašrat-a ten-FEM-ACC “I read 12 magazines.”

ʕašar-a ten-MASC-ACC

kita:b-an book-MASC.SG-ACC

ʕašrat-a ten-FEM-ACC

majallat-an magazine-FEM.SG-ACC

ʕašar-a ten-MASC-ACC

kita:b-an book-MASC.SG-ACC

ʕašrat-a ten-FEM-ACC

majallat-an magazine-FEM.SG-ACC

Ɂiθnay two-DU-ACC kita:b-an book-MASC.SG-ACC Ɂθnatay two-FEM.DU-ACC majallat-an magazine-FEM.SG-ACC

The forms Ɂiθna: and Ɂiθnata: are expressed in the NOM case (15a-b). Ɂiθnay, and Ɂiθnatay are expressed in the ACC case (15c-d), which are the same forms if they are expressed in the GEN case. They are treated as any other dual nominals in Arabic. 3.2.2 Numerals ‘13-19’. In these numerals, the units in ‘13-19’ show gender mismatch with their counted nominals while their tens ‘10s’, have the same gender of the counted nominal contained within the same NP. These numerals are always ACC and their counted nominals always have the features SG and ACC. Again, the units in numerals ‘13-19’ express gender polarity along with their counted nominals. (16) a. b. c.

θala:θat-a ʕašar-a three-FEM-ACC en-MASC-ACC “13 (male) tourists” tisʕat-a ʕašar-a nine-FEM-ACC en-MASC-ACC “19 (male) books” θala:θ-a ʕašrat-a three-MASC-ACC ten-FEM-ACC “13 (female) tourists”

sa:Ɂiħ-an tourist-MASC-ACC-IND kita:b-an book-MASC.SG-ACC-IND sa:Ɂiħat-an tourist-FEM.SG-ACC-IND

24 d.

KAMEL A. ELSAADANY

tisʕ-a ʕašrat-a nine-MASC-ACC ten-FEM-ACC “19 (female) magazines”

majallat-an magazine-FEM.SG-ACC-IND

The tens in these numerals do not show gender polarity with their counted nominals. 3.2.3 Tenfold numeral ‘20-90’. Tenfold numerals have invariant forms with their MASC and FEM counted nominals, which are always SG and ACC. As for their Case, they behave like sound plural nouns in Arabic where the suffixal morpheme {-u:na} is affixed to them in the NOM case and the suffixal morpheme {-i:na} is affixed for both the ACC and GEN cases. (17) a. b.

tisʕu:na ninety-NOM “ninety books” tisʕi:na ninety-ACC/GEN “ninety magazines”

kita:b-an book-MASC.SG-ACC-IND majallat-an magazine-FEM.SG-ACC-IND

3.2.4 Conjoined numerals ‘21-99’. The first units in ‘21-99’ of conjoined numerals are treated as SG numbers and are normally inflected for the NOM, ACC, or GEN case according to their positions in their NP constructions. The tens in ‘20-90’ of the conjoined numeral remain invariant for gender agreement and their counted nominals are always SG and ACC (Oblique case), as illustrated in (17) above and (18) below. (18) a. b.

najaħa succeeded-PAST.3RDP.MASC wa-ʕišr-u:na and-twenty-NOM “21 (male) pupils succeeded.” ša:had-tu saw-PAST-1STP.SG wa-θama:n-i:na and-eighty-ACC “I saw 84 girls.”

wa:ħid-un one-MASC.SG.NOM tillmi:∂-an pupil-MASC.SG-ACC.IND Ɂarbaʕat-an four-FEM.ACC bint-an girl-FEM.SG-ACC-IND

3.2.5 Hundred and thousand numerals. When hundreds, thousands, millions, billions, trillions …etc. are used with counted nominals in an NP, their counted nominals are always SG and inflected only for GEN case (see (19) below). If they are combined with other numerals, then the conjunction wa- “and” is used before the number whose counted nominal should be SG, ACC and IND (see (20) below).



AN LFG ACCOUNT OF AGREEMENT MISMATCHES

(19) a. b.

miɁat-u rajul-in 100-NOM man-GEN-IND “100 men and women” Ɂalf-u walad-in 1000-NOM boy-GEN.IND “1000 boys and girls”

wa- miɁat-u and-100-NOM

ɁimraɁat-in woman-GEN-IND

wa-Ɂalf-u and-1000-NOM

bint-in girl-GEN-IND

(20) a. b.

sabʕ-u miɁat-in seven-MASC-NOM 100-GEN ṭa:lib-an student-MASC.SG.ACC.IND “770 (male) students” θala:θat-u Ɂala:f-in three-FEM-NOM thousand-PL-GEN.IND wa-θama:niyat-u buyu:t-in and-eight-NOM house-MASC.PL-GEN-IND “3208 houses”

25

wa-sabʕ-u:na and-seventy-NOM

wa-miɁata:ni and-200-DU-NOM

The next section presents an analysis of agreement mismatches between numerals and their nominals within NP constructions. This analysis accounts for the Arabic NPs containing numerals presented above. 4. Data Analysis 4.1 INDEX versus CONCORD 4.1.1 Index and Concord agreement features. In recent work within LFG and HeadDriven Phrase Structure Grammar-HPSG (King & Dalrymple 2004, Wechsler & Zlatić 2003, 2000, Kathol 1999, Pollard & Sag 1994), there is a distinction between two sets of syntactic agreement features, INDEX and CONCORD. According to Wechsler & Zlatić (2003), the set of CONCORD features are closely related to morphological classes whereas the set of INDEX features are related to the semantics. Wechsler & Zlatić (2003) also point out that both CONCORD and INDEX sets of features are syntactic and cannot be reduced to morphological or semantic features. Following Pollard & Sag (1994), the CONCORD features are closely related to NP-internal concord between nouns, determiners and adjectives whereas INDEX features are typically relevant for subject-verb agreement and for pronominal anaphora. Wechsler & Zlatić (2003:51) provide the following instance of mismatch between CONCORD and INDEX for the Serbian/Croatian noun deca “children”: (21) ta dobra that.FEM.SG good.FEM.SG “Those good children came.”

deca children

dolaze came.3RDPL

Morphosyntactically, (21) shows that the nominal deca “children” has SG CONCORD features as reflected by the FEM.SG determiner and adjective. Semantically, the same nominal refers to more than one, thus, it has the PL INDEX features which are reflected on the plural agreement on the verb dolaze “came.”

26

KAMEL A. ELSAADANY

In LFG, Mittendorf & Sadler (2005) comment on King & Dalrymple (2004) by saying that they “make a related but nonetheless distinct proposal to distinguish between CONCORD and INDEX features associated with nominal f-structures.” They also point out that the major difference for King & Dalrymple is that “INDEX is a non-distributive feature while CONCORD is a distributive feature.” King & Dalrymple (2004) tested their notions of CONCORD and INDEX features on cases of coordinate structures. According to their proposal, for any ‘distributive’ feature that holds for a certain set, this same feature will hold for every member of the set. As for the ‘non-distributive’ feature, it will hold of the whole set and not of the individual members of the set. Mittendorf & Sadler (2005) cite Dalrymple & Kaplan’s (2000) formulation of the difference between distributive and nondistributive features of CONCORD and INDEX in (22) as follows. (22) For any distributive property P and set s, P(s) iff ∀ f є s.P(f ). For any non-distributive property P and set s, P(s) iff P holds of s itself. (Dalrymple & Kaplan 2000)

King & Dalrymple (2004) notice that some languages have their own specific rules as to whether they allow singular and/or plural determiners to combine with a coordination of singular nouns. Nikolaeva (2005:222) supports the distinction between INDEX and CONCORD features and argues that

INDEX features are grammaticalizations of the constraints on anchoring in a discourse and include Person, Number and Gender. In contrast, CONCORD relation is simply a sharing of morphosyntactic features between certain designated elements. For example, adjective-noun concord follows from the fact that subcategorization of a noun specifies that its modifier’s features must match its own features. CONCORD features are Case, Number and Gender. Person is not involved because it is not dependent on local syntactic relations, but has a purely pronominal motivation.

One of Nikolaeva (2005)’s implications in her distinction between INDEX and CONCORD agreement features is that the feature Person is not listed among CONCORD features; consequently, no languages list Person under their CONCORD features. This is a strong generalization and needs further studies to prove it. 4.1.2 Cardinals and Nouns: An Index/Concord Mismatch. As mentioned in this paper, agreement mismatches in GNC provide an intricate challenge to various grammatical theories. The distinction between INDEX and CONCORD agreement features presents a viable solution to the SA data in which the f-structure of the entire NP is headed not by the numeral but by N, the head of NP. In such a case, the head is to be treated as a modifier to the head noun of the whole NP construction. In such an approach, the f-structure of an adjectivally modified NP and a cardinally or numerally modified NP will be structurally similar except in their agreement features and values.



AN LFG ACCOUNT OF AGREEMENT MISMATCHES

27

The basic idea in Arabic is that numeral-nominal combinations project f-structures for these NPs with INDEX-CONCORD mismatches. In such cases, the numeral modifier contributes the INDEX NUM and the nominal contributes the CONCORD NUM. Consider the following f-structure of a simple NP such as (23). (23) a. rajul-un man-MASC.SG-NOM “a wise man”

ʕaaqil-un wise-MASC.SG-NOM

In (23), the nominal specifies a SG number value for INDEX and CONCORD. The f-structure of an NP containing a cardinal or numeral modifier is structurally similar to that in (23). The only difference is on the values of INDEX and CONCORD NUM. Prenominal cardinals 3-10 and the units in 13-19 show ‘polar’ behavior with their head nominals. Accordingly, FEM human and non-human nominals take MASC cardinals whereas MASC human and non-human nominals take FEM cardinals. Thus these cardinals instantiate polar gender requirements on heads which they modify. For example, the morphologically FEM cardinal sabʕa-t “seven” would have the following LFG lexical entry: (24) sabʕ-at

b. f-structure

((ADJ є↑) ((ADJ є↑) (↑PRED )

CONC GEND) =c CONC NUM) =c = SEVEN PRED INDEX CONC ADJ

MASC PL

MAN [ NUM [NUM {[PRED

SG ] SG ] WISE ]}

This ‘polar’ behavior in SA NPs exemplifies a mismatch behavior between morphological form and syntactic CONC feature. Additionally, prenominal cardinals 3-10 subcategorize for GEN and IND complements. Examples (12, 13, and 16) illustrate this behavior. Example (11a,c) is repeated as (25a, b) for convenience. (25) a. b.



xams-at-u five-FEM-NOM “five men” xams-u five-MASC-NOM “five (female) students”

rija:l-in men-MASC.PL-GEN-IND ṭa:liba:t-in students-FEM.PL-GEN-IND

The f-structure for prenominal cardinals in (25) is tentatively shown in (26).

28

KAMEL A. ELSAADANY

(26) CASE PRED

NOM FIVE < OBJ > PRED CASE DET

MEN GEN IND

OBJ INDEX

PERS 3 NUM PL GEN FEM

CONC

PERS 3 NUM PL GEN FEM

According to the polar concord behavior in SA, a (morphologically) FEM numeral requires its subcategorized complement to be MASC and vice versa. Example (27) illustrates this point. (27) a. xams-at-u b. xams-u

(↑PRED ) = FIVE < OBJ > (↑CASE ) = (NOM) (↑OBJ CASE ) =c GEN (↑OBJ DET ) =c IND (↑OBJ CONC GEND ) =c MASC (↑OBJ CONC NUM ) =c PL (↑PRED ) = FIVE < OBJ > (↑CASE ) = (NOM) (↑OBJ CASE ) =c GEN (↑OBJ DET ) =c IND (↑OBJ CONC GEND ) =c FEM (↑OBJ CONC NUM ) =c PL

The distinction between INDEX and CONCORD features in LFG offers a solution to such intricate Arabic NPs that contain cardinals as prenominal modifiers as shown above. It also accounts for those NPs which contain cardinals used as postnominal modifiers that agree with the head nominal in Case and Definiteness but not in Gender. Still, postnominal cardinals show polar gender agreement with their head nominals. This behavior is true in both human and non-human plural nouns as illustrated in (28). (28) a. b.

Ɂal-Ɂawla:d-u the-boys.MASC.PL-NOM “the six boys” Ɂal-bana:t-u the-girls.FEM.PL-NOM “the six girls”

Ɂal-sitta-t-u the-six.FEM-NOM Ɂal-sitt-u the-six-MASC-NOM

c. d.

AN LFG ACCOUNT OF AGREEMENT MISMATCHES

Ɂal-kutub-u the-books.MASC.PL-NOM “the six books” Ɂal-majalla:t-u the-magazines.FEM.PL-NOM “the six magazines”

29

Ɂal-sitta-t-u the-six.FEM-NOM Ɂal-sitt-u the-six-MASC-NOM

The basic idea here is that in the f-structure of an NP that contains a numeral modifier, the numeral contributes the INDEX NUM value while the nominal contributes the CONC NUM, CASE and DEF values. This analysis shows that cardinals, whether they are used as prenominal or postnominal modifiers, show agreement mismatches with their head nominals. The analysis proposed in this section which considers the nominal, but not the cardinal, as the head of the NP construction, is further supported by the behavior of cardinals ‘13-19’. As illustrated in section 3, the units of these cardinals show polar behavior while the tens of the same cardinals do not show this polarity. The tens agree in GENDER with their head nominals as shown in (16a, c), repeated here as (29a, b) for convenience. (29) a. b.

θala:θ-at-a three-FEM-ACC “13 (male) tourists” θala:θ-a three-MASC-ACC “13 (female) tourists”

ʕašar-a ten-MAC-ACC

sa:Ɂiħ-an tourist-MASC-ACC-IND

ʕašrat-a ten-FEM-ACC

sa:Ɂiħat-an tourist-FEM.SG-ACC-IND

Such analysis to Arabic cardinals and their polar behavior in terms of INDEX and CONCORD features solves this intricate agreement conundrum. 4.2 The two-tier f-structure approach In order to account for agreement mismatches illustrated in section 3 above, another possible approach to agreement involves taking the numeral as the head of NP construction. Accordingly, the cardinal number contained in simple numeral construction, i.e. cardinals from 3-10, subcategorizes for a (PL and GEN) nominal complement. The AP within such NP structures is in construction with the nominal complement and thus shows (PL and GEN) agreement features. In a two-tier f-structure of such numeral NP, the nominal in NP is in construction with the numeral head while the AP in that NP is in construction with the nominal itself. A sentence such as (30) would have the f-structure in (31): haɁula:Ɂi “these” contributes features to the SPEC function of the numeral; however, the AP jududin “new” provides an ADJ function to the f-structure of the nominal ṭulla:b-in “students.” (30) haɁula:Ɂi sabʕ-at-u ṭulla:b-in these-PL seven-FEM-NOM students.MASC.PL-GEN “These are seven new students.”

judud-in new.MASC.PL-GEN

30 (31)

KAMEL A. ELSAADANY CASE PRED NUM

NOM sabʕ-at PL

SPEC

DEIX DEF

DIST -



PRED CASE DET

ṭullaab-in GEN IND

OBJ INDEX

PERS NUM GEND

3 PL MASC

CONC

PERS NUM GEND

3 PL MASC



{ [PRED

judud-in ] }

ADJ

The cardinal number defines the number of its f-structure as PL, and requires its argument, taken here to be an OBJ, to be PL in number and GEN in Case. Cardinal numbers in simple numeral NPs, such as sabʕ-at “seven” shown in (32), thus require their argument to be in different gender and case from themselves. (32) sabʕ-at

(↑PRED ) = “SEVEN ” (↑NUM ) = PL (↑OBJ GEND ) =c MASC (↑OBJ NUM ) =c PL (↑OBJ CASE ) =c GEN

The following c-structure can be motivated along the lines of (33) or (34) in which Det is a projecting functional category and the demonstrative (Dem) is a structural specifier (SPEC) of the Det head.



31

AN LFG ACCOUNT OF AGREEMENT MISMATCHES (33)

DP

(↑SPEC ) =↓ Dem

D’ (↑SPEC ) =↓ Det

­↑=↓ Num’ ­↑=↓ Num

(↑OBJ ) =↓ NP

↑=↓ ↓ є (↑ADJ) N AP a) haɁula:Ɂi Ɂal sabʕ-at-u ṭulla:b-i Ɂal-judud-i b) haɁula:Ɂi Ø sabʕ-at-u Ɂal-ṭulla:b-i Ɂal-judud-i

(34)

­

NumP

(↑SPEC ) =↓ Det

­↑=↓ Num’ ­↑=↓ Num

(↑OBJ) =↓ NP ­↑=↓ N

Ɂal-

sabʕat-u

(↑SPEC ) =↓ Dem

Ɂal-ṭulla:b-i

↓ є (↑ADJ) AP

Ɂal-judud-i

haɁula:Ɂi

This data analysis of numeral NPs in Arabic captures the agreement facts and agreement mismatches adequately. As shown in this analysis, there is no syntactic movement involved in LFG as other transformational and generative frameworks require for accounting for such agreement mismatches within NPs that contain numeral expressions.

32

KAMEL A. ELSAADANY

5. Discussion The two analyses proposed in section 4 present two different approaches to account for agreement mismatches that arise in SA NPs containing a numeral. Although they account for the data presented in this current study, they depend on different syntactic intuitions. In this section, the two approaches are discussed to see which approach is the most suitable one in accounting for agreement mismatches in Arabic NPs. 5.1 Other agreement mismatches The distinction between INDEX and CONCORD features within LFG can be motivated by accounting for other agreement mismatches and may thus be independently needed in the grammar. In Arabic NPs, some prenominal quantifiers show morphosyntactic polarity. One such quantifier is biḍʕ-un “some” which expresses, like numerals, polarity mismatch with its nominal head. If the quantified nominal with which the quantifier agrees is MASC, the quantifier inflects in FEM and if the quantified nominal the quantifier agrees with is FEM, the quantifier inflects in MASC. In (35), the lexical item Ɂawla:d-in “boys” is MASC and the quantifier biḍʕ-at-u “some” has the FEM feature. In contrast, bana:t-in “girls” in (36) is FEM and the quantifier biḍʕ-u “some” has the MASC feature. (35) biḍʕ-at-u some-FEM-NOM “some boys”

ʕawla:d-in boys-MASC.PL-GEN

(36) biḍʕ-u some-MASC-NOM “some girls”

bana:t-in girls-FEM.PL-GEN

The f-structure for (35) is shown in (37). (37) PRED

CASE NOM SOME

PRED BOYS CASE GEN OBL CONC



PERS NUM GEND

The lexical structure for biḍʕ-at-u is presented in (38).

3 PL MASC



AN LFG ACCOUNT OF AGREEMENT MISMATCHES

(38) biḍʕ-at-u

33

(↑PRED ) = SOME ((↑index ) = (↑OBL INDEX )) (↑OBL CONC GEN ) =c MASC (↑OBL CONC NUM ) =c PL (↑OBL CONC DET ) =c IND

Following the INDEX/CONCORD analysis, the polar behavior of biḍʕ-at-u “some” is correctly accounted for. The quantifier behaves like any simple Arabic numeral from 3-9. With complex numerals, biḍʕ-u “some” also shows polar behavior like the units in 13-19 as shown in (39). (39) a. b.

biḍʕ-u some-MASC-NOM “some ten ships” biḍʕ-at-u some-FEM-NOM “some ten boats”

ʕašra-ta ten-FEM-ACC

safi:n-at-an ship-FEM.SG-ACC

ʕašar-a ten-MASC-ACC

qa:rib-an boat-MASC.SG-ACC

Thus quantifiers such as biḍʕ-a “some” behave like simple or low numerals which show polar agreement mismatches with their nominal heads. This argument is in favor of the INDEX/CONCORD analysis and extends to account for such data and others as illustrated below. In SA, if the numeral is used postnominally, then it will behave like an adjectival modifier that agrees with its nominal head in Case and Definiteness. As for the gender feature, the postnominal numeral can show either a polar behavior or full gender agreement with its nominal head. This behavior is shown in (40). (40) a. b. c. d.

rija:l-un θala:θ-at-un / men-MASC.PL-NOM-IND three-FEM-NOM-IND / θala:θ-un three-MASC-NOM-IND “three men” rija:l-un Ɂarbaʕata men-MASC.PL-NOM-IND four-FEM-ACC-IND ʕašra / Ɂarbaʕa ʕašarata ten-MASC-ACC-IND / four-MASC-ACC-IND ten-FEM-ACC-IND “fourteen men” bana:t-un sabʕ-un girls-FEM-NOM-IND seven-MASC-NOM-IND / sabʕat-un / seven-FEM-NOM-IND “seven girls” bana:t-un Ɂarbaʕa girls-FEM-NOM-IND four-MASC-ACC-IND ʕašrata / Ɂarbaʕata ʕašra ten-FEM-ACC-IND / four-FEM-ACC-IND ten-MASC-ACC-IND “fourteen girls”

34

KAMEL A. ELSAADANY

e.

majalla:t-un tisʕ-at-un magazines-FEM.PL-NOM-IND nine-FEM-NOM-IND tisʕ-un nine-MASC-NOM-IND “nine magazines”

/ /

There are some potential difficulties for the two-tier approach if it is adopted. In Section 4.2, the c-structures associated with the two-tier analysis have the numeral as sister to the NP which corresponds to the object of the numeral as shown in (41), which is the relevant sub-tree of (33) and (34) mentioned above. An essential property of such structures, as fully shown in (34), is that the demonstrative is outside of the NP OBJ, whether this demonstrative is used prenominally or postnominally. This NP-external position ensures that whenever a numeral is present, this demonstrative contributes its agreement features to the f-structure of the numeral rather than to the f-structure of the nominal:

(41)

Num’ ­↑=↓ Num

(↑OBJ) =↓ NP ­↑=↓ N

sabʕat-u

Ɂal-ṭulla:b-i

↓ є (↑ADJ) AP

Ɂal-judud-i

(42) and (43) provide further examples that support the fact that the demonstrative contributes its agreement constraints to the f-structure of the numeral rather than to the f-structure of the nominal itself. (42) a. b.

haɁula:Ɂi Ɂal-ṭulla:b-i Ɂal-judud-i these-PL-OBL the-students-MASC.PL-GEN new-MASC.PL-GEN “these new (male) students” Ɂal-ṭulla:b-i Ɂal-judud-i haɁula:Ɂi the-students-MASC.PL-GEN new-MASC.PL-GEN these-PL-OBL “these new (male) students”

(43) a.

haɁula:Ɂi Ɂal-xamsa-ta ʕašara these-PL-OBL the-five-FEM-ACC ten-MASC-ACC ṭa:lib-an Ɂal-judud-i student-MASC.SG-ACC-IND new-MASC.PL-GEN-DEF “these fifteen new (male) students”

b.

35

AN LFG ACCOUNT OF AGREEMENT MISMATCHES

Ɂal-xamsa-ta ʕašara ṭa:lib-an the-five-FEM-ACC ten-MASC-ACC student-MASC.SG-ACC-IND ?al-judud-i ha?ula:?i new-MASC.PL-GEN-DEF these-PL-OBL “these fifteen new (male) students”

(42) is a regular NP that does not contain a numeral. Thus the AP modifier and the Dem, haɁula:Ɂi, in the [SPEC] position of NP agree with the nominal head, Ɂal-ṭulla:b-i “students.” Both the Dem and AP modifier, Ɂal-judud-i, in (42) contribute their agreement features to the f-structure of the nominal. In contrast, (43) contains a numeral as the sister to the NP which is the OBJ of the numeral according to the c-structure in the two-tier analysis. The Dem, haɁula:Ɂi “these,” is outside of the NP OBJ, precedes the numeral in (43a), and follows the AP modifier of NP in (43b). The demonstrative in (43) contributes its agreement constraints to the c-structure of the numeral rather than to the f-structure of the nominal because the nominal head in (43b), ṭa:lib-an “student,” is a SG-ACC noun which should select a SG Dem not a PL Dem as in the case of (43). This is again a real problem that the two-tier approach cannot account for. Another intricate problem for the two-tier analysis to account for consists in the AP modifier of the NP in (43), Ɂal-judud-i “new,” which has the features [PL-GEN-DEF]. According to SA grammar, AP modifiers should have the same agreement features as their nominal heads, a fact that seems violated in (43). Following grammar, the AP Ɂal-judud-i “new” should then have the features [SGACC-IND] of its head noun. The two-tier approach cannot account for such a problem in its c-structure. Such problems can be accounted for by adopting the INDEX / CONCORD analysis which extends more gracefully to this problem and many others. There are other potential problems that the two-tier approach could not solve. For example, postnominal adjectival modifiers in SA NPs can intervene between the head N and any complements or adjuncts as shown in (44): (44) kita:b-un book-MASC.SG-NOM-IND “a new book about Egypt”

jadi:d-un new-MASC.SG-NOM-IND

ʕan about

miṣr Egypt

Such adjectival modifiers can also precede the NP possessor, which in turn precedes any complements or adjuncts. Typical examples can be found in the Construct State, idafa construction, in Arabic: (45) naja:ħ-u Ɂal-ṭa:lib-i success-SG-NOM the-student-MASC.SG-GEN-IND fi: Ɂal-Ɂimtiħa:n-i in the-exam-SG-GEN-DEF “the student’s success in the exam”

36

KAMEL A. ELSAADANY

Again the proposed two-tier analysis is unable to account for such data in (44-45) unless proposing a flat structure within NP as shown in (46):

(46)

NP

↑­ =↓ N kita:b-un

↓ є (↑ADJ) AP jadi:d-un

↓ є (↑ADJ) AP ʕan miṣr

Such flat c-structures are syntactically and structurally problematic and are not preferable in the SA grammar, a fact which is not the focus of the present study. They are also problematic for the two-tier analysis. The NP in (47) provides a challenging problem for the same approach if adopted in accounting for agreement mismatches. (47) Ɂal-xamsa-ta ʕašara ṭa:lib-an the-five-FEM-ACC ten-MASC-ACC student-MASC.SG-ACC-IND Ɂal-judud-i haɁula:Ɂi min miṣr new-MASC.PL-GEN-DEF these-PL-OBL from Egypt “these fifteen new students from Egypt”

The demonstrative haɁula:Ɂi “these” in (47) intervenes between AP and PP adjuncts. If we assume that this position of the Dem falls within NP, then the Dem which contributes its agreement features to the plurality of numerals in the two-tier analysis would incorrectly contribute its agreement features to the nominal head rather than the numeral. Accordingly, the two-tier analysis founders. Another alternative approach to solving such a problem is to consider the nominal complements and adjuncts extraposed out of NP and falling under a higher projection such as DP or NumP as illustrated in (33) and (34) above. Such an assumption predicts that these complements and adjuncts will be associated with a disjunctive f-description to reflect the presence of the numeral. Once more such approaches are not appealing. Such phenomena are correctly accounted for within the INDEX/CONCORD distinction as shown earlier.

6. Conclusion and Recommendations 6.1 Conclusion This study investigates agreement mismatches in SA NPs that contain numerals. It suggests two routes to account for such agreement mismatches within LFG framework: the distinction between INDEX and CONCORD features and the twotier approach. It proves that the INDEX versus CONCORD analysis has advantage



AN LFG ACCOUNT OF AGREEMENT MISMATCHES

37

over the two-tier analysis in accounting for agreement/number mismatches in SA. It has the potential for accounting for the behavior of a lot of data in SA and may extend more gracefully to account for and capture the behavior of other exceptional or idiosyncratic NPs. On the other hand, the two-tier analysis can account for agreement mismatches in Arabic NPs, yet the study proves that it is less appealing in accounting for the data. This approach also has a lot of potential difficulties when more complex NPs are considered and analyzed. It lacks the generalization that can be obtained from the INDEX and CONCORD approach. As a result, this current study supports the use and implementation of the INDEX and CONCORD analysis in accounting for agreement and/or agreement mismatches in SA NPs that contain numerals. Still, this approach should be examined and applied to other SA data before it can be generalized or included in Arabic grammar. 6.2 Recommendations The following recommendations and studying points stem from the current paper. (1) The concept of CONCORD should be applied on more Arabic structures that show agreement features such as Ɂal-tawki:d “emphasis,” Ɂal-ʕaṭf “coordination/ conjunction,” and Ɂal-badal “substitution/replacement.” (2) More LFG analysis should be conducted to show if the CONCORD features are the same as ADJ features in Arabic and other languages. (3) Scholars should thoroughly study the ‘polarity’ nature of gender agreement in Arabic, particularly in non-human plural nouns, which take default FEM-SG adjectives, quantifiers, and modifiers. This generally accepted rule in Arabic grammar needs further study. For example, Al-Rajhi (n.d.: 382) points out that if the nominal head is a non-human plural noun, then its modifier/adjective/quantifier may be FEM-SG, sound FEM-PL, or broken FEM-PL. He has mentioned the following example to illustrate this point. (48) a. b. c.

haaðihi buyu:t-un this-FEM-SG houses-MASC-PL-NOM-IND “These are high houses.” haaðihi buyu:t-un this-FEM-SG houses-MASC-PL-NOM-IND “These are high houses.” haaðihi buyu:t-un this-FEM-SG houses-MASC-PL-NOM-IND “These are high houses.”

ʕa:liyat-un high-FEM-SG-NOM-IND ʕa:liya:t-un high-FEM-PL-NOM-IND ʕawa:l-in high-MASC-PL-GEN-IND

Examples (48b, c), which are grammatically attested, should be considered from an LFG framework. (4) Scholars and students of Arabic should also try to account for the tamyi:z after the numerals (11-99) which is always singular and accusative; it can also be plural, such as (49b).

38 (49) a. b.

KAMEL A. ELSAADANY

najaħa Ɂarbaʕata ʕašra succeeded-3rdP.MASC-SG four-FEM-ACC ten-MASC-ACC ṭa:lib-an mujtahid-an students-MASC-SG-ACC hardworking-MASC-SG-ACC “Fourteen hardworking (male) students succeeded.” najaħa Ɂarbaʕata ʕašra succeeded-3rdP.MASC-SG four-FEM-ACC ten-MASC-ACC ṭa:lib-an mujtahid-i:na students-MASC-SG-ACC hardworking-MASC-PL-ACC “Fourteen hardworking (male) students succeeded.”

Such examples should be accounted for by further studies. (5) As shown in this study, the LFG theory of grammar is the most suitable framework to teach Arabic grammar and numerals, which are considered a very problematic area for Arabs in general and for non-Arabs in particular.

ADJ ACC AP(s) CONC DEF DEM Det DU FEM GEN GEND GNCD IND LFG MASC SA N NOM NPs NUM NumP OBL OBJ P PAST PL PRED

Abbreviations = Adjective = Accusative Case = Adjective Phrase(s) = Concord = Definite = Demonstrative = Determiner = Dual = Feminine = Genitive Case = Gender = Gender, Number, Case & Definiteness = Indefinite = Lexical Functional Grammar = Masculine = Standard Arabic = Noun / Nominal = Nominative Case = Noun Phrases = Number = Number Phrase = Oblique = Object = Person = Past Tense = Plural = Predicate



SG SPEC 1ST 2ND 3RD = c

AN LFG ACCOUNT OF AGREEMENT MISMATCHES

39

= Singular = Specifier = First Person = Second person = Third Person = Feature Checking: check f-structure for the presence of a feature. References

Abdul-Moneim, A. A. 1989. “Agreement in Standard Arabic Verbal Clauses”. International Journal of Islamic and Arabic Sciences 6:1.21-29. Abdul-Mutalib, Hamdy M. 1998. Ɂal-xulaasah fii ʕilm Ɂal-naħw [Synopsis of Syntax]. Cairo: Ibn Sina Library. Al-Rajhi, Abduh. N.d. Ɂal-taṭbiiq Ɂal-naħawi [Grammatical Application]. Alexandria: Dar Al-Maʕaarif Al-jaamiʕiyyah. Aoun, Joseph, Elabbas Benmamoun, & Dominique Sportiche. 1994. “Agreement, Word Order, and Conjunction in Some Varieties of Arabic”. Linguistic Inquiry 25.195-220. Avgustinova, Tania & Hans Uszkoreit. 2003. “Toward a Typology of Agreement Phenomena”. Texas Linguistics Forum, The Role of Agreement in Natural Language: TLS 5 Proceedings ed. by W. E. Griffin, 167-180. Austin: University of Texas. Benmamoun, Elabbas. 1992. Structural Conditions on Agreement. Proceedings of NELS 22, GLSA, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, 17-32. Benmamoun, Elabbas. 2000. “Agreement Asymmetries and the PF Interface”. Research in Afroasiatic Grammar ed. by J. Lecarme, J. Lowenstamm & U. Shlonsky, 23-40. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: Benjamins. (Also in S. Plock & A. Simpson 1996. SOAS Working Papers in Linguistics and Phonetics 6, 106-28. London: SOAS.) Bresnan, Joan. 1996. Lexical-Functional Syntax. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2001. Borer, Hagit. 1996. “The Construct in Review”. Studies in Afroasiatic Grammar, ed. by J. Lecarme, J. Lowenstamm & U. Shlonsky, 30-61. The Hague: Holland Academic Graphics. Corbett, Greville G. 2001. “Agreement: Terms and boundaries”. The Role of Agreement in Natural Language: Proceedings of the 2001 Texas Linguistic Society Conference 109-122. Dalrymple, Mary. 2001. Lexical Functional Grammar, Syntax and Semantics, vol. XXXIV. New York, NY: Academic Press. Dalrymple, Mary & Ronald M. Kaplan. 2000. “Feature Indeterminacy and Feature Resolution”. Language 76:4.759-798.

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Falk, Yehuda. 2001. Lexical-Functional Grammar: An introduction to parallel constraint-based syntax. Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications. Gawron, Jean M. 2002. “Two Kinds of Quantizers in DP”. Paper presented at LAS Annual Meeting, January 6. Halle, Morris. 1994. “The Morphology of Numeral Phrases”. Annual Workshop on Formal Approaches to Slavic Linguistics: The MIT Meeting, 1993, ed. by S. Avrutin, S. Franks & L. Progovac (Michigan Slavic Materials; 36), 178-215. Ann Arbor: Michigan Slavic Publications. Holes, Clive. 1995. Modern Arabic: Structures, functions and varieties. London: Longman. Hurford, James R. 1987. Language and Number: The emergence of a cognitive system. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Hurford, James R. 2001. “Languages Treat 1-4 Specially: Commentary on Stanislas Dehaene’s précis of the number sense. (Symposium on Numerical Cognition, special issue of) Mind and Language 16:1.69-75. On-line: http://www.ling. ed.ac.uk/~jim/dehaene.html Hurford, James R. 2003. “The Interaction between Numerals and Nouns”. Noun Phrase Structure in the Languages of Europe ed. by F. Flank, 561-620. New York: Walter de Gruyter. Ilias, Geoseph & Gerges Nasif. 1998. Ɂal-kaafii fii Ɂal-ṣarf wal-naħw wal-Ɂiʕraab [The Sufficient in Morphology, Syntax and Parsing]. Beirut: Dar Al-Elm LilMalayin. Ionin, Tania & Ora Matushansky. 2004. “The Non-existence, Syntax and Semantics of Numerals”. Ms. submitted to Natural Language and Linguistic Theory. Katamba, F. 1993. Morphology. London: Macmillan. Kathol, Andreas. 1999. “Agreement and the Syntax-Morphology Interface in HPSG”. Studies in Current Phrase Structure Grammar ed. by R. Levine & G. Green, 223-274. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. King, Tracy H. 2005. “Criticizing LFG”. Proceedings of LFG05 Conference, University of Bergen. On-line: CSLI Publications. http://csli-publications. stanford.edu/LFG/10/lfg05king.pdf King, Tracy H. & Mary Dalrymple. 2004. “Determiner Agreement and Noun Conjunction”. Journal of Linguistics 40:1.69-104. Kremers, Joost. 2000. A Recursive Linearization Approach to Arabic Noun Phrases. The Netherlands: University of Nijmegen. On-Line: http://user.unifrankfurt.de/~kremers/papers/pilot.pdf Krifka, Manfred. 1989. “Nominal Reference, Temporal Constitution and Quantification in Event Semantics”. Semantics and Contextual Expression ed. by R. Bartsch, J. van Benthem & P. van Emde Boas, 75-115. Dordrecht: Foris. Lapointe, Steven G. 1978. A Theory of Grammatical Agreement. New York & London: Garland Publishing.



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Lecarme, Jacqueline. 2002. “Gender ‘Polarity’: Theoretical aspects of Somali nominal morphology”. Many Morphologies ed. by P. Boucher, 109-141. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press. Matrajy, Mahmoud. 2000. fi-l-naħwa wa-taṭbiqaatih [On Syntax and Its Applications]. Beirut: Dar Al-Nahda Al-Arabiyya. Mittendorf, Ingo & Louisa Sadler. 2005. “Numerals, Nouns and Number in Welsh NPs”. Proceedings of the LFG05 Conference ed. by M. Butt & T.H. King, Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications On-line. http://csli-publications.stanford. edu/LFG/10/lfg05mittendorfsadler.pdf Moravcsik, E. A. 1978. “Agreement”. Universals of Human Language, ed. by J. H. Greenberg, vol. IV, 331-374. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Neidle, Carol. 1994/1996. “Lexical Functional Grammar”. The Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, 2147-2153. New York: Pergamon Press. Reprinted in Concise Encyclopedia of Syntactic Theories 1996 ed. by K. Brown J. Miller, 2147-2513. 1996, Oxford: Elsevier. Nikolaeva, Irina. 2005. “Modifier-Head Person Concord”. Morphology and Linguistic Typology. On-line Proceedings of the Fourth Mediterranean Morphology Meeting (MMM4) ed. by G. Booij, E. Guevara, A. Ralli, S. Sgroi & S. Scalise, Catania 21-23 September 2003, University of Bologna. On-Line: http://morbo.lingue.unibo.it/mmm/mmm-proc/MMM4/221-234Nikolaeva-MMM4.pdf. Omar, Ahmad M., A. Mustafa Zahran, Fatima R Al-Rajhi & Abdull-Aziz A. Sifer. 1996. Ɂal-tadriibaat Ɂal-luɣawiyyah wal-qawaaʕid Ɂal-naħawiyyah [Language Drills and Grammatical Rules]. Kuwait: Thaat Ɂal-salaasil Printing Publishers. Pollard, Carl & Ivan A. Sag. 1994. Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Ritter, Elizabeth. 1991. “Two Functional Categories in Noun Phrases: Evidence from Modern Hebrew”. Syntax and Semantics 25, Perspectives on Phrase Structure: Heads and Licensing ed. by S. Rothstein, 37-62. San Diego: Academic Press. Sadler, Luisa. 2003. “Asymmetric Coordination and Agreement in LFG”. Nominals: Inside and Out ed. by M. Butt & T. H. King 85-118. Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications. Selkirk, Elizabeth. 1977. “Some Remarks on Noun Phrase Structure”. Formal Syntax ed. by P. W. Culicover, T. Wasow & A. Akmajan, 285-316. London: Academic Press. Strunk, Jan. 2005. “Pro-Drop in Nominal Possessive Constructions”. Proceedings of the LFG05 Conference ed. by M. Butt & T. H. King. Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications On-Line. http://csli-publications.stanford.edu/LFG/10/ lfg05strunk.pdf Wechsler, Stephen & Larisa Zlatić. 2000. “A Theory of Agreement and Its Application to Serbo-Croatian”. Language 76:4.799-832.

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Wechsler, Stephen. (2003). The Many Faces of Agreement. Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications. Zabbal, Youri. 2005. “The Syntax of Numeral Expressions”. Ms. Second Generals Paper, Department of Linguistics, UMass, Amherst. On-line: http://people. umass.edu/yzabbal/docs/gp2-may2005[revised].pdf Zamparelli, Roberto. 2000. Layers in the Determiner Phrase. Ph.D dissertation, University of Rochester, New York.

A Text-Pragmatic Approach To Moot Questions In Arabic Reda A. H. Mahmoud University of al-Minya, Egypt 1. Introduction Moot questions provoke disagreement, dispute and doubt. They result in indecisive answers and incompatible conclusions. Unlike other questions in normal discourse, moot questions are intentionally utilized by the questioner to concentrate on the questioned diverse points of views, not to resolve them but to increase their intensity. Moot questions typify a growing phenomenon in Arabic discourse, particularly in social and political TV arguments and other public arguments as well. Social and political mobility in the Arab world is among the essential factors that has led to this phenomenon. In these face-to-face arguments, the debater directs provocative questions to two or more persons with diverse ideologies and attitudes. These questions and their conflicting answers make up whole arguments over modernist ideas among different speakers who refute, reject, and rarely come to terms with certain issues of modernism, war, and political, religious and social reform. Consider the following question and compare its possible answers (1) a. b. c.

kayfa tαrαα ddiimuqrααṭiyya alʕαrαbiyya almazʕuuma? “How do you see the alleged Arabic democracy?” Ɂanta ʕala ħαqq, laa tuujad ladayna diimuqrααṭiyya walaa ħurriyya walaa Ɂayy šeeɁ. “You’re right. We don’t have democracy, freedom, nor anything else.” limaaða tunkiruuna ddiimoqrααṭiyya llati taʕiišuunaha Ɂalaan? naʕam ladayna diimuqrααṭiyya waħurriyya. “Why do you deny the democracy you practice now? Yes, we have democracy and freedom.”

The above question is similar to other provocative questions under investigation, and its responses generally reflect the degree of disagreement in the answers to other moot questions. In the question in (1a), the debater proposes a certain issue ddiimuqrααṭiyya alʕαrαbiyya almazʕuuma “the alleged Arabic democracy” in a negative way by using the modifier almazʕuuma “the alleged.” In the answer in (1b), the first respondent accepts the proposition of the debater in (1a), and adds more issues to support his opinion, e.g. walaa ħurriyya walaa Ɂayy šeeɁ “and no

44 REDA A. H. MAHMOUD freedom, nor anything else.” In (1c), the second respondent refuses the debater’s proposition and reconfirms his refusal by mentioning the opposite of the answer in (1b). To put it more clearly, the debater has the intention of provocation via proposing a negative issue, and the respondents accept or refuse this proposition according to their different attitudes and concepts. In their answers, the respondents may also direct other questions to each other (e.g., the question in 1c) to express their opinions, to defend, or to retaliate. The goal of this study is to analyze these questions in their different sequences, their pragmatic functions, their different syntactic constructions and lexical features which lead to certain mechanisms of provocation and expansion to result in other textual aspects, e.g. extension and disorganization of discourse. The data consists of more than four hundred questions collected from thirtysix TV arguments on several TV channels over the three previous years. The language used in almost all questions is Educated Standard Arabic, though in rare cases the questioner switches into his or her Khaliji dialect, e.g. leeš “why” instead of limaaða. The majority of questions in the data reflect similar sequences and subsume identical syntactic and lexical features in almost all arguments. Almost all questions in this data are of a similarly provocative nature. The debater intentionally asks two or more respondents of different ideologies about certain social and political issues to lead them to disagreement as in example (1). In this study, a moot question is viewed on the basis of Halliday & Hasan’s (1976:1) definition of text as “a unit of language in use.” Berinetto (1979:144) also considers that “any given sequence of verbal signs, disconnected though it might appear, can form a T [=Text], as long as we find an appropriate context for it.” According to the above views, a moot question is considered a spoken text since it has the context of an intentional question of certain propositional content and requires a certain answer, i.e. moot questions are texts or “vehicles of purposeful interaction” (de Beaugrande & Dressler 1981:79).1 Therefore, each question in this approach is dealt with as a text with certain communicative functions focusing on a certain topic and requiring a certain answer. Groups or sequences of questions (e.g., initial, debater, and respondent questions) in the same pattern (i.e., the organization of sequences in the whole argument) have the same force as longer texts since they have similar organizational and textual effects and achieve certain communicative functions (see 2.0). Every question in this text-pragmatic approach will be investigated as a text of certain purpose or intention and will be treated as a member in a sequence of questions which in turn will be part of the overall pattern of questions in the argument. For instance, debater questions generally reflect the intentions of the debater. On the one hand, the debater uses them intentionally to change the attitude of the 1 Togeby also sees text as “an expression of the communicator’s intentions and attitudes” (1998:1008).



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respondents or to lead them to adopt a negative attitude and disputed answers.2 On the other hand, these questions are meta-intentional since the debater intends to have his intention acknowledged by the respondents and the audience (Togeby 1998:1008-1010). Intention and meta-intention influence the formation of the mechanisms of provocation and expansion and culminate in the production of extensive texts and disorganized discourse. The debater’s intention of provocation and the respondents’ retaliation result in two textual effects: extension and disorganization of discourse. The intention of the debater is to increase disagreement by utilizing the ideological differences among the respondents to encourage them to defend or counterattack. In such a way, the conflict remains unresolved, but augmented, and the discussion yields further disagreement. Walton indicates that “a successful critical discussion ends with the resolution of initial conflict of opinions which shows that one party was successful while the other was not” (2003:1775). An unsuccessful argument proves the opposite such as the type of argument under investigation. Referring to unsuccessful discussions, van Eemeren et al. indicate that “unless the conflict is resolved it is unclear whether the discussion has any point” (1984:86). The debater’s provocative intention to result in inconclusive arguments is preset by his/her choice of two or more figures of diverse ideologies. His/her intention to provoke or expand is also represented by selections of certain syntactic and lexical structures. Also, the respondent intentions to retaliate are interpreted in terms of their concepts and beliefs which affect their syntactic and lexical choices in the production of questions and answers. Consequently, the pragmatic functions of provocation and expansion and their lexical and syntactic representations in moot questions are productive of further texts, i.e. disorganized questions and answers. The symptoms of disorganization are manifest in the uncooperative strategies of the respondents. They retaliate or defend, e.g. surpassing the appropriate degree of informativity, focusing on certain negotiable relevant or irrelevant issues, overlooking turn-taking strategies, and using evasive expressions.3 These disorganization symptoms are a direct result of the variety of illocutionary forces achieved by every moot question. Moot questions have multiple pragmatic effects or “pragmatic multivalency” (Davies 1988:28-46), particularly achieved by indirect speech acts.4 For example, one question can imply accusation, mistrust, blame, and mockery. The respondent infers one or more of these meanings according to the concepts they already have, his/her pre-knowledge of the attitude or the context of the situation. See the role of intentions in changing attitudes in the “mental model” in (Grice 1968:147-177). Cf. The four “cooperative principles” in (Grice 1975:41-58); the “strategic rules” in Togeby’s model of text- pragmatics (1998:1008-1010). 4 Also see Searle (1979) Halliday (1985), and Davies (1979, 1985). 2 3

46 REDA A. H. MAHMOUD In this paper, the main focus of analysis is on questions only; the answers to questions are approached only when needed. The answers are excluded from analysis for several reasons: (a) the answers to all questions stereotype the different attitudes of the respondents as in example (1), (b) the fact that conflicting answers are predictable since they reflect the different attitudes of the respondents plays down the significance of the answers as productive elements in discourse, and (c) respondent questions are to some extent representatives of the respondents’ answers. The above reasons do not lessen the importance of answers as integral parts of the discourse in any argument but for the requirement of this study they only show why they are excluded in the discussion of moot questions. If some answer is needed for the requirement of analysis, a summary of the context of the answer will be given. In the following parts of this study the different sequences of questions are discussed (e.g., initial, debater and respondent) to describe the different types of questions, their organization in every sequence and to reveal their pragmatic functions (2.0). The syntactic features in these questions are also handled, e.g. the types of interrogatives in 3.1, and some cohesive elements such as anaphoric references and junctive expressions (e.g. conjunction, disjunction, contrajunction, and subordination) in 3.2. In section 4, various lexical cohesive devices are analyzed, e.g. recurrence, parallelism, paraphrase, and pro-forms. In 5, the study reveals that some textual mechanisms, e.g. provocation, expansion, and conceptualization, determine the extension and disorganization of discourse. 2. Patterning of Questions In almost all arguments in the data, moot questions often have three recurrent sequences: initial questions, debater questions, and respondent questions. Initial questions are a series of consecutive general questions used only by the debater to introduce the main topic of the argument to the audience and the participants and to heat up the overall situation. Debater questions are directed by the debater to elicit an answer from any respondent. Respondent questions are interchangeable questions. They are directed by one of the respondents to the other or sometimes to the debater; each party uses them for certain rhetorical functions. For the purpose of this study, the following three sections illustrate the features of each sequence, the discourse function(s) for each question in these sequences, and the role every sequence plays in the overall pattern of the argument. 2.1 Initial questions Initial questions are classified into six core-type groups of questions. They proceed roughly in the following arrangement: key5 question, case question, The labels for questions, e.g. key, case, alternative, etc., are given according to the questions’ basic topic and/or function. 5



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alternative question, blaming question, negative question, and unfeasible question. The examples below will show each type of question successively:

(2)



Ɂalaysa min ħαqq almαrɁα alxaliijjiyya Ɂan tabtahij biduxuuliha almuʕtarak assiyyaasi ħatta law Ɂaxfαqαt bilfawz fi maqααʕid baladiyya Ɂaw bαrlamaniyya fi lbaħrayn waqαṭαr walkuwayt? “Doesn’t the Gulfian woman have the right to be happy to have entered the political arena even if she failed to win civil or parliamentary seats in Qatar or Kuwait?”

The debater in the above question seems to focus on key information, “the right of the Gulfian woman to share politically,” which is pivotal to the whole argument and to the rest of the following questions. The topic in this key information is identical to both the declared title of the argument and the textual world, i.e. the actual event of the political election of women in the Gulf. However, the debater intentionally concentrates on the emotional state of the Gulfian woman, represented by the phrase ħαqq almαr?α alxaliijjiyya ?an tabtahij “the right of the Gulfian woman to be happy” about her first political participation. The question then has two topics: one which agrees with the title of the argument and the textual world and consequently forms the main topic of the argument, and another which agrees with the debater’s intention to heat up the argument and therefore establishes the provocative topic of the argument. Case questions are exemplified as follows:

(3)

a. Ɂalaysat mušaaraktaha fi ʕamaliyyat aliqtirααʕ wattaṣwiiṭ biɁaʕdaad ɣafiira xuṭwα ʕala aṭṭαriiq aṣṣαħiiħ ? “Isn’t her participation in the polls with the big number of voters a step forward on the right path?” b. Ɂalaa yakfi Ɂannaha tajaawazat ħaajiz alqubuul bilmušααraka assiyaasiyya walmujtamaʕiyya waɁinna almustαqbal laha ħata law ṭααla anniḍααl? “Isn’t it enough for her to pass through the limits of political and social participation and to look forward to her future even if she struggles for too long?”

In (3), two cases have been successively provided by the debater to verify the main topic in (2). In (3a), political participation and the large number of voters form the first case, and in (3b) passing through the limits of participation forms the second. The two cases in (3) emerge as actual examples of success utilized by the debater to approve the main topic in (2) while the second provocative topic is also supported by the following queries: is participation the right step for women? in (3a), and is she going to look forward to her future even if she struggles too long? in (3b). These two queries raise doubt and distrust among both male and female participants6 as well as male and female viewers. It is clear that the debater supports the main and the provocative topics in (2) with two actual cases paralleled 6 Henceforth R1 and R2 will refer to male and female respondents respectively, and D will refer to debater.

48 REDA A. H. MAHMOUD with two provocative topics in (3). In (4), D intensifies provocation by asking a question comparing two cases:

(4)



hal yuʕqαl Ɂanna bαʕḍα nniswa maa zilna mamnuuʕaat min qiyaadat assayyaarα fi ʕaalam daxalat fiihi ilmαrɁαh kull ilmayaadiin min Ɂawsaʕ ?abwaabiha? “Is it plausible that some women are still forbidden to drive in a world where women have entered every field?”

In the above example, the article bαʕḍα ‘some’ refers to women in the Gulf who represent one case compared with another case representing capable women all over the world. Such a comparison transcends the political situation which forms the main topic in (2) and (3) to other irrelevant topic(s), e.g. other civil rights. The following examples show how blame is utilized by the debater:

(5)

a. Ɂalaysa ħariyyan binnisaaɁ Ɂan yuwaħidna ṣufuufahunna lilfawzi bilmaqααʕid fi lmajaalis albaladiyya wattašriiʕiyya fi lintixabaat almuqbila badalan min aliktifaa? bilmušααraka? “Isn’t it better for women to unify themselves to win some seats in the municipal or legislative councils in the coming elections instead of being satisfied with participation only?” b. limaaða taḍαʕ allawm ʕala llmujtamaʕ aðukuuriyy Ɂiða kaana Ɂaw kaanat banaat jinsiha lam yuṣαwwiṭnα laha fi lintixabaat alkuweetiyya bal ṣαwwαṭnα lirrijaal? “Why does she place the blame on the male community if women haven’t voted for her, but rather have voted for men?”

In (5a), the first part of the question Ɂalaysa ħariyyan ... fi lintixabaat almuqbila “isn’t it better ... in the coming elections” implies that women in the Gulf are to be blamed for not unifying themselves to win the election. At the same time in the second part, badalan min aliktifaa? bilmušααraka “instead of being satisfied with participation only,” the debater accuses women of being contented with what they have achieved so far. The implied blame in the first part of the question is heightened to an explicated blame in the second part of the question. Blame is directed to women for two purposes, to urge them to justify or defend their situation and to stir up the feeling of some men who stand against the political representation of women. Therefore, the question is used for blaming and for provoking both men and women, to make each party defend its own view. In (5b), the debater literally blames both the losing female candidates who assign to men the responsibility for their failure and all other females in the Gulf who did not give them support and help. Non-literally, blame thus encourages men to defend themselves against the false claims of the losing women and stirs up the emotions of the losing women against the other Gulfian women. The following example clarifies the functions of alternative questions: (6) a. hal ilmαrɁα alxaliijiyya muḍṭαhαdα Ɂαṣlαn kay tuṭααlib biħuquuqihaa? “Is the Gulfian woman really persecuted so that she has to demand her rights?”



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b. Ɂam Ɂannahaa ħaakima biɁamriha? “or is she a tyrant?”

The above question has two literal alternatives: Gulfian women are either denied their rights or they practice their authority on others, i.e. men. The first alternative in (6a) hal ilmαrɁα alxaliijiyya muḍṭαhαdα implies several non-literal meanings that can be expressed as follows: are they really persecuted? If yes, then they really suffer; if not, then they should claim their rights, and if they suffer and do not claim their rights, they are wrong. And if there is no persecution, they should not claim their rights. These non-literal meanings raise accusation and doubt about women, and they have to defend or justify themselves in all cases. The second alternative in (6b) Ɂannahaa ħaakima biɁamriha “she is a tyrant” has serious implications. They are accused of exercising their sexual authority on men, a concept rejected by women activists because they do not want to be viewed as sex objects. Otherwise, if the word “tyrant” is understood by women in the same sense in (5b), the losing candidates have no right to accuse men. Therefore, the debater succeeds in provoking the anger of women, giving men the opportunity to make fun of women to increase the intensity of the situation, and finally to add another irrelevant issue to the debate. Negative questions are also utilized to perform several functions:

(7)

a. Ɂalaysa ðaalika daliilan ʕala Ɂana ħamlat tamkiin almαrɁαh laysa lahaa juðuur nasawwiyya? “Isn’t it evidence that the campaign of empowering women has no feminist roots?” b. Ɂalaysa lliḍṭihααḍ daliilan waaqiʕan fi mujtamaʕaatina ʕala arrαjul walmαrɁα maʕan? “Isn’t persecution a reality in our societies imposed on both men and women?”

Based on the premise of (5b), the debater negates in (7a) any feminist role in the political campaign for women’s participation. D uses negation to evoke doubt, mistrust and accusation. The audience doubts the role of the feminist activists in the campaign, and hence they mistrust the underlying intentions in the call to liberating Gulfian woman. Mistrust and doubt are extended by accusing the nominated women and their governments of responding to imposed external policies. The non-literal doubt, mistrust and accusation in (7a) is expanded in (7b) where the debater accuses all men and women in our societies of being controlled by their governments, thus urging the audience to doubt and mistrust both their governments and all male and female activists. The initial chain of moot questions comes to an end with the following unfeasible question:

(8)



hal yuriiduun taħriir almαrɁα lilħuṣuul ʕala ħuquuqihaa Ɂam litaħriirihaa min qiyamihaa wamalaabisiha wafuluusiha ? “Do they want the liberation of women so they can get their rights or do they want to liberate her from her values, clothes, and money?”

50 REDA A. H. MAHMOUD In (8), D expands the topic of the argument to include men, women, and the audience. This expansion is expressed by the open reference of the prefixed pronoun in yuriid-uun “they want” which leads all parties to think in different ways; each party thinks according to its own concept of “they.” The pronoun “they” may be interpreted as women activists, external politicians, or secular governments. Additionally, the call for liberating women politically is intentionally expanded by the debater to include their values, clothes, and money, hitting upon the ideological concepts of tradition, religion, and economy. It is obvious that each initial question in the previous chain focuses on certain literal and non-literal meanings to perform specific functions, e.g., to provoke, to blame, to distrust and to mock. These meanings may be related to the main topic of the argument or not. Each relevant or non-relevant meaning is produced intentionally by the debater via some syntactic structures and lexical choices to achieve these functions and to heat up the situation in general. These syntactic and lexical features will be illustrated in sections 3 and 4. 2.2 Debater questions The analysis of debater questions explains the ways with which the debater uses provocative and expansive mechanisms and the ways respondents react to them. The sequencing of the debater questions proceeds as follows: key questions (for focusing on the topic), comment questions (for inviting one of the respondents to comment on a certain issue raised by the second party), intensifying questions (for eliciting provocative answers, e.g. accusing, blaming, mistrusting or mocking the other party), case questions (for requesting more explanation), and finally concluding questions. The following excerpt illustrates the way the debater uses key questions (9) a. b. c.



hal taħtaaj almαrɁα alxaliijiyya Ɂila taħriir? “Does the Gulfian woman need liberation?” 34.3 naʕam, 65.7 laa “34.3 agree, 65.7% disagree.” maaða tαqrαɁ fii haaðihi innatiija yaʕni hal nafham min ðaalika Ɂana kull haaðihi ḍḍαjja almuqααma min Ɂajl taħriir ilmαr?αh waduxuuliha almuʕtαrαk assiyaasiyy xααṣαtan baʕda heeṣαt alɁintixaabaat alkuweettiyya kama yusamiiha llbaʕḍ hiya ʕibαrαh ʕan ħαqq yurααd bihi bαṭil? “How do you read this result? That is, do we understand that all this fuss for woman’s liberation and her participation in political life, particularly after the noise of the Kuwaiti elections, as named by some, is considered a truthful issue for claiming a false one ?”

In (9), D uses the following sequence to heat up the general situation: D’s first key question in (9a), D’s answer in (9b), and D’s second question in (9c). Corresponding with the key question in (2), the key question in (9a) overrides the central topic of the argument, which is the right of the Gulfian woman to share politically, and instead heats up the argument which is expressed by asking about “the need of



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the Gulfian woman for liberation” where taħriir “liberation” is more general than “sharing politically.” In (9b), D provides an answer to his previous question. The numbers in the answer read negative: ‘women do not need liberation’. Later, this answer will give support to R1, and will provoke R2. Provocation increases when D chooses to give the first turn to R1 whose opinion is supported by 65.7% of the audience in (9b). In the first part of (9c), D asks R1 maaða tαqrαɁ fi haaðihi innatiija “how do you read this result?” The second part includes another question in which he rephrases the negative result and uses several lexical phrases with negative meanings, e.g. kull haaðihi ḍḍαjja almuqααma “too much fuss for woman liberation,” heeṣαt al?intixaabaat alkuweettiyya “the noise of the Kuwaiti elections,” kamaa yusammiihaa llbaʕḍ “as named by some” (with reference to the Kuwaiti elections), and ħαqq yurααd bihi bαṭil “a truthful issue for claiming a false one.” All these negative phrases reflect the intention of D to provoke R2 by supporting R1. R1 has been granted the opportunity of the first attack, which later leads R2 to defend herself strenuously. Comment questions are represented in the following:

(10) a. haaða lkalaam yaʕni laysa hunaaka muškilat ɁimrαɁαh fi llxaliij......, maaða taquuliin? “His words mean that there is no problem for woman in the Gulf…, what do you say?” b. yaʕni hunaaka taɁααmur bayna llmujtamaʕ wαssulṭα Ɂiða Sαħħα attaʕbiir ḍiḍḍ ilmαrɁα? “This means that there is a conspiracy between society and government, that’s to say, against woman?”

In (10), D asks R2 two questions, inviting her to comment on them. The invitation to comment is achieved by two forms of questions: an interrogative word in (10a), and a rising tone in (10b). In (a), D rephrases the preceding answer of R1 and invites R2 to comment on his answer, and in (b), D rephrases the answer of R2 and invites her to comment on her answer. The rephrased part in (a) haaða lkalaam yaʕni laysa hunaaka muškilat ɁimrαɁαh fi llxaliij “his words mean that there is no problem for woman in the Gulf” is an attempt to focus the attention of R2 on certain important provocative issues provided in the answer of R1. Selecting a particular negative issue from too many issues included in the answer of R1 is an intentional way to direct the answer of R2 to the desired goals of the debater. In (b), D rephrases the answer of R2 and invites her to comment on her answer. This means that D intentionally wants R2 to reconfirm her previous concepts which will provoke R2 later. Generally, the invitation to comment reveals the debater’s intention to achieve more provocation, and is also used by the debater as a turntaking strategy to elicit more answers or to reconfirm given answers. The following questions show how the debater intensifies the situation to elicit more conflicting answers:

52 REDA A. H. MAHMOUD (11) a. kayfa nataqαddam iða kana niṣfuna mašluul? “How can we progress while half of us are paralyzed?” b. ?alaysa muʕĐαm annisaa? yaħyayna fi Đilli ħurriyya diimuqrααṭiyya ?aw ħuriyyat diimuqrααṭiyyat hayfaaɁ wahbi lmazʕuma waɁakθar min kida? “Don’t almost all women live in a democratic liberty or the democratic liberty of Hayfaa Wahbey and others?” c. Ɂantum limaaða taxtaziluun alqαḍiyyah Ɂila Ɂan yaʕni Ɂusrαh wama Ɂusrαh wanhiyααr alɁusrαh wama Ɂaʕrif, limaaða Ɂanta taxtaziluha daaɁiman Ɂila mawḍuuʕ alɁusrαh wama Ɂusrαh? “Why do you summarize the case into a family or non-family, the collapse of family or not. Why do you always sum it up into family or non-family?” d. ma haaða nnifaaq almawjuud lada lmuraššaħiin fi lkuweet, maθalan min jiha yaquul almαrɁα nααqiṣatu ʕaqlun wanααqiṣatu diin wama baʕrif šu wamin jiha θaaniyah kaanu yataqααtaluun ʕala Ɂαṣwααti lmαrɁα? “What is that hypocrisy of the male candidates in Kuwait, on the one hand they say that woman’s mind and religion are not perfect and so on, and on the other they fight to win their votes?”

In (11a) the question focuses generally on the issue of “progress” by asking for “the methods progress” kayfa nataqαddam in the Arab world, a question all respondents have to answer. Each respondent focuses in his/her answer on a different point of view, i.e. his/her concept of progress. In their answers, R1 has considered that the liberation of woman is the direct cause for paralyzing her important role as mother in a family, whereas R2 has counted preventing women from practicing their liberal roles as the direct cause for this situation. The second question in (11b) is a reverse of the question in (11a). In (a) the question is directed mainly to R1 whilst in (b) the question is directed to R2. The two answers are extremely different. In her answer, R2 disagrees with the negative example of ħuriyyat diimuqrααṭiyyat hayfaaɁ wahbi “the democratic liberty of Hayfaa Wahbey”7 and considers the debater’s choice of this name as a mockery and insult to the efforts of the women activists. On the contrary, R1, in his answer, considers the same case a positive example and uses it to support his opinion. In the questions in (11c, d), D intensifies the argument by accusing and mistrusting male society. In (c), he accuses men in the Gulf of altering the issue of women’s liberation to an issue of Ɂusrαh wama Ɂusrαh “family or non-family” and wanhiyααr alɁusrαh wama Ɂaʕrif “the collapse of family or not” which are synonymous to the positive traditional roles of “women as mothers” or the negative role of “women as liberal activists.” In (d), the accusation is directed explicitly to men for their nifaaq “hypocrisy” which is represented in their low view of women almαrɁα nααqiṣatu ʕaqlun wanααqiṣatu diin “woman’s mind and religion are not perfect,” at the same time they are fighting to gain their votes in yataqααtaluun ʕala Ɂαṣwααti lmαrɁα. By the final question in (d), accusation is raised to the level 7

An Arab singer famous for semi-clothed and provocative performances.



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of mistrust to let R1 defend and justify the situation of men, and to encourage R2 to increase her attack. The deliberate functions of mistrust and accusation get clearer in the following case question:

(12) hal tansiin haaða, haaða lɁinħilaal Ɂiskindinaafiyyan (number one) fi l?inħilaal fi lʕaalam? “Do you forget that immorality in Scandinavia is number one in the world?”

The debater uses the above question to raise the feelings of mistrust against R2. D mentions alɁinħilaal Ɂiskindinaafiyyan “immorality in Scandinavia” to remind her of the results of liberation in Scandinavia. Also, the Scandinavian case which is mentioned in this question can be viewed as a non-literal accusation for R2 in the sense that she avoids the cases that do not support her situation, and avoids drawing the image that the same liberal concepts she believes in has led to the Scandinavian case. Later in their answers, mistrust and accusation intensify her defensive answer, at the same time giving reason to the male respondent to attack her strenuously. The following concluding question is vacuous because its answer is to be a replica of the respondents’ answers and their points of view in the whole argument: (13) bass ilkalima lɁaxiira laki tafaḍαlii? “Only, the final word for you, please?”

The answers of both respondents to the above final tone-question culminate in the failure of the argument to take certain resolutions towards the proposed issues. This question reflects two functions: literal and non-literal. The literal function is an invitation for the different parties of the discussion to focus their answer on a final situation to finish up the argument, whereas the non-literal function is to aggravate the colliding opinions of the respondents before concluding the debate. Consequently, the debater succeeds in achieving his intentions of provocation to serve his ultimate goal: disagreement. At the same time he conforms to the procedure of concluding the argument to keep up the pretense professional form neutrality. To achieve his intentions of disagreement, D relies on the divergence of the beliefs, the presumptions, and the conficting ideologies of R1 (a conservative academic researcher) and R2 (a woman activist) and the audience members who stand with or against either or both participants. These provocative functions serve as discourse mechanisms to expand, disorganize, and ambiguate the whole discourse, the questions and their answers. Each party has been pushed under the pressure of doubt or accusation to defend his/her beliefs by responding to relevant or non-relevant questions. As a result, all respondents overlook the principles of

54 REDA A. H. MAHMOUD cooperative discourse and break turn-taking strategies in almost all their answers. In any case, the answers to debater questions appear expanded and disorganized. 2.3 Respondent questions Respondent questions are integrated in the respondents’ answers. The respondents either use them in the middle of their answers or end their answers with them. Each respondent uses them to accuse, mock or doubt the other party, defend his/her viewpoint, expand the argument or focus on a certain issue. The sequencing of respondent questions reads as follows: case question (for persuasion), repeated question (for inviting the other party to answer), re-directed question (for inviting the other party to direct his/her question to the people involved in the issue), and explanatory question (for requesting more explanation from the other party). Consider the following three questions: (14) a. b. c.

mušααrakatana leeš mubtaʕidiin minha ? “Why do you avoid our participation?” man yataħammal masɁuuliyyit haaða liqtiṣααḍ? man yataħammalaha? “Who is held accountable for this economy? Who is held accountable for that?” Ɂiħna ma naxtazil ilmawḍuuʕ alyawm, door almαrɁα muhimm lamma nitkallim ʕala lqiyam ilɁislaamiyya, Ɂaxi nuṭαbbiquha leeš ?aaxuð šiʕarααt? “We don’t want to cut it short; today the role of woman is significant. When we talk about the Islamic values, we have to apply them; why do you use them only as emblems?”

In all these examples, R2 mainly directs accusation to R1 and D as representatives of all men in the Gulf. In (14a), the question focuses on the main issue of the argument which is mušααrakatana “our participation” whereas the questions in (14b-c) focus on other general issues, e.g., aliqtiṣααḍ “economy” in (b) and the application of ilqiyam ilɁislaamiyya “Islamic values.” In (14a), R2 accuses R1 and D directly of keeping women from political participation. In (14b), she also accuses them of being responsible for the economic failure in their country. In (14c), she accuses them of misapplying the Islamic values they always preach. Explicit accusation in the above three examples is considered a non-literal defensive way to reflect the absence of women in politics and economy. Literal accusation and non-literal defense perform a third function which is persuading R1, D, and the audience that “men are unable to develop their countries without the participation of women.” To retaliate against this accusation, R1 mocks and doubts R2 in the following examples: (15) a. b

ma ʕilααqαt ðaalika bilmαrɁαh, ya duktoorα? “What is the relation between that and woman, doctor?” jazaaha llααhu xαyran, taquul maaða? “God bless her, what does she say?”



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c. yaʕni limaaða taxuṣṣi llmαrɁαh biddifaaʕi ʕanha wahuwa lmujtamaʕ kulluhu mabyuuʕ Ɂαṣlαn ? “Why do you defend woman in particular while the whole society has been sold out?”

In (15a), R1 does not ask R2 for more explanation, because he knows her opinion which is dependent on her previous answer. This answer is represented by the demonstrative pronoun ðaalika “that” which refers to the fact that “men are responsible for the bad economy.” The pronoun “that” encodes R1’s knowledge of R2’s previous answer, and normally no one asks for something he/she already knows. Consequently, this question is an implicit way to mock her and doubt her conclusions. More obviously, the question in (15b) reveals R1’s explicit mockery and falsification of R2’s previous answer to stir her up. In (15c), R1 doubts her intention of defending women in particular whereas she leaves the whole society (men and women) defenseless. Doubt leads to non-literal accusation, i.e. by doubting her intention to defend women only, he accuses her of having no moral obligation towards the society of men, and hence preaching what she is not practicing. Also, the question in (15c) expands the issue of the rights of women by introducing another issue, which is the rights of the whole society, men and women. Expansion is utilized by R1 to convince the audience that he, unlike she, is preaching what he believes to be right. Retaliation is represented in the following colliding questions.

(16) a. miin illi ʕam biyixlaɁ iθθαqααfa, ʕafwan .. miin illi ʕam biyʕmil ilʕilm, ilixtirαʕααt, ittaṭαwwur? “Who creates culture, sorry... who creates science, inventions and progress?” b. Ɂana la Ɂuqααṭiʕaki, ɁasɁalaki suɁaal, hal turiidi Ɂan taquuli Ɂanna sabab attaqαddum hunaaka huwa almαrɁα? “I don’t interrupt you, I ask you a question, do you want to say that the cause of progress there is due to woman?”

For retaliation purposes, each party attempts to expand an issue or to focus on a certain issue in order to gain precedence over the other. In (16a) R2 expands the argument by opening other issues. e.g. iθθαqααfa “culture,” ilʕilm “science,” ilixtirαʕααt “inventions,” and ittaṭαwwur “development.” To retaliate by mocking her, R1 focuses on the same issue by repeating it in (16b) to let her admit explicitly that she means by mentioning these issues that women are the creators of scientific development. Expansion and focus function differently. Expansion functions as an attempt for R2 to open another issue to defend the role of women to gain precedence over men, whereas focus is utilized by R1 to mock R2 because of her negative opinion. It is obvious that the majority of the above respondent questions are contextdependent and metaphorical in nature. Both respondents use these questions for functions other than requesting information. They use these questions to accuse,

56 REDA A. H. MAHMOUD doubt, defend, convince, mock and support their own points of view by expanding certain issues or focusing on particular topics. During the argument, the respondents use certain strategies, e.g. expansion and focus to defend or mock, accusing to defend or defending to persuade. 3. Syntactic Features Syntactic features of moot questions play a significant role in the production and interpretation of the above sequences of pragmatic functions. In the production of these questions the debater uses syntactic constructions to perform functions so the respondents will interpret them in terms of their ideological differences, thus leading to further questions and answers that result in further intensified ideological differences. Such syntactic features fall into two categories: the types of interrogatives and cohesive elements. Each category will be discussed in the subsequent sections. 3.1 Interrogation types Similar to other questions, moot questions may be divided into three groups: yes/no questions, wh-questions, and tone questions. Yes/no questions are mostly introduced by the particles: Ɂa, prefixed to the following word, e.g. Ɂa-laa, Ɂalaysa, and Ɂa-lam; and hal, used separately. Wh-questions often start with the following interrogative pronouns: limaaða (or leeš in Gulfian dialects), maaða, ma, man, kayfa, mata, and Ɂayna. The third type, the tone question, is distinguished by the absence of interrogative particles and pronouns. A rising tone is used instead to express interrogation. Analysis of the above three question types reveals two underlying structures:

(1) Interrogative particles or pronouns followed by verbal construction. (2) Interrogative particles or pronouns followed by nominal construction.

These two constructions are illustrated by the following examples: (17) a. b.

kayfa [tarudd ʕala haaða llittihaam?] “How do you [respond to this accusation?]” Ɂalam [takun ilmunaĐαmα muhtamma biħimaayat alɁaaθααr alʕirααqiyya?] “Was not the organization [concerned with safeguarding the Iraqi monuments?]”

(18) a. b.

Ɂayna [alħamalaat alɁiʕlaamiyya wabayaanaat alɁidaana?] “Where are [the publicity campaigns and condemnation reports?]” hal [ittaqαddum Ɂan taqtul almαrɁα nafsaha?] “Does [progress mean that women kill themselves?]”

In (17), the interrogative pronouns kayfa “how” and the particle Ɂalam “was not” are followed by verbal constructions and in (18) the interrogatives Ɂayna “where” and hal “does” are followed by nominal constructions. It is obvious that verbal and nominal constructions follow both types of interrogatives. In (17a), kayfa tarudd



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“how do you respond” (interrogative pronoun + verb) indicates that someone asks another about something directly, i.e. requesting him to comment on something related to his person. D asks R1, inviting him to comment on the accusation of R2. D wants R1 to defend himself (or retaliate) against the accusation of R2. In (17b), the verbal construct takun ilmunaĐĐαmα muhtamma biħimaayat alɁaaθααr alʕirααqiyya “was not the organization concerned with safeguarding the Iraqi monuments?” which is preceded by the interrogative particle Ɂalam indicates that someone asks another indirectly about something. D asks R1 indirectly to comment on a certain issue that is not related to him as a person. Asking directly or indirectly for personal and impersonal comments is reflected by the verbs t-arudd and t-akun, particularly by the grammatical meanings of the prefixed morpheme t-. The first t- is the prefixed second personal pronoun “you” whereas the second one is the prefixed female gender morpheme that refers to the following word ilmunaĐĐαmαh “the organization,” a female noun in Arabic. The first t- is for addressing, and the second is for referring. Therefore, the first verbal construction in (17a) is used by D for addressing R1 directly, attempting to obtain personal information about R1. The second verbal construction in (17b) is used by D to refer to a certain topic included in the question ilmunaĐĐαmmα ‘the organization’, asking R1 to obtain information about this impersonal topic. The two nominal constructs in (18 a-b) have the same referential function as the verbal construct in (17b). These two nominal constructs represent two impersonal topics, not related to the questioned as a person. The questioner only asks the questioned about them to obtain information about impersonal topics, for example, alħamalaat alɁiʕlaamiyya “the publicity campaigns” in (18a), and ittaqαddum “progress” in (18b). In both examples, D refers to certain topics and wants R1 and R2 to comment on these impersonal topics. The above analysis makes clear that both nominal and verbal forms preceded by interrogative pronouns or particles determine the pragmatic functions of moot questions. The verbal constructs whose verbs begin with the prefixed t- for addressing are used for direct personal comments and other verbal constructs whose verbs begin with the prefixed t- are used for indirect impersonal comments. Generally, nominal and verbal constructions pertain to provocation and expansion: Direct comment questions reflect two aspects: a. The question mirrors the questioner’s intention to provoke the personal feeling of one of the respondents against the other. b. The answer to the question represents the respondent’s emulation of the other respondent’s accusation, mockery, retaliation, doubt and provocation in general. Indirect comment questions also reflect two aspects: a. The questioner’s intention to expand or focus on the topic of the argument to defend, persuade, mock or generally support one’s point of view.

58 REDA A. H. MAHMOUD

b. The respondents’ intention to conform to or refute the expansion or focus.

3.2 Cohesive elements Two elements of cohesion work out the pragmatic functions of provocation and expansion in moot questions. These cohesive elements are anaphoric reference and junctive expressions, for example: (19) a. b.

kayfa tarudd ʕala haaða? “How do you respond to this?” kayfa tarudd ʕala ðaalika? “How do you respond to that?”

The two demonstrative pronouns haaða “this” and ðaalika “that” in (19 a, b) refer anaphorically to the immediate answers of the respondents. Although both of them perform the same grammatical function of anaphoric referencing, each one of them pertains to a different pragmatic function. The different pragmatic functions are due to their different proximal referencing. The choice of near and distant references of haaða and ðaalika is determined intentionally by the debater’s knowledge of the answer that haaða and ðaalika refers to. If the answer is predictable by the debater, the near haaða is used, and if it is extremely negative or unpredictable, the distant ðaalika is used instead. Predictable and unpredictable answers represent the debater’s evaluation of the previous answer and his/her pre-knowledge that the other respondents will accept it or not. Therefore, haaða refers anaphorically to a predictable answer and ðaalika refers also anaphorically but to a negative answer. The debater intentionally uses these demonstratives to reassert predictable or negative answers to motivate the other respondents to increase retaliation, particularly in the case of negative answers. Such anaphoric reference is common in almost all arguments where the debater usually uses it as a mechanism for retaliation and expansion at the same time. The second cohesive element in moot questions is junction. The term junction refers to four junctive expressions, e.g. conjunction, disjunction, contrajunction, and subordination which are clear devices “for signaling the relationships among events or situations” (De Beaugrande & Dressler 1981:71-73). De Beaugrande & Dressler have defined the role of each type: (a) “Conjunction links things which have the same status, e.g. both true in the textual world; (b) disjunction links things which have alternative status, e.g. two things of which only one can be true in the textual world; (c) contrajunction links things having the same status but appearing incongruous or incompatible in the textual world, e.g. a cause and an unanticipated effect; (d) subordination links things when the status of one depends on that of the other, e.g., things true under certain conditions or for certain motives (precondition/event, cause/effect, etc.).” These four types of junctive expressions are also clear in moot questions and they reflect pragmatic functions. However, the junctive expressions which are used in interrogative subordinated clauses have



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a disjunctive force (see examples 24, 25). So, the junctive expression used in disjunction and subordination will be treated equally since they result in similar conclusions. Conjunction in moot questions is most often signaled by the additive particle wa- “and,” and wa-Ɂakθar “and more.”

(20) hal tastaṭiiʕu Ɂan tunkir biɁanna lqαḍααɁ alʕαrαbi la yastaṭiiʕ Ɂan yabitta fi Ɂatfah alɁumuur? waɁannahu ʕindaka maħaakim ʕaskariyya? “Can you deny that Arabic legal system is not able to decide over the most trivial matters? and that you have military courts?”

(21) Ɂalaysa muʕĐαm annisaaɁ yaħyayna fi Đilli ħuriyya diimuqrααṭiyya Ɂaw ħuriyyat diimuqrααṭiyyat hayfaaɁ wahbi lmazʕuuma waɁakθar min kidah? “Don’t almost all women live in a democratic liberty or the presumed democratic liberty of Hayfaa Wahbey and more?”

In (20), the additive wa- “and” is used to link the first question to the second. The topic of the second question which is denying the practices of maħaakim ʕaskariyya “military courts” is added to the topic of the first question which is denying the practices of alqαḍααɁ alʕαrαbi “the Arabic legal system.” Using addition, the debater expands denial to include the two topics. In (21), the additive expression waɁakθar ‘and furthermore’ is used for adding more objects or negative examples, though unspecified by the debater. The grammatical function of these two conjunctive devices is linking sequences of questions as in (20) or linking sequences of examples as in (21). However, these devices in both examples are used for two pragmatic functions, expansion in the first example and provocation in the second (see 11b). Disjunction is also signaled by Ɂam and Ɂaw, both of which mean “or” in the following: (22) a. hal ilmunĐĐαmααt attaabiʕa lilɁumam ilmuttaħida dawliyya fiʕlan? “Are the organizations affiliated to the United Nations really international?” b. Ɂam Ɂannaha Ɂadawaat fi Ɂaydi lbuldaan alllati taħtaḍinuha? “or are they tools in the hands of the countries which host them?” (23)

maa huwa tαqyiimak limada najaaħihaa fi llʕaalam ilʕαrαby Ɂaw ʕadam najaaħihaa? “What is your evaluation of the extent of its success in the Arab World or not?”

In (22), the particle Ɂam “or” is composed of the question particle (Ɂa) preffixed to the letter (m). It signals two issues of equal weight, one of which should be selected. It is used by D to equate two ascriptions for one object, ilmunĐĐαmααt “the organizations” whose role is either described as dawliyya fiʕlan “really international” in (22a), which is or is supposed to be identical to its actual role, or as Ɂadawaat fi Ɂaydi llbuldaan allati taħtaḍinuha “tools in the hands of host countries” in (22b), which opposes its role in reality. Although the question

60 REDA A. H. MAHMOUD particle hal is predominantly used with questions anticipating negative answers, one of these two ascriptions should be supported by the respondent when providing an answer to any question. The debater intentionally uses these two alternative questions to derive anticipated negative answers to provoke more negative feeling against these “organizations,” waiting for the respondent to cope with his intention of provocation or to refute it in his next answer. In both cases, D succeeds in expanding the argument. If the respondent accepts “the actual international role of these organizations” in the first question, he will refute the anticipated negative intention of D. And if he complies with the negative intentions of D in the second question, he will refute the second ascription. The opposite proves true for the second case. The second alternative conjunction Ɂaw “or” in (23) has the same disjunctive force (Badawi & Carter 2004:562-563). However, the disjunctive force of Ɂaw in this question functions exclusively. It is used by the debater to provide two alternative choices for the respondent. Any of these choices could be supported or refuted by the respondent according to his ideology, irrespective of the debater’s intention. The debater uses the particle Ɂaw only to expand the argument. To answer the question, the respondent has to choose one of the alternatives, and he/ she is required to provide the reason in his/her answer for his/her “negative or positive evaluation” in both cases. The junctive expressions baynama “while” and iða “while”, which are often used to subordinate verbal clauses, have a similar disjunctive force particularly when preceded with certain interrogatives, e.g. limaaða “why” and kayfa “how,” for instance.

(24) limaaða habbat litaħriir annisaaɁ alɁAfɣaaniyyaat baynama la tudaafiʕ ʕan iṭṭααlibaat ilmuslimaat fi farαnsa almutamassikaat biziyyihinna lɁislaami? “Why did it plea for liberating the Afghani women while it didn’t defend the Muslim students in France who were keen on their Islamic costumes?” (25) kayfa nataqαddam iða kaana niSfuna mašluul ? “How can we progress while half of us are paralyzed?”

In (24), baynama “while” links two alternative verbal sentences whose subject is “the United Nations.” The temporal function of baynama results in the alternative status which is the point of the question, i.e. one agent does a certain positive action, habbat litaħriir annisaaɁ alɁafɣaaniyyat “plea for liberating the Afgani women,” while neglecting another action of the same type and at the same time, e.g. la tudaafiʕ ʕan iṭααlibaat ilmuslimaat fi farαnsa “it didn’t defend the Muslim students in France.” The first action is true because it took place in the textual world while the other is not. This alternative status leads the respondents and the audience to accuse and doubt the role of the organization. Similar to baynama, the temporal function of iða “while” in (25) leads to a disjunctive effect. However, the pragmatic function of this question is different, namely, blaming and self criticizing.



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Finally, contrajunction has been represented by wa-laakin, which is literally translated “and but” and often occurs with the conjunction wa- “and,” and is frequently used by the respondents in their questions.

(26) alɁumam ilmuttaħida kaan laha dawran Ɂiijaabiyyan fi baʕḍi lɁamaakin, walaakin alɁumam ilmuttaħidah maaða faʕalat? “The United Nations had a positive role in some places, but what did the United Nations do?” (27) walaakin man yadʕam haaðihi llɁanĐimα? “But who supports these systems?”

In (26), walaakin “and but” is used to contrast two sentences. The first sentence is declarative, and the second is interrogative. The subject alɁumam ilmuttaħida “the United Nations” in both sentences is the same. The first sentence includes a positive topic, dawran Ɂiijaabiyyan “a positive role,” though restricted by baʕḍi “some.” In the second interrogative sentence, the nature of that role forms the topic of the question. That is, by the first declarative sentence the respondent admits the restricted role of the United Nations fi baʕḍi lɁamaakin “in some places.” Nevertheless, in the second interrogative sentence he asks about the role of the organization in relation to his case, his country and people, which is mentioned earlier. This incongruity between the different roles of the organization provokes doubt and accusation in accordance with the respondent’s beliefs about the double standards of this organization. The conjunction walaakin initializes the rhetorical respondent question in (27). In response to the previous answer to this question, the respondent asks about man yadʕam haaðihi lɁanĐimα “who supports these systems?,” although he knows the answer that was previously mentioned. Hence, walakin followed by a question is used mainly for expanding the topic or at least keeping the topic open for further discussion. On the other hand, the question has a provocative function which is represented by the respondent’s accusation of those ‘systems’ which are being supported by other external forces. 4. Lexical Cohesive Devices Our reasons for handling junctive expressions in terms of cohesion were to study them as operable syntactic devices in the micro-structure of moot questions and to deal with the degree to which these devices serve as productive mechanisms of provocation and expansion. These two mechanisms, in addition to conceptualization, are also triggered by other lexical cohesive devices. Lexical devices in moot questions, e.g. synonymous and antonymous expressions, signal cohesive relations, for example, recurrence and interchangeability, respectively. The analysis of recurrence depends on De Beaugrande & Dressler’s classification of some recurrent expressions where recurrence is defined as “the straightforward repetition of elements or patterns”, while partial recurrence is “the

62 REDA A. H. MAHMOUD shifting of already used elements to different classes (e.g. from noun to verb).” Parallelism is the repetition of “a structure but filling it with new elements”, and paraphrase is “repeating content but conveying it with different expressions”. Pro-forms are represented when “replacing content-carrying elements with short placeholders of no independent content” (1981, ch. 6). According to the above criteria, the analysis of moot questions designates four aspects of recurrent expressions: (1) Recurrent questions (e.g., similar questions either partially repeated or paraphrased); (2) Recurrent components in the questions (e.g. parallel lexical expressions such as adjectival phrases, nominal constructs, and verbal structures); (3) Recurrent topics (e.g., repeated lexical components in the questions recurring the major/minor topic(s) of the argument); (4) Interchangeable expressions are represented by antonymous lexical components. They are used in alternative questions to express alternative meanings and concepts. Although interchangeable expressions denote two different concepts, they are still in relative association with the main topic of the argument. One of these concepts may match the textual world and the other may not. The above four aspects are represented in the following examples: (28) a. b.

man yataħammal masɁuuliyyat haaða lɁiqtiṣααḍ? “Who is held accountable for this economy?” man yataħammalaha? “Who is held accountable for that?”

(29) a. b.

hal iltaqαddum Ɂan taqtul almαrɁα nafsaha? “Does progress mean that women should kill themselves?” hal taʕallamti Ɂanti fi hopkins ħatta tαqtuli nafsiki fi nnihaaya? “Have you learned at Hopkins to kill yourself at last?”

Partial recurrence and paraphrase are used in (28) and (29). In (28), the same structure of the question recurs in (a) and (b), except that the suffixed pronoun -ha “that” in yataħammala-ha in (b) replaces haaða lɁiqtiṣααḍ “this economy” in (a), and both of them are objects in the two question sentences. In (29), two structures recur. The content of the nominal structure in (a) is paraphrased in the verbal structure in (b), and both questions begin with the interrogative particle hal. The nouns iltaqαddum “progress” and almrαɁα “woman” in (a) are replaced by the verbal structure taʕallamti Ɂanti fi hopkins “you learned in Hopkins” where Ɂanti, the feminine pronoun “you,” stands for “woman.” The first type of recurrence reflects the debater’s insistence and his sense of mockery. The first question is general and impersonal about almαrɁα “woman,” and the second is personal where the respondent is meant by the question and the intentionally mentioned case of Hopkins. The shift from impersonal to personal and the contradiction in the content (one kills herself) represents the debater’s sense of mockery and reflects his provocative intention. In the questions below, some lexical components recur to express the same content:



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(30) ma qαwl azzamaariin wħamalat almabaaxir fi ħaḍααrαt alʕirααq allati nuhibat waðaakiratahu allati dummirrαt ? “What do the pipers and incense carriers say about the Iraqi culture which was ripped off and its memory which was destroyed?”

(31) limaaða inzawuu ṣaamitiin wataqαwqαʕuu muṣααbiin bilʕamaa waṣṣαmαm ħiyaal ma yaħduθ? “Why did they turn aside gloatingly and isolate themselves blindly and deafly away from current events?”

In the above examples some lexical expressions are distributed in the questions to convey certain negative meanings. In (30), four phrases repeat similar contents in a parallel structure. The nominal construct azzamaariin “pipers” and ħamalat almabaaxir ‘incense carriers’ have the same reference in Arabic. Both of them refer to “political hoaxers who gain personal benefits.” The two other phrases are adjectival. The adjectival phrase allati nuhibat “which was ripped off” is qualifying the nominal construct ħaḍααrαt alʕirααq “the Iraqi culture,” and the other adjectival phrase, allati dummirαt “which was destroyed,” is qualifying the nominal construct ðaakirata-hu “its memory” where the suffixed pronoun -hu ‘its’ refers to alʕirααq “Iraq.” The two adjectival phrases qualify two nominal constructs of the same meaning. They signify the same negative meaning, “destruction,” for the same subject, “Iraq.” Parallelism is also manifest in (31). The verbal sentence inzawuu ‘they turn aside’ is followed by the adverb ṣaamitiin “gloatingly,” and the same structures recur in taqαwqαʕuu “isolate themselves” and muṣααbiin bilʕamaa waṣṣαmαm “blindly and deafly.” The first set of lexical structures in the above two examples reveals the intention of the debater, and the second reactivates the same idea.8 They are summarized in the following.

Set (1) (30) azzamaariin (noun)

Set (2) waħamalat almabaaxir (nominal construct)



(30) ħaḍααrαt alʕirααq allati nuhibat (nominal construct + adj. phrase)

waðaakiratahu allati dummirαt (nominal construct + adj. phrase)

(31) inzawuu ṣaamitiin (verbal sentence + adv.)

wataqαwqαʕuu muṣaαbiin bilʕamaa waṣṣαmαm (verbal sentence + adv. phrase)

Since these parallel structures have similar negative meanings and similar references, their recurrence reasserts the provocative intention of the debater. In almost all arguments, debater or initial questions repeat the main topic of the argument. The following examples clarify this type of recurrence:

64 REDA A. H. MAHMOUD (32)

addiktaatoriyya Ɂam addiimuqrααṭiyya lilbuldaan almuḍṭαriba “Dictatorship or democracy for perturbed countries.”

(33) a. b.

hal ma naħtaajuhu hiya addiktaatoriyya fiʕlan? “Is what we really need dictatorship?” Ɂam Ɂannaha sabab kull maṣααɁibina? “or is it the cause of all our catastrophes?”

(34) a. b. c.

maaða taħtaaj almanṭiqαh alɁaan? “What does the area need now?” hal hunaaka yumkin ilħadiiθ ʕan inbiʕaaθ dimuqrααṭi kaða? “Isn’t there a possibility of talking about such democratic revival?” Ɂam Ɂanna fi waaqiʕ ilɁamr alʕaks yaħduθ? “or does the opposite happen in reality?”

The questions in (33) and (34) repeat the title of the argument in (32). This title suggests two alternative topics and so do the questions. The two alternative topics in (32) addiktaatoriyya Ɂam addimoqrααṭiyya “dictatorship or democracy” are paraphrased in (33) and (34). The noun addiktaatoriyya “dictatorship” is mentioned explicitly in (33a) and its opposite meaning addimoqrααṭiyya “democracy” is paraphrased in (33b) by using the pro-form Ɂannaha “it” which refers to “democracy”and the opposite meaning sabab kull maṣααɁibina “the cause of all our catastrophes” which implies a negative meaning because of the implication of the noun “catastrophes.” Similarly in (34), the nominal construct inbiʕaaθ dimuqrααṭi “democratic revival” is mentioned in (b) and its opposite meaning addiktaatoriyya “dictatorship” is paraphrased in (c). The choice between the two alternatives “democracy” and “dictatorship” is expressed implicitly in the question in (a). The examples above clarify that both alternative topics are synonymous to the main alternative topics in the title of the text, and each of them is antonymous to the other. These two sense relations are not incompatible since both of them achieve coherence. Synonymous expressions represent partial recurrence and antonymous expressions signify interchangeability where the respondent’s choice of any alternative is subject to his/her concepts of democracy or dictatorship, i.e. his acceptance or refutation of any of them. For instance, if the respondent chooses to defend democracy he/she has to talk positively about democracy and negatively about dictatorship and vice versa. That means to defend one’s concept is to refute or attack the second alternative.

cf. De Beaugrande & Dressler definition of recurrence as, “the relation where the same expression reactivates a concept, but not necessarily with the same reference to an entity, or with the same sense” (1981).

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5. Textual Mechanisms The previous analysis of the pragmatic functions and the grammatical features in moot questions discloses two textual aspects, viz. extension and disorganization. These two textual aspects are the outcome of the mechanisms of provocation, expansion, and conceptualization. Such mechanisms are associated with the production and the consumption of moot questions in their different sequences, e.g. initial, debater, and moot questions. In regard to production, the questioner, the debater in our case, uses some syntactic and lexical features to produce certain pragmatic functions (e.g. to accuse, mistrust, mock, etc.) throughout the sequences of initial and debater moot questions which lead to certain effects on the questioned. In turn, the questioned, or the respondent in our case, under the effects of provocation, produce other pragmatic functions throughout the sequence of respondent questions for retaliation purposes. As producers of texts, the debater and the respondents are equal in their production of moot questions. The debater produces debater questions to achieve his/her discourse goals of provocation, and the respondent produces respondent questions to achieve his/her discourse goals to counterattack provocation. Provocation and retaliating provocation proceed in an intentional way. The debater produces questions to provoke the respondents intentionally, and the respondents retaliate against each other by provocation also supported by their contextual knowledge of the situation for each question, their knowledge of the ideology of the other party, and their knowledge of the intentions of the debater. As consumers of initial and debater questions, the respondents process the syntactic and lexical features in moot questions, recognize the intentions of the debater, and produce answers and further questions according to their concepts and contextual knowledge. Their answers to the questions and their production of further respondent questions are formed and/or interpreted primarily according to their concepts, their knowledge of the goal of the argument, the intentions of the debater, and the intentions of the other party. Consequently, both production and interpretation of moot questions are governed by the mechanisms of provocation, expansion, and conceptualization. These mechanisms are interrelated in a particular way to result in extensive texts (e.g., producing other topics irrelevant to the main topic of the argument) and disorganized texts (e.g., inconclusive questions and answers). The following criteria elucidate the mechanisms, their interrelations, and their textual effects: 1. Provocation a. In initial questions, D uses some provocative acts (e.g., accuse, doubt, mistrust, blame, and intensify) to heat up the argument and motivate respondents to react. b. In debater questions, D uses the same provocative acts to provoke each respondent and to encourage each of them to retaliate. c. In respondent questions, each respondent uses the same provocative acts to defend and to retaliate.

66 REDA A. H. MAHMOUD 2. Expansion a. In both initial and debater questions, the debater focuses on certain literal and non-literal meanings to hit upon relevant and irrelevant topics to expand discourse. Relevant topics are related to the main topic of the argument, and irrelevant topics focus on personal provocation and other minor topics to support provocation. b. In respondent questions, every respondent expands the argument by focusing on irrelevant issues for certain discourse goals, e.g. to defend his/her point of view, to retreat from responding to an unpleasant question, and to retaliate by opening another topic to lessen the strength of the point of view of the other party, attack or mock him/her. 3. Conceptualization a. By the production of initial questions, D intentionally establishes the basis of the argument by setting the context of provocation, depending on his/her preknowledge of the different concepts of the respondents. b. By the production of debater questions, D intentionally conceptualizes provocation by selecting certain provocative topics to call forth provocation or to expand certain issues. c. Integrated in their answers and as such representing them, the respondents form their questions depending on their pre-concepts and the context of the argument to counteract other concepts and beliefs. The substantial results of the above mechanisms are represented in the following textual aspects: a. Extensive texts: the production of further debater and respondent questions and, consequently, answers. b. Disorganized texts: the producing of inconclusive questions and answers, resulting in no final resolution, disordering turn-taking strategy, and generally breaking the maxims of discourse. 6. Conclusion In this paper, our approach to moot questions is contingent on the analysis of the pragmatic multivalency of literal and non-literal acts. This text-pragmatic approach deals with every question as a text that achieves certain pragmatic effects to influence more than one respondent. The analysis reveals that the question, or the text in this sense, is provocative and therefore productive of further provocative answers or questions. The multiple pragmatic effects of each question or sequence of questions often lead to provocation. The question is designed syntactically and lexically to achieve such provocative effects. The implications proposed in section 5 represent the relations between provocation, as a pivotal mechanism and generator of other mechanisms, e.g. expansion and conceptualization, and productivity, e.g.



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extension. The interrelations among these textual mechanisms on the one hand and between them and the textual aspects of extension and disorganization on the other posit the roles of pre-knowledge (e.g., ideological differences, attitudes) and intentionality (intentions, meta-intentions) in both the production and the interpretations of moot questions. References Badawi, Elsaid & G. Michael Carter. 2004. Modern Written Arabic: A comprehensive grammar. London and New York: Routledge. Bertinetto, Pier Marco. 1979. “Can We Give a Unique Definition of the Concept ‘Text’? Reflections on the status of text linguistics”. In Text vs. Sense. Basic questions of text linguistics ed. by J. S. Petoefi, pp. 143-60. Hamburg: Buske. Davies, Eirian C. 1979. On the Semantics of Syntax: Mood and condition in English. London: Groom Helm. Davies, Eirian C. 1985. “One type of meaningfulness in discourse”. In Systemic Perspectives on Discourse ed. by J. D. Benson & W. S. Greaves, vol. I, pp. 229-47. Norwood, NJ: Ablex. Davies, Eirian C. 1988. “English Questions: A ‘significance-generating device’ for building in context”. In Pragmatics, Discourse and Text: Some systematicallyinspired approaches ed. by Erich H Steiner, 28-46. Norwood, NJ: Ablex. de Beaugrande, R. & W. V. Dressler. 1981. Introduction to Text Linguistics. London and New York: Longman. Grice, H.P. 1968. “Utterer’s Meaning and Intentions”. The Philosophical Review, 78:147-177. Grice, H.P. 1975. “Logic and Conversation”. In Syntax and Semantics ed. by P. Cole & J. Morgan, vol. III, 41-58. New York: Academic Press, Halliday, M. A. K. 1985. Introduction to Functional Grammar. London: Edward Arnold. Halliday, M. A. K & R. Hassan. 1976. Cohesion in English. London: Longman. Searle, John. 1979. Expression and Meaning: Studies in the theory of speech acts. Cambridge: Cambridge University. Togeby, D. 1998. “Text Pragmatics”. In Concise Encyclopedia of Pragmatics, ed by Mey L. Jacob, 1008-1010. Amsterdam and New York: Elsevier. van Eemeren, Frans H. & Rob Grootendorst. 1984. Speech Acts in Communicative Discussions. Foris: Dordrecht. Walton, Douglas. 2003. “The Interrogation as a Type of Dialogue”. Journal of Pragmatics 35:1771-1802.

THE PRAGMATICS OF DENIAL

AN INFORMATION STRUCTURE ANALYSIS OF SO-CALLED “EMPHATIC NEGATION” IN EGYPTIAN ARABIC

Mustafa Mughazy Western Michigan Univeresity 1. So-called “Emphatic Negation” The discontinuous negative construction ma-pro-š, where “pro” is a personal pronoun, is often described as “emphatic negation” under the assumption that it expresses a type of negation that is “stronger” than ordinary sentential negation.1 This view is supported by examples such as those in (1a)-(1c), where ma-pro-š is used to forcefully assert a negative proposition, as in (1a), to deny intentions, as in (1b), or to express a prohibitive illocutionary force, as in (1c), following the functional taxonomy proposed by Eisele (1999). Note that negation in these examples takes the main utterance stress. (1a) ma-nii-š faaḍi innaharda neg-I-neg free today “I am not free today.” (1b) ma-nii-š raayiħ maʕaa-kom neg-I-neg go(AP) with-you.pl. “I am not going with you!” (1c) ma-ntaa-š raayiħ el-ħafla neg-you-neg go(AP) the-party “You are not going to this party!”

di this

There is nothing unusual about having a marked negative construction designated for such communicative functions in Egyptian Arabic. The formal distinction between ordinary sentential negation and so-called “emphatic negation” is attested in many languages, including Brazilian Portuguese (Schwenter 2005), Dutch (Zeijlstra 2004), and Italian (Zanuttini 1997), among many others. Besides, Egyptian Arabic, like many other Arabic dialects, has affirmative constructions and 1 I would like to thank Abbas Benmamoun, Mushira Eid, Jonathan Owens, and the participants of the 21st ALS Symposium for their comments and suggestions. Special thanks to Nehad Heliel for her support with the data and her invaluable feedback.

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discourse markers that express emphasis, such as the sentence-initial particle ma in (2a) and emphatic repetition (conjoined or not), as in (2b) and (2c), in addition to oath phrases. More importantly, the structural distinction between form-function negative construction pairs is a widespread phenomenon in Egyptian Arabic; there are several negative constructions in this dialect, each of which is assigned a particular pragmatic function (Mughazy 2003a, 2006). (2a) a: fahhim-oh Ɂin kida ɣalaṭ make.understand-him that this wrong “Make him understand that this is wrong.” b: ma-na Ɂolt-ell-oh (w-allaahi), bass huwwa illi ma-biyismaʕ-š emph-I told-to-him (by-God), but he who neg-listen-neg “(I swear) I did tell him, but he is the one who does not listen.” (2b)

es-samak da ħa-yiʕgib-ik, da ṭaaẓa ṭaaẓa the-fish this fut-impress-you.f. that fresh fresh “You will like this fish, it is really fresh.”

(2c) a: b:

eẓẓaahir Ɂinn-ak ma-kallemt-ahaa-š seem(AP) that-you neg-talked-her-neg “It seems that you did not talk to her.” da Ɂana kallemta-ha w-kallemta-ha that I talked-her and-talked-her “I did talk to her.”

The problem with analyzing the ma-pro-š construction as emphatic negation is that it fails to account for cases where none of the pragmatic functions exemplified in (1a)-(1c) applies. In (3a) and (3b), ma-pro-š does not encode a “stronger” type of negation, and it does not have a prohibitive interpretation. Moreover, negation in these examples does not take the main utterance stress, while oath phrases, which typically occur in emphatic utterances, cannot be used felicitously.2 The utterance in (3c) is a wh-question, where the notions of emphasis and assertion do not apply. (3a) aṣl (#wallaahi) ma-nta-š waaxid baal-ak. kollo because (by-God) neg-you-neg take(AP) mind-your everything “(#I swear) You do not really understand. Everything is taken care of.”

tamaam ready

(3b) itfaḍḍali yax-ti, (#wallaahi) ma-nti-š ɣariiba come in sister-my, (#by-God) neg-you-neg stranger “Please, come in sister! (#I swear) You are no stranger.”

The phrase wallaahi “by God” has a non-oath function where it is used as a discourse particle that is best translated as “well”. On this reading wallaahi “by God” can be used felicitously in (3a) and (3b) (see Mughazy 2003b).

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THE PRAGMATICS OF DENIAL

(3c) ma-ntu-š gahziin neg-you-neg ready “Why aren’t you ready?”

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leeh? why

I take these examples as an indication that emphatic negation, denial of intentions, and the prohibitive illocutionary force constitute only a subset of the possible interpretations associated with the ma-pro-š construction. Besides, ordinary sentential negation with meš can also be used emphatically, in which case it would receive the main utterance stress and allow felicitous use of oath phrases. In fact, meš can replace ma-pro-š in all the negated utterances above. Therefore, any analysis of ma-pro-š as a construction that maps a one-to-one form-function relation to emphatic negation is incomplete. 2. Presupposition and Implicature under Negation While still characterizing the ma-pro-š construction as categorical or emphatic negation, Brustad (2000) departs from traditional accounts by demonstrating that it is a negation strategy used to contradict presupposition and previous utterances. For example, in (4a) the speaker is contradicting what she thinks her addressees have assumed about her husband, namely that he meant what he said. In (4b), on the other hand, the speaker “vigorously denies the claim made by one of her interlocutors that the umra ‘minor pilgrimage’ is an obligation for Muslims” (Brustad, 2000:298). Again, ordinary sentential negation with meš can be used in both contexts to achieve the same communicative function. (4a)

huwwa saʕaat biyitkallem kalaam yaʕni ma-huwwaa-š ħaɁiiɁa he sometimes talk.3sm talk yaʕni neg-he-neg truly guwwa-ah inside-him “Sometimes he just talks, it is not what he really feels inside.” (Brustad 2000:298)

(4b) il-ʕumra ma-hiyyaa-š farḍ, il-ʕumra the-umra neg-she-neg obligation, the-umra “The umra (minor pilgrimage) is not an obligation; practice of the Prophet).”

sunna practice-of-the-Prophet the umra is sunna (imitating the (Brustad 2000:298)

There is one complication though; it is not presupposition that is contradicted in negative utterances with ma-pro-š. The standard diagnostic for presupposition is that it is preserved under negation. For example, both Ali realized that he was lost and Ali did not realize that he was lost presuppose that Ali was lost, i.e., truthfunctional negation does not affect presupposition. The B and Bˊ responses in (5) demonstrate that neither sentential negation nor ma-pro-š can cancel presupposition, since both negative utterances still presuppose that the speaker smokes. This claim is supported by the fact that denying this presupposition results in semantic inconsistency.

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Ɂinta lissa ma-baṭṭalt-eš sagaayir you yet neg-quit-neg cigarettes “Haven’t you quit smoking yet?” Ɂinti laazim tisɁalii-ni es-suɁaal da koll yoom? you must ask-me the-question this every day laɁ lissa ma-baṭṭalt-eš sagaayir, (#Ɂana ma-badaxxan-š Ɂaṣlan) no yet neg-quit-neg cigarettes (#I neg-smoke-neg originally) “Do you have to ask me this question every day? No, I have not quit yet. (#I do not smoke to start with.)” Bˊʹ: Ɂinti laazim tisɁalii-ni es-suɁaal da koll yoom? you must ask-me the-question this every day ma-nii-š mibaṭṭal sagaayir (#Ɂana ma-badaxxan-š Ɂaṣlan) neg-I-neg quit(AP) cigarettes (#I neg-smoke-neg originally) “Do you have to ask me this question every day? I am not quitting. (#I do not smoke to start with.)” (5) A: B:

Presupposition can be cancelled only by metalinguistic negation, which pragmatically functions as “a device for objecting to a previous utterance on any grounds whatever — including its conventional or conversational implicata, its morphology, its style or register, or its phonetic realization” (Horn 1989:121). For example, Speaker B in (6) is using metalinguistic negation to cancel the presupposition that he traveled to Cairo before (at least once), which is triggered by the adverbial taani ‘again’. Using ma-pro-š in this context, as in the Bˊ response, is unacceptable because the rectification is inconsistent with the presupposition. Note the difference in main utterance stress assignment: the focus of metalinguistic negation (taani ‘again’) receives the main stress, and together with the rectification the two clauses display a contrastive intonation pattern, but “emphatic” ma-pro-š always takes main utterance stress. (6) A: Ɂinta raayiħ maṣr taani? You go(AP) Cairo again “Are you going to Cairo again?” B: Ɂana meš raayiħ maṣr taani, di ħa-tkuun Ɂawwil marra Ɂaruuħ hinaak I neg go(AP) Cairo again, this will-be first time go.1s there “I am not going to Cairo again, this will be the first time I go there.” Bˊ: ma-nii-š raayiħ maṣr taani, neg-I-neg go(AP) Cairo again, di ħa-tkuun Ɂawwil marra Ɂaruuħ hinaak this will-be first time go.1s there “#I am not going to Cairo again, this will be the first time I go there.”

Metalinguistic negation can be used to cancel implicature, as in (7a). In this utterance, the speaker is objecting to the upper bound of the scalar implicature associated with the predicate mabsuuṭ “happy”. The negated sentence and its rectification are not in contradiction because the proposition I am happy is not semantically negated. Using ma-pro-š gives mixed results with implicatures, as it cannot be used to cancel those concerning non-propositional aspects of utterances,



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such as scalar bounds, as indicated by the contradiction in (7b). If the implicature is a full proposition, as in (7c), using ma-pro-š is acceptable and there is no contradiction. (7a)

Ɂana meš mabsuuṭ, Ɂana ħa-ṭiir I neg happy, I fut.-fly “I am not happy; I am ecstatic.”

min el-farħa from the-happiness

(7b)

#ma-nii-š mabsuuṭ, Ɂana ħa-ṭiir min neg-I-neg happy, I fut.-fly from #“I am not happy, I am ecstatic.”

(7c) A: B:

momken Ɂatkallim maʕa-ak possible talk with-you “Can I talk with you?” ma-nii-š ʕaawiz naṣiiħa min ħadd neg-I-neg want advice from one “I do not want advice from anyone.”

el-farħa the-happiness

The crucial difference between metalinguistic negation and ma-pro-š has to do with their semantic functions. Metalinguistic negation is not truth functional, as it fails to license negative polarity items, as in (8a), and it allows apparent double negation, as in (8b). In (8b) metalinguistic negation is used to register an objection to the sociolinguistically stigmatized metathesis in marsaħ “theater” and the rectification provides what the speaker views as the appropriate pronunciation. Since this type of negation has a pragmatic rather than a semantic function, it can take scope over negative operators with semantic import (see Mughazy 2003a). The negative marker in ma-pro-š, on the other hand, is truth functional, and therefore, it allows negative polarity items, but not double negation, as in (9a) and (9b). (8a) A: Ɂaħmad biyħib mona Ahmad love Mona “Ahmad loves Mona.” B: da meš biyħibba-ha (*xaaliṣ/Ɂabadan), da biymuut that neg love-her (at all/ever) that die.3sm “He does not love her (*at all/ever); he is mad in love with her.” (8b) A: Ɂana ma-roħt-eš el-marsaħ Ɂimbaareħ I neg-went-neg the-theater yesterday “I did not go to the theater yesterday.” B: Ɂinta meš ma-roħt-eš el-marsaħ, Ɂinta ma-roħt-eš you neg neg-went-neg the-theater, you neg-went-neg *“You didn’t not go to the theater; you didn’t go to the theater.” (9a)

*ma-nii-š ʕawza min-noh ħaaga neg-I-neg want(AP) from-him thing “I do not want anything from him at all/ever.”

xaaliṣ/Ɂabadan at all/ever

fii-ha in-her

el-masraħ the-theater

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*ma-nii-š meš misaafir neg-I-neg neg travel(AP) *“I am not not leaving.”

The arguments presented thus far demonstrate that ma-pro-š is a truthfunctional negative operator with the same semantic functions of sentential negation. Both change the polarity of a proposition, license negative polarity items, rule out double negation, and fail to cancel presupposition. With regard to its pragmatic function, ma-pro-š has some emphatic uses, but that is not a necessary or a sufficient characterization because it has non-emphatic uses and sentential negation can be used emphatically as well. Moreover, the use of ma-pro-š is not limited to discourse-old material, as it can be used to contradict implicatures provided that they are full propositions. 3. ma-pro-š as a Mechanism of Denial In order to understand the difference between the pragmatic functions of mapro-š and meš, it is necessary to draw a distinction between negation and denial, following Geach (1965), Atlas (1980), Wiche (1991), and Van der Sandt (1991, 2003). Negation, assuming a bivalent logic with no truth-value gaps, is a semantic operator that functions on propositions reversing their truth values. It is not a scalar attribute that allows strong or weak readings (see Horn 1989). Semantically speaking, propositions can be true or false, but not somewhat true or very false, and therefore the term “emphatic negation” is a misnomer. Denial, on the other hand, is the speech act of objecting to the truthfulness of a proposition that is assumed to be part of the addressee’s background knowledge, whether this proposition is asserted in previous discourse or implicated. Unless an explicit performative verb is used, denial is achieved by using a sentence of the opposite polarity. Sentences with opposite polarities, such as Mona is at home and Mona is not at home, can be used to deny each other. As a result, any sentence (affirmative or negative) can be used as an indirect speech act of denial. The distinction between negation and denial is far from trivial, as it entails that every negative utterance is ambiguous between an assertive illocutionary force and a denying one. The following scenarios illustrate this ambiguity. Mona and Nadia are leaving the office building where they work. Mona receives a text message on her cell phone and unexpectedly says Oh my God. My husband is not home. In this context, the negated utterance achieves an assertive illocutionary force. In a similar context, Mona reads the text message, but says nothing. Knowing that her husband is not at home, she invites Nadia over, but Nadia, who does not get along well with him says But your husband is at home. Mona’s answer Do not worry, he is not at home (with stress on not) is an utterance with the illocutionary force of denial. The utterance would have the same function if Nadia said nothing and just looked at Mona, since unsaid/implicated propositions are also deniable. The same utterance My husband is not at home is used in the first scenario as an assertive speech act presenting new information, and in the other two scenarios as a speech act of denial,



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where the addressee’s old information is corrected. Negation inherently involves pragmatic ambiguity between at least two interpretations: assertive negation and denial, in addition to the metalinguistic use. The Egyptian Arabic sentential negation marker meš/ma-š is equally ambiguous, as the utterance goozi meš fe-l-beet “My husband is not at home” can replace Mona’s response in the three contexts, i.e., it can be used to make a negative assertion or a denial of an affirmative proposition. However, if the Arabic-speaking Mona wants to be cooperative in the sense of Grice’s Cooperative Principle (Grice 1975), she would use the negation construction ma-pro-š in the second and third scenarios in adherence with Grice’s Manner Maxim by avoiding the ambiguity. Crucially, ma-pro-š is not acceptable in the first scenario where denial is infelicitous because the proposition Mona’s husband is at home is not part of the assumed shared background knowledge, i.e., it cannot be felicitously denied. Therefore, negative utterances with meš/ma-š and ma-pro-š are semantically equivalent, but pragmatically distinct. Negation with ma-pro-š is reserved for the pragmatic speech act of denying affirmative old propositions. Support for analyzing ma-pro-š as a negative marker designated for denial as defined above comes from the ways it interacts with constructions that are sensitive to information structure such as relative clauses. Definite restrictive relative clauses use presumed old information to help delimit the reference of the head noun (Lambrecht 1994, Givon 2001). For example, the negated relative clause illi dayman meš ʕaamil wagboh “who never does his homework” in (10) helps identify the student in question assuming that (a) the addressee is already familiar with this student (the definiteness effect), and (b) the addressee already knows that this student never does his homework. In other words, Speaker B is using an old proposition, which is already negative, as a reminder rather than denying an affirmative old proposition, namely that this student always does his homework. Denying such an affirmative proposition in this particular context would be misleading and it results in unacceptability, as in the Bˊ response, where ma-pro-š is used. That is because denying an old proposition entails asserting a new one, hence the conflict with the pragmatic function of the definite restrictive relative clause. (10) A: miin eṭ-ṭaalib illi siɁiṭ who the-student who failed “Who is the student that failed?” B: eṭ-ṭaalib illi dayman meš ʕaamil the-student who always neg do(AP) “The student who never does his homework” Bˊ: #eṭ-ṭaalib illi dayman ma-huwwaa-š the-student who always neg-he-neg “The student who never does his homework”

wagb-oh homework-his ʕaamil do(AP)

wagb-oh homework-his

Restrictive relative clauses with indefinite head nouns are constrained differently, as the embedded proposition is pragmatically required to present

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new information (Givon 2001). Indefinite head noun phrases introduce new discourse referents, while the embedded proposition presents salient new grounding information that will help facilitate future reference in the absence of the definiteness effect. Since denial involves contradicting old information, there is a conflict between its felicity conditions and those of restrictive relative clauses modifying indefinite head nouns. Even though denial presents new information, it has to be information about established referents, which is not the case with indefinite head nouns. For example, the speaker of (11) assumes that (a) the addressee is not familiar with the referent of the head noun waaħid ‘a man’, and (b) the proposition expressed by the embedded clause is new to the addressee. In this particular context it is acceptable to use negation, but not denial, as indicated by the unacceptability of (12), where ma-pro-š is used. That is because the denied proposition, this man wants to make his wife angry, is not assumed to be part of the addressee’s background knowledge. (11)

kaan fiih waaħid meš was Ǝ one neg fa-gab la-ha so-brought.3sm to-her “There was a man who did flowers.”

ʕaawiz yizaʕʕal miraat-oh want(AP) make.angry wife-his ward flowers not want to make his wife angry, so he brought her

(12)

#kaan fiih waaħid ma-huwwaa-š ʕaawiz yizaʕʕal miraat-oh was Ǝ one neg-he-neg want(AP) make.angry wife-his fa-gab la-ha ward so-brought.3sm to-her flowers “There was a man who did not want to make his wife angry, so he brought her flowers.”

Non-restrictive relative clauses are pragmatically constrained such that the proposition expressed in the embedded clause presents new information. Therefore, we expect felicitous denials of old affirmative propositions to be acceptable in such contexts, provided that the head noun has an established referent. The utterance in (13) is taken from an Egyptian blog where participants discuss government responses to the political situation in the Middle East. The affirmative proposition that the [Israeli] ambassador is the only way to communicate with Israel is a wellestablished official response to calls for the expulsion of ambassadors. The speaker denies this old proposition, hence presenting new, yet less central, information about the referent of the definite head noun. (13)

ɣeer-oh ħa-yoṭlob ṭard es-safiir, other-him fut.-demand explusion the-ambassador illi ma-huwwaa-š el-wasiila el-waħiida l-el-tawaaṣol who neg-he-neg the-way the-only for-the-communciation maʕa ɁisraɁiil wa-la ħaaga with Israel and-no thing “Others will demand the expulsion of the [Israeli] ambassador, who is not the only way to communicate with Israel at all.”



THE PRAGMATICS OF DENIAL

77

The example in (14) summarizes the semantic and pragmatic properties of the ma-pro-š construction. This is an excerpt from a speech by President Mubarak of Egypt where he responds to allegations made by some Egyptian newspapers that he rejected a request by Colonel Qadafi to form a unity between Egypt and Libya3 (presumed hearer-old information). The free relative clause, which is a cleft construction, presupposes that someone said the preceding sentence, i.e., the presupposition is an open proposition with a missing agent argument. The presumed agent, Colonel Qadafi (a well-established referent), is predicated of the relative pronoun. Therefore, the proposition the one who said so [I form a unity with you] is Colonel Qadafi is the old information the President is denying. The ma-pro-š construction is used to unambiguously deny this proposition, as reiterated with the sentential negation in the following sentence. The use of two negative constructions in this example is not redundant, as the first singles out an old proposition as false, while the other asserts its rectification. (14)

Ɂaʕmil maʕaa-k wiħda, make.1s with-you unity “I form a unity with you.” illi biyɁuul kida ma-huwwaa-š el-ʕaqiid. who say.3sm so neg-he-neg the-Colonel “The one who is saying so is not the Colonel.” el-ʕaqiid ma-ṭalab-haa-š Ɂabadan the-Colonel neg-requested-it-neg ever “The Colonel never requested it.”

Analyzing ma-pro-š as a negative marker that encodes the speech act of denial provides a straightforward explanation of the various discourse interpretations associated with this construction. As discussed in Section 1, ma-pro-š can be used to express emphasis, but it is not negation or the construction that is emphatic. It is the speaker who is being emphatic while correcting information that the addressee is expected to already know as false. For example, Speaker A in (15) asks Speaker B if he still has her book, but he answers negatively. Two minutes later, she asks the same question again, but gets the response in Bˊ, where the denial construction makes it clear that she should already know that he does not have her book. It is possible that the speaker is annoyed with the repeated question. It is also possible that he is acting defensively after interpreting her repeating the question as an accusation that his first response was a lie. Regardless of Speaker B’s intentions, ma-pro-š only indicates that the addressee’s belief that he has her book is false. (15) A: el-kitaab bitaaʕ-i lissa the-book poss.-my still “Do you still have my book?”

ʕand-ak at-you

This speech was aired on May 1, 1992, on the occasion of Labor Day. The complete script is available at www.sis.gov.eg.

3

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B: laɁ, meš ʕand-i. Ɂana Ɂidet-huu-l-ik no, neg at-me. I gave.1s-it-to-you “No, I do not have it. I gave it back to you.” Bˊ: ma-huwwaa-š ʕand-i. Ɂolt-ell-ik neg-he-neg at-me. said.1s-to-you “I do not have it. I told you.”

If the denied proposition has to do with the addressee’s actions, it can be interpreted as a denial of permission, provided that the speaker has the ability to control the addressee’s actions. However, this is not the only possible interpretation. Speaker B’s response in (16) is a denial of Speaker A’s presumed proposition that he is going to the movies with his friends. If that proposition is false because Speaker B would not let it happen, it is a prohibitive utterance. However, if that proposition is denied because Speaker A’s friends called earlier and canceled their plans, the utterance has no prohibitive illocutionary force. Denial is only concerned with rectifying a mismatch in background knowledge: the addressee believes that an affirmative proposition is true while the speaker believes that it is false. Emphasis and prohibition are only interpretations of interlocutors’ intentions that are not structurally encoded. (16) A: B:

baba! Ɂana raayiħ es-sinima maʕa dad! I go(AP) the-movie theater with “Dad! I am going to the movie theater with my friends.” laɁ, ma-nta-š raayiħ No, neg-you-neg go(AP) “No, you are not going.”

ṣuħaabi friends-my

The analysis presented in this paper also accounts for some of the structural patterns that are assumed to be syntactic constraints on the ma-pro-š construction (see Eid 1983, Eisele 1999, Jelinek 2003). The pronouns in ma-pro-š constructions are sometimes analyzed as copulas in verbless sentences. One argument in support of this position is that negative personal pronouns cannot be used in responses to subject oriented wh-questions. However, this pattern is pragmatically, rather than syntactically, motivated. Wh-questions presuppose open propositions, so Speaker A’s question in (17) presupposes that at least one individual among the addressees is hungry. Using ma-nii-š to deny that Speaker B is hungry is infelicitous because Speaker A does not assume that Speaker B is the one who is hungry. This response is flouting the Relevance Maxim, since the addressee is denying information that the addressee does not assume. The unacceptability of ma-nii-š (with a relative clause, a predicate, or an elided predicate) is independent of the syntactic structure of the utterance. The construction is unacceptable for pragmatic reasons. (17) A: miin fii-kom gaʕaan who among-you.pl hungry “Who among you is hungry?”

B:

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THE PRAGMATICS OF DENIAL *ma-nii-š / #ma-nii-š gaʕaan / ma-ħaddi-š *neg-I-neg / #neg-I-neg hungry / neg-one-neg “not I/I am not hungry/nobody (is hungry)” / * ma-nii-š illi gaʕaan *neg-I-neg who hungry “I am not the one who is hungry.” meš Ɂana (illi gaʕaan ) neg I who hungry “Not I/I am not the one who is hungry.”

(gaʕaan) (hungry)

/ /

The only ma-pro-š construction that can be felicitously used as a response to Speaker A’s question is ma-ħaddi-š gaʕaan ‘nobody is hungry’, which corrects speaker A’s assumption. Note that ma-ħaddi-š does not cancel the presupposition that someone is hungry. The presupposition involves an existential quantifier [there exists (at least) someonex among you (the set of intended addressees) and X is hungry], while the response with ma-ħaddi-š involves a universal quantifier [for all x, if X is one of us, X is not hungry]. These are two different propositions, i.e., this example does not contradict the previous claim that negation in utterances expressing denial does not cancel presupposition. Finally, ma-pro-š cannot be used in wh-cleft constructions. In (18a) the relative clause is grammatically used in a wh-cleft construction, but preposing the negative constituent, as in (18b), is ungrammatical. This observation is often taken as an indication that the pronouns in ma-pro-š do not function as other nominal elements that can be preposed, but behave like verbal copulas instead. (18a) illi biyɁuul kida ma-huwwaa-š el-ʕaqiid. who say.3sm so neg-he-neg the-Colonel “The one who saying so is not the Colonel.” (18b) *illi ma-huwwaa-š biyɁuul kida el-ʕaqiid who neg-he-neg say.3sm so the-Colonel “The one who is not saying so is the Colonel.”

This pattern, in fact, is a direct consequence of the interaction between the pragmatic constraints on wh-clefts and the ma-pro-š construction. For a constituent to be pre-posed in a wh-cleft construction, it has to express old information, while the focus constituent that presents new information cannot be clefted (Lambrecht 2001, Collins 2006). The relative clause, which presupposes an open proposition, presents old information, whereas the ma-pro-š construction presents new information by contradicting an assumed old proposition. Therefore, only a relative clause without ma-pro-š can be clefted, as in (18a) compared to (18b) that has an information status conflict. 4. Conclusion The arguments presented in this paper demonstrate that the negative construction ma-pro-š has the same semantic properties of sentential negation

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with meš or ma-š. Both reverse polarity, preserve presupposition, license negative polarity items, and rule out double negation. The difference between the two negative markers is pragmatic in nature, as ma-pro-š encodes the speech act of denial, and accordingly, it is required to present new propositional information by contradicting presumed affirmative propositions, whether they are discourse-old or hearer-old. It follows that negation with meš can replace ma-pro-š in all contexts, but not vice versa. Speakers choose ma-pro-š instead of meš as an expression of denial to make their communicative intentions clear and to avoid the inherent pragmatic ambiguity of negation. By comparing the pragmatic functions of metalinguistic negation and denial we find that they complement each other. Metalinguistic negation is used to object to the structural properties of utterances as well their presuppositions and implicatures, while denial is used to object to their propositional content. Both constructions are formally distinct from sentential negation: negation is encoded discontinuously with pronouns in the case of denial, but it is encoded continuously with all predicates in the case of metalinguistic negation. The pragmatic functions of both constructions can be achieved by using ordinary sentential negation with the caveat of ambiguity. Each marked negative construction is assigned a subset of the pragmatic functions of negation in a systematic pattern of distributing pragmatic labor. References Atlas, Jay. 1980. “A Note on a Confusion of Pragmatic and Semantic Aspects of Negation”. Linguistics and Philosophy 3:3.411-414. Brustad, Kristen. 2000. The Syntax of Spoken Arabic: A comparative study of Moroccan, Egyptian, Syrian, and Kuwaiti dialects. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press. Collins, Peter. 2006. “It-Clefts and Wh-Clefts: Prosody and pragmatics”. Journal of Pragmatics 38.1706-1720. Eid, Mushira. 1983. “The Copula Function of Pronouns”. Lingua 58.197-207. Eisele, John. 1999. Arabic Verbs in Time: Tense and aspect in Cairene Arabic. Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz. Geach, Peter. 1965. “Assertion”. The Philosophical Review 74:4.449-465. Givon, Tom. 2001. Syntax: An introduction vol. II. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Horn, Laurence. 1989. A Natural History of Negation. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Jelinek, Eloise. 2003. “Person-Subject Marking in AUX in Egyptian Arabic”. Linguistic Categories: Auxiliaries and related puzzles ed. by Frank Heny & Barry Richards, 21-45. Dordrecht: Deidel Publishing Company.



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Lambrecht, Knud. 1994. Information Structure and Sentence Form: Topic, focus, and the metal representation of discourse referents. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lambrecht, Knud. 2001. “A Framework for the Analysis of Cleft Constructions. Linguistics 39:3.463-516. Mughazy, Mustafa. 2003a. “Metalinguistic Negation and Truth Functions: The case of Egyptian Arabic”. Journal of Pragmatics 35:8.1143-1160. Mughazy, Mustafa. 2003b. “Discourse Particles Revisited: The case of wallahi in Egyptian Arabic”. Perspectives on Arabic Linguistics ed. by Dilworth Parkinson & Samira Farwaneh, vol. XV, 3-17. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Mughazy, Mustafa. 2006. “The Many Faces of Negation”. Paper presented at the Second International AUC-OXF Conference. American University in Cairo, March. Schwenter, Scott. 2005. “The Pragmatics of Negation in Brazilian Portuguese”. Lingua 115.1427–1456. Wiche, Rob. 1991. “External and Verb Phrase Negations in Actual Dialogues”. Journal of Semantics 8.107-125. Van der Sandt, Rob. 1991. “Denial”. Papers from the Regional Meetings, Chicago Linguistic Society, 1991, 27, 2, 331-344. Van der Sandt, Rob. 2003. “Denial and presupposition”. Perspectives on Dialogue in the New Millennium ed. by Peter Kuhnlein, 59-78. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Zanuttini, Raffaella. 1997. Negation and Clausal Structure: A comparative study of romance languages. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Zeijlstra, Hedde. 2004. “Syntactic vs. Semantic Negation”. Proceedings of the sub8 – Sinn und Bedeutung Conference ed. by Cecile Meier & Matthias Weisgerber. Sprachwissenschaft, Universitat Konstanz, Germany.

YAʕNI

WHAT IT (REALLY) MEANS

Jonathan Owens & Trent Rockwood University of Maryland 1. General Background There is an overall consensus that discourse markers (DM) reveal speakers’ intentions, attitudes, their state of knowledge and plans for text organization relative to elements of discourse. Beyond this, they have been approached in two opposed ways, with a number of intermediary positions and ancillary positions. On the one hand, Fraser (1990) argues that discourse markers have a pragmatic meaning linked to a speaker’s communicative intentions, but not a semantic meaning. He adduces a number of examples (1990:393) in which he suggests, for instance, that “so” has a meaning essentially determined by context. In (1a) it is “as a logical conclusion” whereas in (1b) it means “I conclude”, and so on.1 Example: (1) a. b.

Susan is married. So she is no longer single. Attorney: And how long were you a part of the clean up crew? Witness: Five years Attorney: So you were employed for roughly five years.

An opposing position has been to identify a basic or core meaning, and to account for the many variants in terms of contextual determinants. This may be seen to follow in broad measure Grice’s dictum, “senses are not to be multiplied beyond necessity” (Grice 1989:47). Fox-Tree & Schrock (2002:737) are a good example of this. They argue that ya know, for instance,

(2)

And I was the only person there that was sort of remotely you know competent to speak

Though in more recent work (e.g. 1998), Fraser has adopted the view that discourse markers have a core, procedural meaning. His earlier position is worth mentioning as one possible interpretation of DMs. 1

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has the very general meaning of filling out unspoken intentions by inviting the addressee to make the relevant attendant inferences. They note that ya know will correlate with characteristic features at the interpersonal, turn management and back channeling levels. On any occasion ya know may mark topic shifts, emphasis and focusing, or introduction of given information, but the authors consider these functions derivable from the inferential force of ya know, rather than being a part of its meaning. An intermediate position of sorts is Schiffrin’s (1987), who, while recognizing the possibility of a core meaning for discourse markers, embeds them in a general framework of five functions into which DMs can or cannot be slotted. These are termed the ideational structure, exchange structure, action structure, participation framework, and the information state. In her approach, while a DM may have a core meaning, it need not, because if it does not, its function is still explicable as a discourse marker in terms of the scaffolding provided by the five functions which each DM fulfills. The DM oh, for instance, signals a change of information state and in terms of participation framework it marks certain types of actions (speech acts), such as clarification. However, it has no ideational or exchange structure function. It is not ideational, for instance, because it does not enter into referential relations (see Redeker 1991:1154 for criticisms). These different definitional stances lead to a divergent recognition of the DM inventory so that there is not total consensus about what constitutes their total class. For Fraser (1990:392) oh! is not one because it does not meet his criterion of signaling a sequential relationship, while for Schiffrin (1987), Redeker (1991), and Heritage (2005), it is. For Schiffrin (1987:31), discourse markers bracket units of talk, which qualifies (sentence initial) oh, while for Redeker (1991:1168) her “discourse operators” signal a link between an upcoming utterance and the immediate discourse context, a characterization which again qualifies oh as a DM. Discourse markers have further been analyzed in terms of conversational pragmatics, due in large part to Grice’s characterization of certain DMs in terms of conversational implicatures. We will consider this perspective in greater detail in section 4. First, in sections 2 and 3 we will concentrate on the question of in what sense one Arabic discourse marker can be said to have a meaning. 2. Arabic The detailed study of discourse markers in spoken Arabic is largely in its infancy. For this reason we will concentrate on one discourse marker, basing the study on a fixed corpus and approaching it from different analytic angles. The DM we have chosen to look at in detail is yaʕni, a particle of high frequency in our texts. The use of a fairly large corpus allows us not only to consider a large range of contextualized meanings, but also to make statements of some generality in regards to conversation analytic, genre and collocational issues.



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As far as research on DMs in Arabic goes, Al-Batal (1994) studies what he terms “connectives” in a corpus of Lebanese Arabic. These are considered in terms of sharedness with MSA, and in terms of a (now somewhat outmoded) “levels” approach to the classification of Arabic texts in the tradition of Blanc (1960) and Badawi (1973).2 yaʕni is among the connectives considered by Al-Batal to be Lebanese, not an MSA borrowing (which we would agree with). As in our data (see 3.1 below), it is noted that yaʕni serves as a connective at all grammatical levels. Beyond this, there are, of course, characterizations of discourse markers in many dialect grammars. However, a perusal of these, concentrating on the marker yaʕni, indicates a considerable degree of variation. In a selection of dictionaries and grammars, four different glosses turn up frequently:

1.

particle signaling the giving or requesting of clarification = that’s to say, that is, does that mean then (in a question) (Hinds & Badawi 1986:606).



This gloss is found with minor additions or exclusions for:

Iraqi Arabic (Clarity et al. 2003:326), who also have “in fact”; Yemeni and Gulf Arabic: (Qafisheh 2000:436, and 1997:447) “that is”, “in other words”, as well as Holes (2005 on Gulf Arabic), “that is, in other words” Algerian: (Bergman 2005:399-400) “I mean, that is to say” Soukhne (NE Syria, Behnstedt 1994:26): “that is to say” (German “das heisst”) Khaweetna (NW Iraq, NE Syria, Talay 2003:360): “that is to say” (“das heisst”) Libyan: (Dickinson 2004:389) “that is” Moroccan: (Harrel 2006 (1966):204, 260): “that is, in other words”

2.

attempted clarification, when the speaker is groping for words = y’know (Hinds & Badawi 1986, bass yaʕni kunt ʕaawiz asʔalak suʔaal). Dickinson also suggests “ya know”, and adds that it may be a neutral place holder.



3.

Parenthetical remark, approximately, “then, therefore” (Qafisheh 1997 and 2000). An identical gloss is found for Iraqi (Clarity et al. 2003) and the Gulf (Holes 2005).



4.

A noncommittal response with implied reservation = so-so, sort of (Hinds & Badawi), also found for Gulf Arabic (Holes 2005), Iraqi (Clarity et al. 2003:326).3

This classifies texts globally on a scale of most dialect-like to most MSA-like. There are two basic problems with this approach. First, it does not adequately disentangle the individual linguistic features, phonological, morphological and lexical, which together globally allow the characterization of a text as one variety or another. Secondly, and related to this point, it bypasses the by now highly developed quantitative sociolinguistic tradition which allows a more subtle characterization of texts or aspects thereof.

2

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In addition, for Egyptian Arabic, Woidich (2006:363) lists it among question particles (yaʕni dilwaʔti yibʔa naaʔiṣ ʔee “what’s still missing”). One common thread running through most of these definitions is the implication that yaʕni signals a further qualification of that which has been just said (“that is, in other words, in short”). The gloss “therefore” adds a specific cause-effect meaning, while Hinds & Badawi’s “groping” adds the implication of uncertainty, presumably either because of the social situation or because of lack of cognitive clarity. Informally we can discern here definitional issues surrounding yaʕni which are encountered in general in studies of discourse markers. Does yaʕni have a single core meaning (e.g. “that is”), or are other meanings part of yaʕni as well (e.g. “therefore”). The gloss “groping” locates the meaning in what yaʕni does, rather than what it refers to. In this paper we would like to look at yaʕni in some depth from a corpusbased perspective. The backdrops to this study are general linguistic issues (most, of course, stemming from studies on English) which will be used to elucidate the status of yaʕni. We use a broad but eclectic mix of issues in order to draw attention to the complexity of analyses accompanying ostensibly innocuous words like yaʕni. In section 3 we describe our corpus and present two fundamentally different interpretations of the meaning of yaʕni. We argue for a ‘minimalist’ interpretation of yaʕni, backing up our text-based conclusions with indexical issues of different types. In section 4 we briefly consider two further analytical perspectives which might elucidate yaʕni further, while in section 5 we isolate a second general ‘focus’ meaning of yaʕni, which, we suggest, is derivative of the basic meaning. Finally, in section 6 we touch on six further perspectives of yaʕni, informed by sociolinguistics, genre considerations, and practical matters of teaching. Our overall aim is to produce a comprehensive overview of the issues impinging on an interpretation of yaʕni, but not a comprehensive treatment of the morpheme from a single theoretical perspective. 3. A Corpus-based Study In order to look at this issue in greater detail, we collected a total of 719 “yaʕni’s” in a corpus of about 27,000 words of spoken Arabian peninsular Arabic, or 2.6% of all words in the corpus.4 The texts used are as follows, the number of yaʕni’s per dialect given to the right of the slash. 3 This usage (e.g. raħ timṭur? yaʕni “Is it going to rain? Maybe”) does not occur in our corpus, which is characterized by narrative and, in part, argumentative texts. There are relatively few question-answer pairs. It is our impression that this particular usage has an Egyptian ring to it, though this requires verification. It fits with our basic characterization of yaʕni (see 3.4) in that it neither contradicts nor affirms the proposition contained in the question. As it were, it answers a question by another question, “your guess is as good as mine”, meeting like with like.

Emirates: Kuwait: Jeddah: Total:

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14,801/423 5,448/145 7,451/150 27,700/719

From these 719 tokens, we selected 300 for closer classification (148 from Emirati, 101 from Kuwaiti, 51 from Jeddah). These will be invoked to illustrate issues of detail. Before beginning, we should note we assume axiomatically that yaʕni is a discourse marker. As seen above, various definitions of discourse markers have been advanced for English, and different definitions encompass different sets of markers. So far as we know, no detailed framework exists for classifying spoken Arabic particles into specific classes of discourse markers, and therefore the question whether a morpheme is or is not a discourse marker in spoken Arabic is not one which can be debated against a broad scholarly backdrop. We can, however, note that yaʕni fulfills a “classic” definition of DMs, namely that of connecting parts of discourse. This basic function will become more apparent as the discussion progresses. In this section we define the basic attributes of yaʕni, beginning with grammatical distribution (3.1) and moving on to its meaning(s) (3.2-3.4). 3.1 Grammatical and positional distribution Commensurate with its high overall frequency, the distribution of yaʕni is virtually unrestricted, either in grammatical terms or relative to its position in an utterance. To give a non-exhaustive idea of its distribution, we note that yaʕni occurs in the following grammatical contexts. In the examples “,” marks a pause, and the bold English gloss our interpretation of yaʕni in that example. (3) V + adverbial complement: gaal l-i ana raayiħ aa yaʕni nəs iṭ-ṭariig said to-1SG I going ah DM half DEF-way “He told me, I’m going, ah just half the way” (Emirates) (4) Time adverbial expressions: a. fi s-sana sitt we θimaaniin, aaxar yaʕni, sitta wa simaaniin in DEF-year six and eighty end DM eighty and six “In 1986, the end I mean, of 1986.” (Emirates)

4 It is also by far the most frequent discourse marker in the corpus. The top five in our material are: yaʕni: 719 bass: 226 fa: 192 zeen/nzeen (backchannel, conversation marker): 88 (no tokens of this in Jeddah, however) ṭayyib: 48

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b. ħa t-siir yaʕni baʕad fatra FUT 3F-happen DM after period “It will happen (yaʕni) after a while” (Jeddah) (5) Two prepositional phrases: lamma kin-t maʕa ʕaaylit-i yaʕni, maʕaa-kum, a-ħiss… when was-1SG with family-1SG DM with-2PL 1SG-feel “When I was with my family I mean, with you, I felt…” (Kuwait) (6) Verb and object: a. i-samm-uun-ah yaʕni seed trant-set 3M-call-PL-3SG DM lane 37 “They call it (yaʕni) road 37” (Emirates) b. xarraj-at yaʕni katiir graduated-3F DM many “it (the school) graduated like many (students).” (Jeddah) (7) Predicate + inverted subject: seera wa radd, yaʕni fi nafs iš-šaariʕ going and returning DM in same DEF-street “Going and coming (were) on the same lane” (Emirates) (8) Existential verb + subject: a. ma fii-hum, yaʕni mahaara NEG in-3PL DM skill “They have no, ya know skill” (Emirates) b. ma ʕind-uhum yaʕni haaða l… at-taʕliim NEG at-3PL DM DEM DEF-education “they don’t have I mean that education…” (Jeddah) (9) Before predicate adjectives: a. illi i-suug is-seekal guwi ma-ša-allaah, yaʕni riyaaði that 3M-drives DEF-bicycle strong God willing DM athletic “The one who pedaled the bicycle was strong by gosh, I mean athletic” (Emirates) b. al-madiina fii-ha ašyaaʔ yaʕni ħilwa DEF-city in-3SG things-PL DM nice “The city (after all) has nice things in it” (Jeddah) (10) Auxiliary kaan + main verb: ana kun-t yaʕni daxal-t madaaris l-ħukuuma I was-1SG DM entered-1SG schools-PL DEF-government “I had (yaʕni) entered the government schools” (Jeddah) (11) Between two propositions:5 a. fa hu ṭabʕan rəyyaal ṭayyib yaʕni haaða đ̣aabət ṭayyib and he of course man good DM DEM officer good “So he of course was a good man, ya know this was a good officer” (Emirates) b. kaʔannu ma ʕind-aha jnaaħ-een, yaʕni laazim ti-ntaẓir wa t-šuuf as if NEG at-3F wing-DUAL DM must 3F-wait and 3F-see “… as if she doesn’t have wings, like she has to wait and see” (Jeddah)



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We would note that this last category is its most frequent position, and most of the examples in sections 3.2 and 3.3, as well as section 6, fall into this category. In the above examples, yaʕni is exemplified post-pause (7, 11b), pre-pause (2a, 5, 8a, 9a), and without pause (3, 4b, 6 8b, 9b, 10, 11, see 3.4.2 for further description). More than one yaʕni can occur in a sentence. In our sample, three is the most that occur (see 3.4 below for discussion). (12) yaʕni bu xaalid yaʕni mitmassik bi ṣəḷḷaat yaʕni, DM abu xaalid DM dedicated in prayers-PL DM “Like Abu xaalid I mean is dedicated in his prayers ya know” (Emirates)

3.2 Meaning, function of yaʕni, part a As might be expected from a morpheme as frequent in occurrence as yaʕni, the question of what its meaning is, or indeed, if it can be said to have a meaning, is not obvious. We will approach this issue from two perspectives. In this section we look at the occurrence of yaʕni in a number of different contexts and suggest possible translations in English. This approach follows some of the lexicographical and grammatical sources summarized in section 2 above, in particular those relating to Egyptian Arabic (Hinds & Badawi 1986, Woidich 2006). The following set of glosses is non-exhaustive. Wherever questions of meaning are concerned, where appropriate we gloss or summarize the textual background of our examples. In some examples more than one yaʕni occurs. In these cases italics marks the one illustrated in the gloss. (13) Because il-ħafla šey muhimm, yaʕni yi-rawwi haw mač il-ʕaaila DEF-party thing important DM 3M-shows how much DEF-family yaʕni kan spend DM can spend “The party is something important. Because it shows how much the family I mean can spend” (Kuwait) (14) Question marker yaʕni marks a question with closed propositional content (i.e. ‘yes=no’, not an open Q word).6

Al-Batal recognizes five distinctive grammatical levels at which discourse markers occur: phrase, clause, sentence, paratone and discourse. A general problem with proceeding on the basis of a detailed hierarchical discourse structure is the need to provide clear criteria for the different levels themselves. While they might be definable — Al-Batal (1994) does not give explicit criteria for his own — lacking detailed criteria we feel a less elaborated characterization; essentially within clause as in examples 1-10 and between propositions (11) allows a more direct descriptive account of yaʕni itself.

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Two speakers are discussing which type of work regime is the better. The speaker solicits B’s opinion, either A or B, ending his question with yaʕni.

A:

fa šu ray-ək inta, tə-faḍḍəl əd-dəwaam ir-rasmi and what opinion-2M you 2M-prefer DEF-work DEF-official wəlla dəwaam iš-šəft-aath, bi-nisba l-ɛk yaʕni or work DEF-shift-PL concerning to-2M DM “And what’s your opinion, do you prefer a fixed work schedule or one in shifts, as far as you are concerned that is” (Emirates)



The narrator is describing how one time he was hitchhiking. His interlocutor interrupts him asking:



inta kən-t mətərayyi ħad yaʕni you were-2M waiting someone DM “You were waiting for someone in particular?” (Emirates)



Speaker B seeks confirmation that she understood the meaning of il-maqaahi correctly.

A: il-gahaawi illi bi li-kweet, il-maqaahi, š fii-č? DEF-cafés.PL that in DEF-Kuwait DEF-cafés.PL what exists-2F “The coffee houses that are in Kuwait, the coffee houses, what’s wrong with you?” B: internet kafey yaʕni? internet café DM “The internet cafe you mean?” (Kuwait) (15) Marks echo reply A: he naʕm, a-rúuħ u á-rəd il-ʔarbaʕ yes yes 1SG-go and 1SG-return DEF-Wednesday “Right. I go and return on Wednesday” B: il-ʔarbaʕ yaʕni ha d-dəwaam haað il-isbuuʕ yaʕni DEF-Wednesday DM DEM DEF-work DEM DEF-week DM “On Wednesday right, This work is this week (yaʕni) then.” (Emirates) (16) You might say, as it were Two youths are finding it impossible to find a taxi in the middle of the night in AlAin. In the end they find one:

wə illaagee-na tiksi, raħam-na yaʕni and found-1PL taxi 3M.mercied-1PL DM “and we found a taxi, you might say he (the taxi driver) pitied us” (Emirates)

There are few if any examples which correspond to the badal al-γalaṭ, the mistake substitution, even though yaʕni will sometimes become involved in false starts and repairs (see section 6.3). This is for two reasons. First the badal is a nominal category, and so one noun needs to be juxtaposed against another. Where yaʕni is used in the context of repairs, it is usually that it appears to flag the beginning of a proposition (not a single noun), which does not get completed. Secondly, the badal al-γalaṭ is used to contrast two referents, whereas yaʕni is essentially additive. 6



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…w ʕaš-t aħsan fatra fii ħayaat-i yaʕni and lived-1SG best period in life-my DM “and I lived the best period of my life, you might say” (Jeddah)

(17) In fact If you pick up hitchhikers you’re asking for trouble: A: B: A:

fa baʕdeen i-saww-oo l-ək məškila kibiira and then 3M-make-PL to-2M problem big “and then they cause you big trouble” he məshkíla yes problem “ya, trouble” məškíla kibiira jiddan yaʕni, problem big very DM “very big trouble (yaʕni) in fact (Emirates)”

(18) In sum AR is explaining what his friend did during the Eid. The first (italicized) yaʕni describes the Eid celebration. The third token (“in sum”) is AR’s response to BI, summarizing all the social obligations and events connected with the Eid. B: farħ il-ʕiid, il ʕiid ʕibaara ʕan, raaħa yaʕni, fatərət joy DEF-Eid DEF-Eid expression about rest DM period ir-raaħa wə lixaaʔ, been, been il-ʔahal DEF-rest and meeting between between DEF-family wə l-aṣdixaa yaʕni, baʕid and DEF-friend.PL DM so on “The joy of the Eid celebration, the Eid celebration is about relaxing, ya know and a time of relaxing and meeting with relatives and friends ya know, and so on” BI: ziyaara-at visits-PL “visits” B: he ziyaara-at wə haaða yaʕni, yes visits-PL and DEM DM “right visits and this (type of thing) ya know. (Emirates)”

After a discussion about everywhere speaker B has traveled, speaker A concludes:

maa-ša-llah ta-baarak allaah yaʕni tnaggal-ti w ruħ-ti katiir by God 2F-bless GOD DM moved-2F and went-2F many maħall-aat places-PL “Wow, so in sum you’ve moved around and been to a lot of places” (Jeddah) (19) As a result Shopping during the Eid is a hassle, because:

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zaħama leena-ma yu-uṣel maħall waaħid maħall-een yaʕni, crowding until 3M-arrives store one stores-DUAL DM yi-tʕab fi t-təsawwəg 3M-tires in DEF-shopping “Crowded, so that by the time he’s gone to one or two stores, as a result he gets tired of shopping.” (Emirates)

These are a sample of plausible translations of yaʕni, tailored to different contexts. The translations encompass not only a range of meanings, but also illocutionary types, including both answers and questions. The meanings are multifarious, and in the examples in subsequent sections, further meanings will emerge. A single meaning is not obvious from the translations. The summary given in this section would tend to support Fraser’s perspective of DMs as having a pragmatic meaning dependent on their context of use. 3.3 Meaning, function of yaʕni, part b An alternative approach is the minimalist. yaʕni has a meaning, but it is a very general one. We would suggest that a core meaning is to signal that the speaker will elaborate on the topic which has been begun. We will expand on this characterization below in this section, after presenting our material. We divide elaboration into three basic sub-categories: what is elaborated after yaʕni delivers more specific information than what was said, it generalizes from what was said, or introduces information of the same status, as for instance in a paraphrase. We would note that we introduce this three-part division as an orientation for potential finer-grained translation. We do not regard the tri-partitite division to be a part of the meaning of yaʕni itself. 3.3.1 Continue. What comes after yaʕni is a continuation of what has gone before. What comes after yaʕni is neither more nor less specific than what precedes. This can have the nature of paraphrase.

(20) Describing the driver who has picked him up as a hitchhiker, the driver went to the other lane (when passing) and stayed there; in other words, she didn’t go back.





wə ta-axəð seed-ha yaʕni, ma tə-rjaʕ and 3F-takes lane-3F DM NEG 3F-return “And she takes her lane, I mean, she doesn’t go back” (Emirates)

In some cases, a simple synonym is introduced (see 6.5 below).

(21)

yimkin hu ṣaaħib-a yaʕni, ṣadiiq-a maybe he friend-3M DM friend-3M “Maybe he’s his friend, I mean his friend” (Emirates)



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3.3.2 Specify. The most frequent sub-function in terms of ‘elaboration’ is specification: the element marked by yaʕni specifies in greater detail what has gone before.

(22)



A group of youths don’t want to pay the higher taxi fare asked of them. They point out that there’s a meter and (more specifically) that the fare should be six dirhams:

fi ʕaddaadt, fi ʕaddaad yaʕni ʕaddaad sitt dirham there is meter there is meter DM meter six dirham “There’s a meter, a meter, ya know (by meter it’s) six dirham”. (Emirates)

Which type of student? (23)

laakin kun-t a-šuuf ṭullaab hina, yaʕni amrikaan but was-1SG 1SG-see students.PL here DM Americans.PL “but I would see students here, ya know, Americans” (Jeddah)

In the following, the relative clause which explains the first statement is introduced by yaʕni. (24) A: ma t-insa l-baxšiiš NEG 2M-forget DEF-tip “And don’t forget the tip” B: naʕam yes “Right” A: yaʕni illi inta it-ħallig bi DM that you 2M-get shaved by “I mean for whom you get your hair cut with. (Emirates)”

When does he work? (25)

aaxar il-leel yaʕni min sitt min aa … ʕašar fi leel end DEF-night DM from six from ah... ten in night yi-nzil ti-səbbəħ 3M-goes down 3M-wakes up “end of the night (yaʕni), from six, ah, from ten at night he goes down and he wakes up”

3.3.3 Generalize. What follows yaʕni generalizes what has gone before.

(26) On the topic of work regimen, the speaker explains why in Europe those who work on holidays receive higher pay.

fa leelit raas əs-sina yimkin leel y-istílim fii-ha alf, and night new year maybe night 3M-receives in-it.F thousand yaʕni ma ħad y-ibi i-daawəm DM NEG somebody 3M-wants 3M-work “And the evening of the new year in a night he gets maybe one thousand. Because no one wants to work then” (Emirates)

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3.4 A minimalist summary Within the minimalist perspective, yaʕni signals that what is coming is of a semantic nature comparable to what has gone before. An analogy can be drawn in set-relation terms: what follows is of the same order, is included in, or is more general than what precedes. Crucially, it is qualitatively of the same order as what it is linked to. The relation recalls the idea of a badal in the Arabic linguistic tradition, an item which further specifies a preceding noun, being identical with it (huwa huwa) or a part of it (huwa baʕḍuhu) (al-Sarraj 1981, II. 46).7 As can be seen, yaʕni can function as a link at different levels of units, in particular, both entire propositions and smaller constituent-level items. The units it links are in some sense “conceptual” ones (see below for discussion), referring expressions of one sort or another. Furthermore, the semantic link is one in which B is of a comparable semantic order, explicating A in some way, and pragmatically relevant to A. We therefore suggest as a general characterization of the meaning of yaʕni the following, which we term the basic meaning. Basic meaning

Aconcept

yaʕni

+ Bconcept

Where A and B are semantically comparable and B complements the meaning of A

yaʕni signals that concept B is related to a comparable, preceding concept A. B is basically in a logical “and” relation to A, not an “or” or “but”. Thinking in terms of a time-stamped representation, a rough informational interpretation can be given as follows, where the link between A and B is bidirectional. Aconcept

signals additional information is coming →

yaʕni

Bconcept

← tells listener to relate propositional content to what was previously uttered

Generally yaʕni occurs at the beginning of (utterances encoding) concept B, but as in (16-18), it may also occur at the end of it. Related to a question, it usually occurs in utterance finally (14). Comparing this approach with that described in the previous section, we prefer the minimalist, as in the multi-definitional approach either yaʕni turns out to be very polysemous, or a further definition is needed to join the various usages. The medial occurrence of yaʕni could fall within the “focus” usage of yaʕni discussed in section 5, though we will not pursue this further here.

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This latter step would amount to something along a minimalist definition as described in this section. Furthermore, as the contexts of yaʕni are so multifarious, the polysemous approach would require an almost open-ended set of definitions. Other problems with the polysemous approach can be mentioned. The polysemous approach would probably have problems where sentences have multiple tokens of yaʕni, as in (12) above. While repeated tokens is an issue requiring greater study, it might be suggested in the current context that multiple yaʕni’s in the same sentence realize the same function of linking yaʕni B with a preceding context. For instance, the larger context of (12) is as follows. (27)

fa fi naas yaʕni i-waaṣil-uun nafs abu xaaləd, and there are people DM 3-continue-PL same Abu Khaaled i-waaṣəl kull il-yoom, yi-ṭlaʕ ma ša allaah, yaʕni 3M-continues every DEF-day 3M-go out by God DM abu xaalid yaʕni mitmassik bi ṣəl-aaṭ yaʕni Abu Khalid DM steadfast in prayer-PL DM “And there are people ya know who do the same as Abu Khalid; he continues at it every day; he goes and my gosh I mean Abu Khalid I mean is steadfast in his prayers ya know.”

Abu Khalid is like others who go to the mosque every day. He is a specific instance of the general class, hence yaʕni here falls within type 3.3.2. yaʕni could occur at the beginning of the sentence, or at the end, or, as here, in both positions, but it realizes the same function.8 Trying to specify discrete, individual meanings for each token of yaʕni is somewhat forced here. At the same time, the minimalist characterization is compatible with all of the meanings illustrated in 3.2, though it is of course more general. In (12/27), for instance, yaʕni introduces a specification of the main point. We would further argue against the ‘radical pragmatist’ position, that yaʕni does indeed have an identifiable core meaning. Rather than merely assert this, however, beyond suggesting a general meaning which at least is compatible with most tokens (see section 5) in our corpus, we would like to move one stage further and suggest that further indices support our approach. The following remarks are, as our designation of them implies, of indexical nature, suggestive of support of our ‘semantic’ position, while allowing that they are inherently imbued with interpretive uncertainty. 3.4.1. yaʕni as paradigmatically contrastive element. First, the presence of yaʕni is different from the presence of other discourse markers on the one hand, and from Ø on the other. In a classic structuralist sense, its presence in a sentence is This corresponds roughly with the nuclear syllable in the autosegmental tradition (Pierrehumbert 1987:18).

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paradigmatically contrastive. For instance, if instead of (11a), one substituted the not unrelated (see 6.1 below) DM bas, the meaning would be different. (28)

fa hu ṭabʕan rəyyaal ṭayyib bas haaða đ̣aabət ṭayyib and he of course man good just DEM officer good “And he of course was a good man, he was just a good officer” (Emirates)

bas in this context would change the meaning of utterance considerably (and in fact, would not be appropriate at this place in the original text). It would impart an idea of finality to the utterance, suggesting, for instance, that the episode at this point was about the character of the officer, rather, as it is in reality, about the narrator’s run-in with the law. yaʕni, on the other hand, explicitly signals that descriptive material of the same order is being added and therefore the story remains about the topic of the episode which was begun before (28) was uttered, which pertained to the behavior of the narrator and his friend when he was young. Furthermore, any yaʕni can be substituted for by Ø. However, yaʕni, as opposed to Ø, creates the expectation that further information of the same kind will be forthcoming. (29)

fa hu ṭabʕan rəyyaal ṭayyib, Ø haaða đ̣aabət ṭayyib and he of course man good DEM officer good “And he of course was a good man, Ø he (was) a good officer” (Emirates)

(29) is propositionally equivalent to (11a), the only difference being that yaʕni explicitly signals that an element such as haaða đ̣aabət ṭayyib is coming (see 6.4 below). 3.4.2 Prosodic position. yaʕni, like many discourse markers, occurs frequently at the edge of utterances; both post-pause (utterance initially) and pre-pause (utterance finally). In all, yaʕni occurs in 43% of its tokens either utterance-initially orfinally:

pre-pause 179, 25%

post-pause 129, 18%

no pause 411, 57%

Given this high percentage of peripheral occurrence, yaʕni on a prioristic summary appears to be a discourse boundary marker (Maschler 1994), though what it explicitly marks is the lack of a new topic or episode. It shares this position with such DMs as bas “just, only”, fa “and then (initial only)”, he walla “absolutely”, yaa X, “vocative”, aʕtaxəd “I believe”, ma dri “I don’t know” and tadriin “ya’ know”, ma sha allaa “wow, great”. A preliminary look at the prosodic characteristics of items at the utterance periphery indicates that parallel to the paradigmatic characteristics of yaʕni discussed in the previous section prosodic characteristics can be identified as well.



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Lacking a full scale analysis of the prosodic structure of our sample, we use the analytic terminology of Badawi (1965), one of the most detailed studies of intonation in spoken Arabic, and based on a related peninsular Arabian dialect, Najdi of Riyaadh. In brief, he identifies tone groups, marked by characteristic pitch patterns. A tone group, (1) ends in a tonic syllable, (2) is delimited initially by pause or it occurs after another tone group. The tonic syllable itself is typically the most prominent, has the strongest stress in the group, and has a marked tone movement.9 yaʕni in its basic meaning will typically occur in a prosodic position occupied by certain other DMs as identified above. These are morphemes which signal cataphoric or anaphoric coherency relations, and which, given their peripheral position, potentially signal discourse boundaries, or, in the case of yaʕni, generally the lack thereof. These DMs typically occur either in post-tonic position, after the tonic syllable which marks the information peak in the tone group, what Badawi terms the posttonic extension, or in a pre-tonic position at the very beginning of a tone group. In each case it has a distinctly low pitch. The following pertains to the prosodic analysis of Emirati Arabic. We give four examples, one each with yaʕni in preand post-tonic position, and one each with other DMs of similar status in the same positions. (30) yaʕni post-tonic position, utterance-finally 10 fa fi šibaab hini yaʕni and exist guy.PL here DM “and there are guys here y’know” (Emirates)

This corresponds roughly with the nuclear syllable in the autosegmental tradition (Pierrehumbert 1987:18).

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In (30), the tonic syllable (hi)ni has a peak of 253 Hz., falling rapidly to 189 Hz., and then to yaʕni, which starts at 176Hz and ends at 157. (31) aʕtaxədt ma fii-ha dowwaar-aat a-ʕtaxədt NEG exist-it.F roundabouts-PL 1SG-believe “There aren’t any roundabouts in it, I believe” (Emirates)

In (31) the tonic syllable dowwaaraat begins at 181 Hz., ends at 168 Hz. and the following aʕtaxədt picks up at 126 Hz. (32) yaʕni pre-tonic position, utterance-initially yaʕni šu i-soww-uun? DM what 3-do-PL “So what do they do?” (Emirates)



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(33) faa; pre-tonic position, utterance-initially faa haaða r-rayyaal and DEM DEF-man “and this man” (Emirates)

In each of these two examples, yaʕni in (32) and fa in (33) begin on an appreciably lower frequency than the following word. In the first, yaʕni begins at 136 Hz, ending at 163, while the peak on shu immediately after is 227 Hz. In the second, fa begins at 151 Hz, drifting down slightly to 174 Hz, followed by a peak on haaða at 222 Hz. What we suggest these examples show is that yaʕni not only commutes with certain DMs, as described in 3.4.1, but often does so in a prosodic position which distinguishes it and other members of its commutational class as peripheral to the main informational event of an utterance. Its consistent mapping onto this prosody again indicates that it has a meaning, searching out, as it were, its usual place in an utterance. 3.4.3 Thirdly, in a recent paper, Germanos (2006) describes the Lebanese Arabic DM enno. She notes that enno has a profile very similar to yaʕni. Often enno adds a nuance or condition to a previous utterance, as she puts it (2006:13).11 In the following, for instance, yaʕni would fit very well in place of her attested enno. This would appear to correspond to a pattern such as Badawi (1965) describes on p. 149 (also 64, 67), in which the tonic syllable falls from mid to low, and post-tonic syllables are low. Although Badawi does not deal specifically with discourse particles, it is noteworthy that in his examples, haaðaaka xuu ya rajjaal, the post tonic element is a vocative, ya rajjaal, which in our data is also frequently rendered with a low pitch. 11 Describing the function of enno, she writes (Germanos 2006: 7): “there is a continuity in the topic that is under discussion, and this continuity serves to further elaborate the topic”. 10

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(34) hallaʔ oo ʕinde əl-english ʔinno ktiir mniiħ fi-ya w ktiir now at-3M DEF-english DM very good at-it.F and much b-ħəbb-a CONT-3M-likes-it.F “now, aah, he has English ya know he’s very good at it and likes it a lot”

It appears that enno here is competing for the same semantic space as yaʕni. Such a competitive model implies that speakers identify the lexemes enno and yaʕni as semantic units, which can be slotted into identical contexts.12 4. Interpretive Perspectives At this point, having introduced our material and argued that yaʕni has a discrete, if general, meaning, it is relevant to speculate further about the nature of yaʕni itself, or to phrase the matter in different terms, the status of the discourse marker which yaʕni is. This can be approached from two perspectives, drawing on a Gricean pragmatic tradition. The problem in this tradition is the categorical status of DMs. It is commonly held that DMs do not contribute to the truth-conditional meaning of a sentence. If this is the case, what is their conceptual status? The purpose of this section is to outline possible generalizing perspectives on the function of yaʕni, not to advocate the adoption of one approach or the other and therefore we will not address the pros and cons of adopting one theoretical position or another. 4.1 yaʕni as tacit performative Rieber (1997) argues that connective DMs such as “but”, “moreover” and “so” can be understood as implicit performatives. He analyses the sentence,

(35) Sheila is rich but she is unhappy

as

(36) Sheila is rich (I suggest that this contrasts) she is unhappy

The conjunction “but” has the semantic component of “contrast”. In using “but” a speaker insinuates a contrast between the two propositions (Sheila is rich, she is unhappy), but as this is only a suggestion it does not affect the truthconditional status of the two conjuncts (if Sheila happens to be both rich and unhappy, (36) is still true, as it is the speaker’s suggestion).

Germanos points out that some speakers in her sample use enno to a far greater extent than others, suggesting that in her Beirut sample enno and yaʕni are stylistic alternatives.

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In defining the connective as a tacit performative, Rieber avoids having to give a truth-conditional interpretation to “but” itself, since the performative verb itself does not depend on the truth-conditional status of its embedded clause. In one formulation, performatives do not have a truth value.13 Applying this analysis to yaʕni, and adapting a meta-language from Standard Arabic in order to underline the fact that it is a meta-language, (11a/29) can be understood along the following lines14 (37) fa hu ṭabʕan rəyyaal ṭayyib yaʕni (= wa uḍiif ilaa ðaalik ʔanna-hu) and he of course man good DM (= and I add to this that …) haaða đ̣aabət ṭayyib DEM officer good “and he of course was a good man, I mean, [I add to this] this was a good officer” (Emirates)



In general, yaʕni = uḍiif ilaa ðaalik (I add to this).

4.2 yaʕni as procedural knowledge A second perspective is to adopt the broad analysis of connectives which has been developed in relevancy theory and widely used in the analysis of discourse particles (e.g., a number of articles in Jucker & Ziv 1998). Whereas Rieber’s treatment assimilates connectives to performative sentence semantics, the procedural knowledge approach locates them among a class of words which do not contribute to propositional meaning. Procedural meaning (Wilson & Sperber 1993) conveys information about how best to construe conceptual meaning, propositions which are amenable to truth-conditional analysis. It does this by constraining inferences which can be drawn on propositions. A standard example is (38) a. Tom can open Bill’s safe. b. He knows the combination. (Schourup 1999:245)

As it stands, (38b) can be understood as a conclusion to an inference with the proposition in (38a) as its premise (since he can open the safe, I conclude that he knows the combination) or as a premise to a conclusion stated in (38a) (since he knows the combination, he can open the safe). Adding the DM so to the sentence

(39) Tom can open Bill’s safe. So he knows the combination.

selects the first interpretation (Blakemore 2002:478). See Larcher (1992) for a related performative-verb interpretation of laakinna “but” in the treatment of the thirteenth-century grammarian Astarabadhi (N.d. e.g. II: 360, 379). 14 Ironically, the performative analysis restores yaʕni to a verbal status it has lost. 13

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From this perspective, yaʕni would be seen as a word which advises the hearer that what is coming, or what has just been said, is related to what has gone before, and that it should be inferred that this is information of the same type.15 It would also invite the listener to make further inferences about the relation between A and B, for instance adding various meanings given in section 3.2 above and section 6 below.16 5. yaʕni as Focus Marker Whereas to this point the meaning of yaʕni has been described as connecting two concepts, there is a further set of examples in our corpus, comprising about 15% of all tokens in our narrower sample, where such a linking function is not readily discernible. Relevant examples include (4b, 6, 8, 9b, 10a) above, as well as the following. (40) (= 3) a. The speaker describes hitchhiking, where a driver offers to take him to a point halfway to where he wants to go.

gaal l-i ha axuu-y ween raayiħ? gi-t 3M-said to-1SG hey brother-1SG where going? told-1SG l-a raayiħ il ʕeen. gaal l-i ana raayiħ to-3M going il- ʕeen. 3M-said to-1SG I going aa yaʕni nəss əṭ-ṭariig, ah DM half DEF-distance “He said to me, ‘hey brother, where are you going?’ I told him, ‘I’m going to AlEen’. He told me ‘I’m going ah, like half the distance.’” b. The speaker is describing his hitchhiking in the mid 1980’s (see previous example); it was:



fi xamsa wə samaaniin, aw sitta wə samaaniin, yaʕni in five and eighty or six and eighty, DM hum sitta wə samaaniin they six and eighty “in (19)85 or 86, that is they were (working) 1986”.



Thereupon, the interlocutor interpolates a comment intended to show that in those days one could hitch a ride, unlike today:

From a relevancy theory perspective, yaʕni has the contextual effect of strengthening existing assumptions. 16 Related to these two treatments, a third perspective is to regard yaʕni as a type of ‘utterance modifier’. This is a term used by Bach (1999:356) to describe words (locutions) to “comment on the main part of the utterance”. As in the previous two treatments, utterances are divided into propositional material and other material. In English, utterance modifiers are such words and phrases as “but, accordingly, above all, confidentially, in addition to, in contrast …” As seen in the semantic characterization of yaʕni in sections 3.1 and 3.2, yaʕni touches on a number of these meanings, according to larger context. 15



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ðiič il-ayyaam ma kaan fi yaʕni nafs ilħiin DEM DEF-days.PL NEG 3M-was exists DM same now “In those days it wasn’t like I mean (how) it is today” c. The speaker is describing getting a haircut during the Eid. While in general it is difficult to find a barber during this time, nonetheless, some barbers have no clients. (=8a) wə haakaða, fa fi ħalaaliig, ma ħad i-ħalləg and like this, and there are barbers.PL, NEG person 3M-is shaved ʕind-um, leeš? ma fii-hum, yaʕni maħaara fi l-ħəlaaga, at-3PL, why? NEG at-3PL DM skill in DEF-shaving “And so on. And there are barbers who don’t have any (customers). Why? They don’t have, shall we say, any skill in cutting hair.

In (40a) there is no explicit element A which nəss əṭ-ṭariig links to. In (40b) the post-posed subject of existential fi, nafs ilħiin semantically parallels the time adverbial ðiič il-ayyaam, but what is expressed in (40b) is a clear contrast between the two eras. If yaʕni is expressing an additive function in (40b), unlike all examples discussed thus far, it is adding a contrast, not complementary knowledge. In (40c) yaʕni marks the peak of the information segment, the reason the barbers have no clients. On the basis of these examples (as well as those noted above), we would therefore suggest that a general function of yaʕni is to focus a particular constituent. Whereas in its basic function it tends to occur utterance initially or finally (see 3.4.2), here it always occurs in the middle of an utterance before the constituent whose focus it marks. In the three examples above, in fact, it occurs before the constituent containing the tonic (nuclear) syllable of the phonetic utterance, the syllable marking the prosodic information peak in the phrase. In our narrow 300 token sample, in the majority of cases (20/32) yaʕni as focus marker occurs marking the new informational sector of the phrase, occurring either pre-predicate or before a constituent in a predicate, such as the direct object. While these usages do not link two explicitly stated parallel elements, as in the basic meaning, they do appear to contain an implicit parallel one. The focus function can thus be seen in pragmatization terms as adventitious upon the basic meaning. In the examples above, for instance, the implications are as follows: (41)

nəss əṭ-ṭariig, “halfway to where you want to go” (not the whole way) social relations, nafs il-ħiin, “now” (not so good as before) ma fiihum, yaʕni maħaara, “no skill” (whereas those with clients do have the skill)

As in the basic meaning of yaʕni (see 3.4 above), the focused element is linked with another element of comparable status, except that in this case it is an implied element. The “B” part of the basic meaning is left unexpressed. Furthermore, unlike the basic meaning, there is an implicit contrast, not addition of information of the same type.

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These differences can be seen by adding a hypothetical extension to the examples. In (40a), the one who offered the ride could, in theory, have said, ana raayiħ yaʕni nəss əṭ-ṭariig bas, “I’m only going half of the way”, with the addition of the adversative/limiter bas. Bas, unlike yaʕni, does not necessarily create the expectation of a further proposition. While this would not have been appropriate in this situation (from a politeness perspective, why would he have stopped just to tell him he was only going halfway), it would be possible if it was the hitchhiker who initially asked the driver (parked on the road) for a ride. What this indicates is that yaʕni as a focus marker commutes with DMs which do not necessarily create the expectation of a further proposition. It can be noted in this context that one Kuwaiti speaker uses yaʕni three times before codeswitched English constituents, as in (42)

iħna ʕind-na baʕad yaʕni spešal gaðering we at-3PL DM DM special gathering “We have additionally ya know a special gathering” (Kuwait) i-rawwi haw mač il-ʔaayila yaʕni kan spend ʕala wild-ha 3M-shows how much DEF-family DM can spend on child-3F “It shows how much the family ya know can spend on its child.” (Kuwait)

While not all her codeswitches are flagged with yaʕni, where they are they mark a focus on a special code, English, which in the current text is far less frequent than is Arabic. The implied focus contrast here is between languages: yaʕni “English (not Arabic) is coming”.17 6. Further Aspects of yaʕni In this final descriptive section we would like to touch briefly on six further aspects of yaʕni which are prominent in our data. 6.1 Collocations yaʕni collocates to some degree with other discourse markers and with conventionalized predicates. We describe three of the most frequent ones here.

maʕruuf yaʕni (5 tokens): The association between maʕruuf “it’s known” and following yaʕni is transparent: something is known, maʕruuf, and now (yaʕni) I’ll say what it is. Germanos similarly notes that ʔinno not infrequently introduces a language switch in her Beirut corpus. 17



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(43) haaða soʕuuba, haaði miškila fi l-jeeš maʕruuf-a yaʕni DEM difficulty DEM problem in DEF-army known-F DM “This is a difficulty, this is a problem in the army; it’s known of course” (Emirates)

bass yaʕni (7 tokens bass yaʕni, 7 yaʕni bass): Along with yaʕni, bass is one of the most frequent DMs, like yaʕni requiring separate study to tease out its various discourse functions. In contrast to yaʕni, the DM bass often has an adversative, limiting or contrastive meaning. Where it collocates with yaʕni it is bass which sets the illocutive tone. In the following examples, yaʕni, as usual, marks basic topic continuity, while bass marks a contrast (44)

aw yi-štir-uun beet aw šey, mumkin iše, yaʕni or 3-buy-PL house or thing maybe something DM mu šarṭ inna ħayaat-hum t-ṣiir asʕad mu NEG condition that life-3PL 3F-become happier NEG bi-ḍ-ḍaruura, bass yaʕni ʕa-l-aqall il-mašaakil šwayya aqall necessarily DM DM at least DEF-problem.PL little less “Or they buy a house or something, maybe something, I mean, it’s not necessarily the case that their life should become happier automatically, it’s just that at least the problems will be fewer” (Kuwati)

yaʕni fa (15 tokens): yaʕni fa is a natural progression and occurs in this sequence in 15 tokens (as well as 3 fa yaʕni18). Whereas yaʕni anchors the segment in its scope to the preceding utterance, fa signals a move to a new topic or to the next stage in the present topic. In the following, the speaker sums up his story about a mild run-in with the police in his youth with yaʕni. He continues a new episode, introducing it with fa. (45)

ayyaam ṭufuula yaʕni, fa marra ya ṭəwiil il-ʕamər, fi days.PL childhood DM and once oh long DEF-life there is waaħid min it-təħarriy-aat, min ha əš-šorṭa, one of DEF-investigation-PL from DEM DEF-police “(those were) the days of youth ya know. And then let’s see, there was one of the investigations, by the police …” (Emirates)

6.2 Conversational dynamics: yaʕni as turn holder Looking at yaʕni in basic conversational analytic terms, it can be considered a marker of turn holding (rather than speaker switch). In our 719 tokens, only 23 or 3.2% occur in the context: 18

Of these three, one is a false start (see 6.3).

106 (46)

JONATHAN OWENS & TRENT ROCKWOOD Speaker A Speaker B yaʕni …

All of the rest are speaker turn internal. This accords with the basic meaning of yaʕni, which is to signal the continuity of adjacent concepts, and this is best preserved within a speaker turn. By contrast, the DM fa, which, roughly, signals a move to a new topic, has comparatively more turn-initial tokens, 19/192, or 10% of all its tokens. Even where there is a speaker switch, yaʕni still usually maintains topic continuity. For instance, in the following the daughter asks her mother about whether the ħinna party is part of the wedding preparation. The mother begins her turn with yaʕni, the word following it a pronominal demonstrative subject, to underscore the point that yaʕni is here in the realm of familiar information. (47) B: yi-guul-uun iħna ma n-sawwi ħinna 3-say-PL we NEG 1PL-do henna party A: yaʕni haðeela mumkin ma y-kuun-uun il, min il, DM DEM-PL maybe NEG 3-are-PL the from the min il-γalibiyya … from DEF-majority B: They say we don’t do the henna party A1: I mean those ones it’s possible that they aren’t, the … of the majority (Kuwait)

The lack of yaʕni at turn-initial position is thus probably not so much a property of yaʕni as such, as the propensity of speaker switch to coincide with significant topic change. This merits further investigation. It is relevant to mention here an appealing dichotomy of DMs proposed by Jucker & Smith (1998:178, 197) into reception and presentation markers. Reception markers (like naʕam “yes, ok”, nzeen “good, okay”, mbala “to the contrary”) signal reception of information whereas presentation markers signal that information will be given out. Clearly, yaʕni is a presentation marker, as it signals that the speaker will elaborate and qualify what has been said. Jucker & Smith show on a quantitative basis from a sample taken on the west coast of the U.S. that reception markers are more common among pairs of strangers speaking with one another, whereas presentation markers predominate among friends. Their explanation is that presentation markers imply a shared world of knowledge facilitating movement of information, and that such sharedness exists especially among friends. While our sample is too small to make definitive judgments in this respect, it can be noted that Kuwait and Jedda have approximately the same number of yaʕni tokens, 145 and 150 respectively, though the first is a mother-daughter pair, the second two speakers who had never met before the interview. Relative to the total words in the texts, in fact, yaʕni in the Kuwait text is slightly over proportional. We would tentatively suggest that it is not the role relationship between the interlocutors which is the more important factor, but rather a more formal



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genre engendered by the interview situation (see 6.5), and that in this context, a presentational marker such as yaʕni emerges as the interlocutors strive for clarity and explicitness. 6.3 Repair, disfluency, and hesitation While yaʕni itself does not mark disfluencies, it not infrequently (19 tokens in our 300 token narrower corpus) is caught in the middle of them, as it were. In the following, for instance, the speaker has been describing the actions of a police officer who threatened to arrest him once when he was a youth. In the end he did not. The speaker first calls him a good officer, yaʕni follows, which sets up the expectation of a further characterization of the officer, but then the speaker changes his characterization of the officer from a description of his character to one in which the officer is fulfilling a role, by implication properly. (48) haaða đ̣aabet ṭayyib hu yaʕni maṣlaħa yaʕni, haay maṣlaħa DEM officer good he DM official duty DM DEM official duty “This was a good officer he ya know an official duty ya know. This is a duty.” (Emirates)

yaʕni at one and the same time appears to signal a disfluency, but also to transition to the new description, which is ultimately formulated in the well-formed sentence, haay maṣlaħa. As an utterance may be broken off after yaʕni, yaʕni is the word that in this context will be caught holding the bag as it were, so yaʕni itself may appear to be a marker of hesitation. For instance, a speaker describes the difficulty of traveling between Dubai and Al-Ain at a time when a road was being built. He appears at one point to leave three fragments describing the difficulty one after the other, two of them closed by yaʕni. (49)

ma nigdar yaʕni, miš dayman , iṣ-ṣaʕib yaʕni NEG 1SG-can DM NEG always DEF-difficult DM “We couldn’t I mean, not always, (it was) difficult I mean”. (Emirates)

In our interpretation, yaʕni is thrown out here, waiting for the correct formulation to catch up with it and be placed after it. If it isn’t, an effect of hesitation and disfluency will result. In (48) the speaker manages the repair quickly and completely. In (49) the ultimate effect is less successful.19 It is also probable that yaʕni is sometimes inserted to play for time while the speaker is looking for a correct formulation. In the following the speaker hesitates slightly after taʕliimi before continuing with yaʕni + time expression. The entire formulation is rather long “during my days in school as well as now …”,20 and yaʕni may be interpolated to allow the speaker to line up the rest of her utterance formulation.

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(50) ana ħaass-a innu ana yaʕni taʕliim-i yaʕni fii I feeling-F that I DM education-1SG DM in zamaan-i w ilʔaan kamaana, al-manaahij ʕind-ana fi time-1SG and now also DEF-program.PL at-1PL in s-suʕudiyya kwéyisa, DEF-Saudi Arabia good “I feel that I, I mean my teaching, I mean during my time (as a teacher) and now as well, that our curriculum in Saudi Arabia is good.” (Jeddah)

6.4 Politeness yaʕni can sometimes be viewed as a marker of politeness. This is a derivative of its functional logic. To illustrate this point, in the Jeddah texts the two women often disagree on issues. One of the speakers (A) is aggressive in putting over her points, the other (B) more conciliatory in replying. B frequently intersperses her replies with yaʕni’s, as in the following. Speaker A suggests ironically that B should not long for the weather in Jeddah. B defends her longing for Jeddah, interposing two yaʕni’s. (51) A: B A: B:

t-ħinn-i li l-jaww, li l-ħarr w r-ruṭuuba 2-long-F for DEF-weather for DEF-heat and DEF-humidity lli f jidda? that in Jeddah naʕam huwa ħarr ṣaħiiħ bass ma z… ma zaal yaʕni yes it hot correct DM NEG NEG still DM wall… aa… balad-ik, waṭan-ik, wi fii-ha yaʕni ʕaaʔilt-ik, ah country-2F homeland-2F and in-it.F DM family-2F “you long for the weather, the heat and the humidity that’s in Jedda? Yes, that’s true, it’s just that st … it’s still I mean wal … your country, your homeland, and your family is ya know there” (Jeddah)

We would again relate this usage to the “maintaining a relevant link between concepts” function of yaʕni. yaʕni acknowledges the point the other has made or what has been said, signaling the relevance of what is being said to A’s utterance. That yaʕni as a politeness marker is derivable from this function can be seen if yaʕni were not used in B’s response in (51). Said directly, ma zaal baladik wa fiiha ʕaaʔiltak could implicitly be taken as a direct, abrupt contradiction to what has been said. yaʕni, as seen in section 3.2 above, sets the utterance on the same conceptual level as that to which it is related, so that in the actual conversation A’s A full account of repairs would need to recognize phonetic gestures which, in contrast to yaʕni, do appear to be dedicated to hesitation and repair, for instance aaaa, spoken with creaky voice, as in … haaða kaan aaaa kətiibte iruuħuun is-səʕuudiyya, “(now) this one aaaa, his platoon was going to Saudi Arabia”. This is spoken at the beginning of an episode, where it appears that the speaker is lining up his strategy of presentation, hesitating after mentioning the topic. 20 By way of comparison, in our Emirati texts, over 75% of the complete sentences in the texts are 4 words or less. The current sentence is 17 words long, by contrast. 19



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critical utterance is tempered by B’s defense. Thus A’s remark that it is very hot and humid in Jeddah is counterbalanced by B’s “it’s your country”. Paraphrasing the implicit contrast, yaʕni picks up the criticism of A and answers it: “(Jeddah is hot and humid that is true) yaʕni but it’s still your country, and there’s no contradiction in all of these facts contrary to what you imply”.21 yaʕni allows the politeness inference “that is true … but”. 6.5 Etc.: style, register, geographical spread, diglossia … In this section we would like to touch on a number of diverse issues which imply a need for greater study, though are present in a clear enough fashion in our data that they can be at least defined in an adequately precise form. While yaʕni is the most widespread morpheme in our sample of texts, it is by no means universal in all dialects or all registers of Arabic. In Nigerian Arabic, for instance, a corpus of 30,000 words yields only 94 tokens, fewer than in any single text in the current study, and all of these are used by speakers who have a background in Standard Arabic. yaʕni we believe is not a part of native Nigerian Arabic. Even in the Arabian peninsula from where the current texts come, it is clear that the use of yaʕni varies according to register, genre and social situation. Looking at the set of texts from Bahrain in Holes (2005),22 for instance, in an arbitrary sample of nine texts,23 there are only 16 tokens of yaʕni. These texts (from the 1970s) were recorded among uneducated speakers and among people who either were close friends or members of the same larger community. This observation would underscore our remark above in 6.2 that a category such as “presentation marker” does not as such sanction socially-relevant distributions; language and culture-specific factors are always key variables. The significance of genre can also be discerned in our own texts (see also 6.2 above). We divided about 70% of our texts into episodes, “relatively bounded sequences within the more comprehensive speech event or encounter as a whole” (Linell 1998:187). The number of yaʕni’s can vary considerably according to the nature of an individual episode. In one, for instance, consisting of 290 words describing the parts of a typical wedding there are no yaʕni’s. In another, consisting of 1,491 words, in which the two interlocutors argue, sometimes vehemently, about the status and state of education in Saudi Arabia, there are 33 yaʕni’s. We would explain the difference in terms of familiarity of discourse. In describing a wedding, the speaker moves from one event to another within a well-defined frame of reference (Lambrecht 1994:99, Sperber & Wilson 1995:88). The events, participants and setting require no qualification or explanation, types of speech acts which yaʕni tends to flag. In the more argumentative segment the same speaker Though there are other indications as well, for instance, the DM bas. These texts were not edited or cleaned up for register or stylistic reasons (Holes 2005: xx). 23 Pp. 31-2, 77-85, 130-6, 184-5, 209-12, 233-6, 269-70, 295-7, 321-5. 21 22

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needs to defend and explain her position at numerous points, using yaʕni to signal an elaboration or further explanation. (46) above is a representative example from this discourse segment. Diglossia is certainly an aspect of genre and style, and this pervasive element of Arabic is present in our data as well. A good example is (21), repeated here as (52)

yimkin hu ṣaaħib-a yaʕni, ṣadiiq-a24 maybe he friend-3M DM friend-3M “Maybe he is his friend, I mean his friend” (Emirates)

ṣadiiqa cannot be said to add any referential meaning to ṣaaħiba, so what is the purpose of yaʕni here? Probably the speaker was acknowledging the presence of an American observer in the conversation, so a Standard Arabic paraphrase (note /q/ reflex) is in order. Sociolinguistically the exchange can be represented: Local variant yaʕni high variant

Note further that the codeswitching function of yaʕni illustrated in (42) above goes in a similar direction, from a local variant to a sanctioned prestige language, though along a different code parameter: Local language yaʕni international prestige language

Finally, somewhat anecdotally, students learning Arabic may be struck by how frequent yaʕni is in their conversations with Arabs. Speaking with a foreigner, an Arab might use a pedagogical mode, one aspect of which is to paraphrase, elaborate and explain, looking for words and formulations which a language learner might understand. As we saw above in 3.3, these are functions par excellence of yaʕni. 6.6 yaʕni and dictionary meanings Clearly yaʕni, and discourse particles in general, present a challenge to lexicographers. Typically DMs have general meanings which can be paraphrased in terms of the contexts they are used in, the effects they have on audiences, Mustafa Mughazy points out that the paraphrase ṣadiiq-a may further be motivated by the ambiguity of ṣaaħib-a as “an intimate friend of the same sex”. ṣadiiq-a disambiguates to a simple “friend”. Related to this point, intertwined with the low-high dichotomy here is the didactic function which yaʕni can assume in clarification (see 3.3.2). This function was pointed out to us by Roni Henkin (p.c.). She notes that yaʕni will be used in Negev Arabic narratives by elders to signal clarification of individual words. In the example, weeš raayak ya… txaawiini, yaʕni inkuun ana wiyyana xwaan “what is your opinion … you become my brother, that is, you and I become brothers”. The definition of xaawa “become brothers” is introduced by yaʕni. In this instance there is also a shift from a ‘local’ variant, one infused with opaque lexical content, to a more transparent clarification, but a clarification equally carried out in the local dialect. 24



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the inferences which they invite, and so on, and indeed, proper usage of them requires adherence to such factors. Nonetheless, descriptive definitions in terms of equivalences in the target language cannot be dispensed with: the dictionary user still needs the support of possible translations. In the future it would be advisable to gloss them both in broad semantico-pragmatic terms, and in terms of a range of translations which may be appropriate on various occasions. 7. yaʕni: Meaning and Doing Discourse markers can be as much about doing as about meaning. This is certainly the case with yaʕni. Its meaning resides in its discourse organizing function, signaling that a semantic unit of comparable status will follow. yaʕni invites inferences about the nature of the relationship between the concepts, which gives rise to more specific interpretations. References Al-Batal, Mahmoud. 1994. “Connectives in Arabic Diglossia: The case of Lebanese Arabic.” Perspectives on Arabic Linguistics VI ed. by Mushira Eid, Vincente Cantarino & Keith Walters, 91-120. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Al-Sarraj, Abu Bakr. 1981. Al-Usuwl fi l-Naħw [The Foundations of Grammar]. ed. by Abd Husayn al-Fatli. Najaf: Matbaʕat al-Nuʕman. Astarabadhi, Radi al-Din. N.d. Sharħ Kitaab al-Kaafiya [A Sufficient (introductory) Commentary (on syntax)]. Beirut: Dar al-Kutub al-ʕilmiyya. Bach, Kent. 1999. “The Myth of Conventional Implicature”. Linguistics and Philosophy 22.327-66. Badawi, El-Said. 1965. An Intonational Study of Colloquial Riyadhi Arabic. Ph.D. thesis, London University. Badawi, El-Said. 1973. mustawayaat al-ʕarabiyya al-muʕaasira fi misr. Cairo: dar al-maʕarif. El-Said & Martin Hinds, eds. 1986. A Dictionary of Egyptian Arabic. Beirut, Libraire du Liban. Behnstedt, Peter. 1994. Der arabische Dialekt von Soukhne (Syrien). Teil 2: Phonologie, Morphologie, Syntax. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. Bergman, Elizabeth. 2005. Spoken Algerian Arabic. Springfield, VA: Dunwoody Press. Blakemore, Diane. 2002. “Indicators and Procedures: Nevertheless and but”. Journal of Linguistics 36.463-86. Blanc, Haim. 1960. “Stylistic [style] Variations in Spoken Arabic: A simplified interdialectal educated conversation”. Contribution to Arabic Linguistics ed. by Charles Ferguson, 81-156. Cambridge, MA: Center for Middle Eastern Studies.

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Clarity, Beverly, Karl Stowasser, Ronald Wolfe, D.R. Woodhead, Wayne Beene, eds. 2003. A Dictionary of Iraqi Arabic. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press. Fox-Tree, Jean & Josef Schrock. 2002. “Basic Meanings of You Know and I Mean”. Journal of Pragmatics 34.727-47. Dickinson, Erik. 2004. Spoken Libyan Arabic. Springfield, VA: Dunwoody Press. Fraser, Bruce. 1990. “An Approach to Discourse Markers”. Journal of Pragmatics 14.383-95. Fraser, Bruce. 1998. “Contrastive Discourse Markers in English”. Jucker & Ziv 1998, 301-26. Germanos, Marie. 2006. “The Syntactic and Pragmatic Functions of enno in Lebanese Spoken Arabic”. Paper presented at Conference on Communication and Information Structure in Spoken Arabic, University of Maryland. Grice, Paul. 1989. Studies in the Way of Words. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press. Harrel, Richard, ed. 2006 [1966]. A Dictionary of Moroccan Arabic. Georgetown: Georgetown University Press. Heritage, J. 2005. “Cognition in Discourse”. Conversation and Cognition ed. by Hedwig te Molder & Jonathan Potter, 184-202. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hinds, Martin & El-Said Badawi. 1986. Dictionary of Egyptian Arabic. Beirut: Librarie du Liban. Holes, Clive. 2005. Dialect, Culture and Society in Eastern Arabia. Vol. II: Ethnographic Texts. Brill, Leiden. Jucker, Andreas & Sara Smith. 1998. “And People Just You Know Like ‘Wow’: Discourse markers as negotiating strategies”. Jucker & Ziv 1998, 171-201. Jucker, Andreas & Yael Ziv, eds. 1998. Discourse Markers: Descriptions and theory. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Lambrecht, Knud. 1994. Information Structure and Sentence Form. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Larcher, Pierre. 1992. “Du mais en Français au laakin(na) Arabe et retour: Fragment d’une histoire comparée de la Linguistique”. Revue québécoise de linguistique 20.171-93. Linell, Per. 1998. Approaching Dialogue. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Maschler, Yael. 1994. “Metalanguage in Bilingual Conversation”. Language in Society 23.325-66. Pierrehumbert, Susan. 1987. The Phonology and Phonetics of English Intonation. Indiana: Indiana University Linguistics Club. Qafisheh, Hamdi, ed. 1997. NTC’s Gulf Arabic-English Dictionary. Chicago: NTC Publishing Group Qafisheh, Hamdi. 2000. NTC’s Yemeni Arabic-English Dictionary. Chicago: NTC Publishing Group.



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Redeker, Gisela. 1991. “Linguistics Markers of Discourse Structure”. Linguistics 29.1139-1172. Rieber, S. 1997. “Conventional Implicatures as Higher Performatives”. Linguistics and Philosophy 20.51-72. Schiffrin, Deborah. 1987. Discourse Markers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Schourup, Lawrence. 1999. “Discourse Markers”. Lingua 107.227-265. Sperber, Dan & Dierdre Wilson. 1995. Relevance. Oxford: Blackwell. Talay, Shabo. 2003. Der arabische Dialekt der Khaweetna. II: Texte und Glossar. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. Wilson, Deirdre & Dan Sperber. 1993. “Linguisitic Form and Relevance”. Lingua 90:1-25. Woidich, Manfred. 2006. Das Kairenisch-Arabisch. Eine Grammatik. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz.

Citations in Arabic Legal Opinion ɁiftaaɁ versus QaḌaaʔ

AHMED FAKHRI West Virginia University 1. Introduction The study of language in legal contexts has yielded valuable information not only about the peculiar linguistic and discourse features of legal language, but also about legal institutions’ motives, values, and concerns as reflected by their use of language (Levi & Walker 1990, O’Barr & Conley 1990, Shuy 2001, Fakhri 2002). It is this double advantage that serves as the impetus for the present investigation of Arabic legal discourse, which examines the use of reference to other texts as a means of effectively formulating and supporting legal arguments in court judgments and religious edicts called fatwas. The study also explores the socio-cultural factors that motivate the choice of particular ways of citing previous texts in each of the two genres. “Fatwas” are non-binding legal opinions issued by a mufti, a jurisconsult, on the basis of Islamic law, shariiʕa, as embodied in the Quran and hadith, the sayings of the prophet. Throughout the history of the Islamic world, ɁiftaaɁ, the issuing of fatwas, has played an important role in the administration of justice beside the judiciary or qaḍaaɁ. The complementarity of the two institutions has been highlighted in many studies such as Vogel (1996), Masud, Messick & Powers (1996), and Hallaq (1996, 2001). Fatwas, especially those issued by prominent muftis, have been regularly compiled and categorized according to topic. Many well-known collections such as Ibn Taymiyya’s Al-Fataawaa al-Kubraa (2002) and al-Wansharisi’s al-Miʕyaar (1981-1983) have made important contributions to the study of the development of Islamic legal thought. Indeed, some have also served as a major source of information about the customs and the conduct of affairs in Muslim communities. For example, Lagardere (1995:17) and Guichard & Marin (1995:13) highlight the value of al-Wansharisi’s collection and its usefulness for the study of the economic and social history of Islamic communities in medieval

116 AHMED FAKHRI North Africa and al-Andalus.1 While fatwas may be intriguing because of their social and cultural content, the present study focuses primarily on formal aspects. It deals with the linguistic and rhetorical means of citing other sources in fatwas and court judgments and seeks to make two main contributions. First, the study aims at building upon the growing research on Arabic discourse (Al-Batal 1990, Najjar 1990, Fakhri 1995, 2004, Khalil 2000) that attempts to go beyond the traditional focus on Arabic textual cohesion phenomena such as lexical repetition and structural parallelism. In fact, the study attempts not only to identify and describe the means for integrating the content of previous texts into current ones, but it also explores the motivation behind their choice. The selected data are particularly appropriate for this purpose. The two discourse genres, fatwas and court judgments, are a rich site for the study of citations since the main goal of both is to provide an opinion as to how a particular issue should be resolved by referring to shariiʕa law from the Quran and hadith in one case, and secular texts such as legal codes and statutes in the other. Deliberate and careful selection of materials from these sources and their skillful integration into fatwas or judgments is crucial because it constitutes the primary means of justifying and supporting the opinion of the mufti or the court. Second, it is hoped that the analysis of the legal data under consideration contributes, albeit in a small way, to understanding aspects of Arabic thought patterns and their complexity, thus building upon scholarship that has traditionally considered the fiqh, the science of law, as central to the development of Arabic and Islamic thought (Makdisi 1985, Hallaq 2001, Al Jabri 2003, Meddeb 2003). In his treatise takwiinu alʕaqli alʕarabiyyi “the formation of the Arab mind,” the Moroccan philosopher Al-Jabri (2003:94) demonstrates cogently the crucial role of ʕilmu Ɂuṣuuli alfiqh “the science of the sources of law” and its primacy in Islamic scholarship compared to other disciplines. He mentions in particular that one of the main purposes of Al-Khawarizmi’s book on Algebra, aljabru wa almuqaabala (Al-Khawarizmi 1968), was to respond to the community’s needs concerning legal issues such as inheritance, division of property, and regulation of trade. The integration of previous texts into current ones, which concerns us here, is often subsumed under the general notion of intertextuality. According to this notion, new texts are inevitably influenced and infiltrated by prior ones, creating a web of intricate relations among them. The study of such complex textual relations has generated vast literature in diverse disciplines such as philosophy, literary theory, rhetoric, and linguistics (Barthes 1977, Foucault 1984, Bakhtin 1986, Ibn Taymiyya (1263-1328) was a prolific mufti who wrote very elaborate fatwas with extensive use of citations from the Quran and hadith (see Weiss 1996 for more details). Al-Wansharisi was a fifteenth-century mufti whose collection al-Miʕyaar includes several thousand fatwas by hundreds of muftis who lived in the Maghrib and al-Andalus between 1000 and 1496 (Masud, Messick & Powers 1996:10). 1



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Pennycook 1996, Hyland 2003, Orr 2003). The present study concentrates on the realization of intertextuality through citations and draws upon insights from genre analysis research (Swales 1990, Bhatia 1993, and Hyland 2000) and particularly from relevant studies of citations in academic discourse. These studies have examined many features of citations including the linguistic means of emphasizing the reported author or, alternatively, the reported message, the manipulation of the tense/aspect system to indicate various degrees of distance from the cited material, and the selection of reporting verbs for the purpose of evaluating previous scholarship (Swales 1990, Hyland 2000). Tadros (1993) investigates the functions of citations in data from the fields of linguistics, sociolinguistics, and discourse analysis and attempts to determine whether differences in writers’ purposes affect the way they use citations. The main finding of the study is that citations are avoided in order not to weaken the authority of the current writer, but utilized extensively when the purpose is to show gaps in the previous scholarship and to provide justification for the current research. Thompson & Yiyun (1991) deal in particular with the different types of reporting verbs in academic discourse and the significance of their selection. The data for their study come from article introductions in applied linguistics, geology, engineering, and veterinary sciences. Their results indicate that the choice of reporting verbs depends on their denotation and evaluative potential and reflects various degrees of the writer’s commitment to, or detachment from, the reported material. In a more comprehensive study, Hyland (2000) examines citations in different academic disciplines, including physics, engineering, philosophy, and sociology. The study considers the surface forms of citations, the types of reporting verbs selected, and the integration of content from previous sources in the form of quotations, summaries, or generalizations. The analysis of the data shows that citation patterns vary across academic disciplines and tend to reflect the cognitive and cultural values of the communities they address. This brief survey of research on the use of citations is sufficient to provide a general idea of the kind of issues and analytical procedures worth considering for the investigation of citations in the present study. 2. Data Collection and Analysis The data considered consist of forty fatwas and forty court judgments. The fatwas are selected from the following sources: fataawaa hayɁat kibaar alʕulamaaɁ “Fatwas of the Council of Prominent Scholars” (Shawadfi 1987), fataawaa Ɂislammiyyah “Islamic Fatwas” (Rifaii 1988), duruus wa fataawaa “Lessons and Fatwas” (Ibn Uthaymin n.d.), and hudaa alɁislaam: fataawaa muʕaaṣirah “Islamic Guidance: Modern Fatwas” (Qaradawi 1981). In the selection of fatwas two main factors have been taken into consideration. First, since the length of the response in the fatwas varies a great deal, ranging from a single paragraph to a few pages, it has been ensured that the fatwas selected are long enough for them to exhibit several citations. Second, an attempt has been made to include fatwas by different

118 AHMED FAKHRI muftis so as to avoid any single mufti’s stylistic peculiarities. The sample comprises fatwas by three different muftis in addition to several fatwas attributed collectively to fatwa committees.2 This measure is mostly precautionary because stylistic variation regarding citations seems quite limited given the highly formulaic nature of the language of fatwas, as will become apparent shortly. Although the content of the fatwas is to a large extent impertinent given the focus on the linguistic and rhetorical properties of the texts, it is worth mentioning that the fatwas selected deal with topics concerning the rituals of praying and fasting, family law, and Islam’s position on modern issues such as family planning, insurance, and banking. The court judgments selected have been rendered by the Moroccan Supreme Court and come from the collection qaḍaaɁu al majlisi alɁaʕlaa “Supreme Court judgments” (Supreme Court 2006) and from issues of the law reviews almilaf “The File” (Wahbi 2005) and majallat alqaḍaaɁ wa alqaanuun “the Journal of Justice and Law” (Ministry of Justice 1989, 1991). The sample is deemed quite representative since it includes judgments from different chambers of the court and different branches of the law: civil, penal, commercial, and family law. There are two main reasons for choosing Supreme Court judgments rather than judgments by lower courts. First, the literature on language and the law indicates that legal discourse varies greatly depending on the type of the judicial institution considered (O’Barr & Conley 1990, Cornu 1990, Mendegris & Vermelle 1996, Fakhri 2002). Therefore the limitation of the data to Supreme Court judgments is intended in part to avoid extreme rhetorical variation that may obscure meaningful regular patterns. Second, the main function of the Supreme Court is to ensure the correct application of the law rather than sort out the facts of the case, which is the domain of lower courts. For this reason the judgments selected are bound to refer to various laws and statutes that have been violated, misinterpreted, or misapplied, which makes them particularly suitable for a study of citations such as the present one. Furthermore, the fact that the Supreme Court judgments are not concerned with establishing the facts of the case enhances their comparability to fatwas, since the latter also adopt a similar position and take as factually correct the case presented by the questioner. The analysis of the data consists in reading the texts selected several times for the purpose of identifying and describing the main patterns regarding the reference to, and the incorporation of, material from the Quran and hadith in the fatwas and from legal codes and statutes in the court judgments. Details and peculiar stylistic variations are ignored so as not to blur the main patterns that will serve as the basis for comparing and contrasting the two sets of data. The linguistic aspects considered include direct and indirect quoting, frequent syntactic structures in the

The three muftis, all quite well-known, are Abdulaziz Ibn Baz, Muhammad Salah Ibn Uthaymin, and Yusuf Qaradawi. Fatwa committees usually comprise three or four muftis. 2



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citations, the types of reporting verbs employed, and the choice of tense, present or past, in reporting clauses.3 3. Main Findings The presentation of the results of the analysis will be done in the following way. The main patterns of citing previous texts will be identified and illustrated through excerpts from the data and then tables showing their frequency of occurrence are given in order to help the reader develop an idea of the general trends exhibited in the data. On the basis of this presentation the main contrasts between the two sets of data, court judgment and fatwas, are summarized. These contrasts are subsequently accounted for in the discussion section. Let’s consider the court judgments first. 3.1. Patterns of citations in the court judgments The court judgments employ three main patterns of reference to laws and statutes. The first pattern is the simple identification of the relevant legal texts, often in adjunct structures introduced by phrases such as binaaɁan ʕalaa “according to” or wifqan li “in accordance with,” (example 1) or in Ɂiḍaafa (genitive) constructions typically headed by nominals such as taṭbiiq “application” or xarq “violation” (example 2). (1) binnaaɁan ʕalaa qaanuuni almisṭarati almadaniyyati According to the code of civil procedure (2)

…xarqa alfaṣli 452 min qaanuuni alɁiltizaamaati wa alʕuquudi. …the violation of article 452 of the code of obligations and contracts.

The second pattern involves the identification of the legal text with some indication of its content as in (3), which mentions the three-month deadline for presenting a particular request to the court.

(3)

Ɂaṣdara alqaaḍii almuntadab Ɂamrahu biʕadami qabuuli aṭṭalabi biʕillati taqdiimihi xaarija Ɂajali thalaathati Ɂashhurin almanṣuuṣi ʕalayhaa fi almaaddati 667 min m. t. [mudawwanati attijaarati]. The deputy judge issued his order not to accept the request because it was made after the three-month period indicated in item 667 of the code of commerce.

In the third pattern, a reporting clause is used to quote legal texts directly or indirectly as in (4) and (5). The most frequent reporting verb is naṣṣ “stipulate” in the present tense in addition to a few instances of verbs such as Ɂajaaz “allow” and Ɂawjab “require” that indicate explicitly the illocutionary intent of the law. The generic formula ṭibqan lilqaanuun “in accordance with the law” which appears routinely at the beginning of court judgments is excluded from the analysis. 3

120 AHMED FAKHRI Simple identification of legal texts In adjunct structures In ’idaafa constructions Others

86 67 38

Identification of legal texts with indication of content

19

Quotation from legal texts Indirect Direct

49 8

Reporting verbs nass Others

33 24

Tense of reporting verbs Present Past

45 12

Table 1: Frequency of citation features in the court judgments

(4)

Ɂinna almaaddata 119 almadhkuurata tanuṣṣu ʕalaa Ɂannahu “Ɂidhaa lam yunaffid arraasii ʕalayhi shuruuṭa almuzaayadti…” Item 119 mentioned above stipulates that “If the person awarded an auction does not follow auction requirements…”

(5)

Ɂinna alfaṣlayni 109 wa 111 min mudawwanati alɁaħwaali ashshaxṣiyyati ynuṣṣaani ʕalaa Ɂanna almaħḍuuna laa yumkinu lahu Ɂan yabiita Ɂillaa ʕinda alħaaḍinati. Articles 109 and 111 of the code of personal status stipulate that a child in custody can stay overnight only at the residence of the person who has custody.

Table 1 gives the frequency of these features. 3.2. Patterns of citations in the fatwas By far the most frequent pattern of citing the Quran and hadith in the fatwas is direct quotations introduced by a reporting clause, typically with the past tense form qaala “said” as the reporting verb. Examples (6) and (7) illustrate quotations for the Quran and hadith, respectively. Note that the subject of the verb qaal “say” may be explicitly stated as in (7) (rasuulu llaahi “the messenger of God”) or implied as in (6), where the honorific expression taʕaalaa “exalted” is deemed sufficient as reference. (6)

qaala taʕaalaa: “wa yuħarrimu ʕalayhimu alxabaaɁitha.” [God] said [honorific expression]: “He forbids them from having impurities.”



qaala rasuulu allaahi ṣalla llaahu ʕalayhi wa sallam: “ Ɂinna llaaha Ɂanzala addaaɁa wa addawaaɁ.” God’s messenger said [honorific expression]: “God has sent both illnesses and remedies.”

(7)





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In other instances the quotations are introduced with the nominal form qawl “saying” as in (8) and (9). (8) liqawlihi subħaanahu: “wa laa tujaadiluu Ɂahla alkitaab.” For His [God] saying [honorific expression]: “Do not argue with the people of the book.” (9) liqawli annabiyyi ṣalla llaahu ʕalayhi wa sallam: “laʕnu almuɁmini kaqatlih.” For the saying of the prophet [honorific expression]: “Cursing a believer is like killing him.”

In a few cases, reporting verbs other than qaal “say” are used that serve to enhance the authenticity of the hadith, for example, or to indicate explicitly the intent of the quoted material. These verbs may replace the verb qaal or be used in conjunction with it, as in the expression thabata ʕani annabiyyi Ɂannahu qaal... “it was ascertained that the prophet said…,” They may also co-occur with the nominal qawl as in nahaa llaahu ʕan dhaalika biqawlihi… “God prohibited that by saying…”. These patterns of citation with a reporting clause or the nominal qawl “saying” represent 84% of all instances of citations (see Table 2 below). The rest of the cases include a few instances of indirect reporting as in (10), quotations that are not integrated into the text (11), and brief summaries (12). (10) thabata ʕani annabiyyi Ɂanna alqurɁaana nazala min ʕindi llaahi fi sabʕati Ɂaħruf. It was ascertained that according to the prophet the Quran came from God in seven readings.

(11) …Ɂan taltazima almarɁatu almuslimatu Ɂidhaa xarajat min baytihaa fi azzayyi wa almashyi wa alkalaami wa alħarakati: “wa qul lilmuɁminaati yaghḍuḍna min Ɂabṣaarihinna.” The Muslim woman must show reserve outside the home regarding her dress, gait, speech, and movement: “Tell women believers to be modest…” (12) dalla alqurɁaanu bi ʕumuumihi ʕalaa taħriimi al ghinaaɁi The Quran, in general, indicated the prohibition of singing.

It is worth noting that some hadith citations indicate the collection from which the hadith is taken (e.g., ṣahiih muslim “Muslim’s sound collection”) and/or the chain of transmission, Ɂisnaad, with one or more names of hadith transmitters, as in (13).4

The two most important and frequently-cited collections are those compiled by Muhammad Ibn Isma‘il Al-Bukhari and Muslim Ibn Hajjaj, who both lived in the ninth century. The collections are usually referred to as ṣaħiiħ Al-Bukhari, “Al-Bukhari’s sound collection,” and ṣaħiiħ Muslim, “Muslim’s sound collection.” Sometimes the two collections are referred to jointly by the dual form in the prepositional phrase fi aṣṣaħiiħayn “in the two sound collections.” 4

122 AHMED FAKHRI Direct quotes with reporting verbs qaal “say” Past Present

127 15

Other verbs Past Present

14 1

Direct Quotes with qawl “saying”

65

Other Patterns

41

Table 2: Frequency of citation features in the fatwas

(13) fa fi aṣṣaħiiħayni ʕan ibni masʕuud raḍiya llaahu ʕanhu qaala rasuulu llaahi ṣalla llaahu ʕalayhi wa sallam: “….” In the two sound collections, according to Ibn Masuud [honorific expression], the messenger of God [honorific expression] said: “…”

Table 2 gives the frequency of the main citation features in the fatwas.5 The analysis of the patterns of citations presented above shows four main differences between the fatwas and the court judgments: 1. The fatwas and the court judgments exhibit variable emphasis on authorship and texts: fatwa citations refer to both texts and authors; the court judgments refer almost exclusively to texts. 2. Whereas direct quotations of hadith and verses from the Quran are by far the most prevalent mode of incorporating these texts into the fatwas, the court judgments exhibit a variety of patterns: simple identification of legal texts, brief indications of content, and quotes, mostly indirect ones. 3. In the court judgments, the preferred syntactic patterns for incorporating previous material are adjunct structures and Ɂiḍaafa constructions; on the other hand, the fatwas rely heavily on reporting clauses to introduce Quran and hadith. 4. Regarding reporting verbs and tense, the fatwas use mostly qaal “say” and the past tense, while the court judgments use naṣṣ “stipulate” and the present tense. These differences are discussed in turn in the following section.

Qaradawi’s and Shawadfi’s fatwa collections sometimes use footnotes to indicate chapters from which Quranic verses are quoted or that name hadith collections; however, this is not done consistently. 5



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4. Discussion 4.1. Authorship versus text prominence The court judgments’ citations refer almost exclusively to legal texts rather than authors; only in two instances in the forty judgments did the citation mention the rather generic author of the text cited, almusharriʕ “the legislator” in one instance and alfuqahaaɁ “legal scholars” in another. On the other hand, the fatwas report texts and mention authors. In addition to explicit references to God to introduce verses from the Quran, the fatwas frequently mention the prophet, the hadith transmitters and, occasionally, alʕulamaaɁ “(religious) scholars” or Ɂahlu alʕilm wa alɁiftaaɁ “the community of (religious) scholars and jurisconsults.” Before attempting to account for this difference, a couple of remarks are in order that help to assess the significance of the issue of text attribution and serve to provide a background for this discussion. Studies of citations in academic discourse have paid a great deal of attention to the question of the relative prominence given to the reported texts and their authors. Preference for author prominence can presumably be signaled through mentioning the author in the citing sentence; on the other hand, emphasizing the reported material rather than the author can be achieved by referring to the latter in parentheses or by superscript numbers (Swales 1990, Hyland 2000). It is the writers’ task to select the strategy that best suits their purpose. A more theoretical discussion of the issue is presented in Foucault (1984), which examines the development of the notion of authorship in the West. Foucault wrote: In our civilization, it has not always been the same types of texts which have required attribution to an author. There was a time when the texts that we today call “literary”… were accepted, put into circulation, and valorized without any question about the identity of their authors…. On the other hand, those texts that we now would call scientific… were accepted in the Middle Ages, and accepted as “true,” only when marked with the name of their author. “Hippocrates said,” “Pliny recounts,”… were the markers inserted in discourses that were supposed to be received as statements of demonstrated truth. (Foucault 1984:109).



The main point of these remarks is that the mention of authors is not fortuitous; it has rhetorical potential since it may reveal current writers’ motives, indicate the authority of the text reported, and affect audiences’ reactions to it. Regarding the present study, it is the option of mentioning authors that seems marked and needs explanation. The case of the court judgments is straightforward: attribution of legal texts to almusharriʕ “the legislator” would have been utterly superfluous and uninformative and, thus, to be avoided. Text attribution in the fatwas requires further examination. It seems that even in the case of fatwas specification of authorship is uninformative in the sense that a simple identification of the text reported as Quran or hadith would suffice. Indeed, in a few instances the generic phrase “fi alkitaabi wa assunnah” (i.e. in the Quran and hadith) has been deemed sufficient. The often lengthy mention of the names of successive hadith

124 AHMED FAKHRI transmitters in Ɂisnaad can also be viewed, although somewhat paradoxically, as uninformative in that it is too detailed and esoteric to be useful for the ordinary lay questioner. In other words, it is not the case that the latter is going to be able to assess the authenticity of the chain of transmitters in order to determine the appropriate reaction to adopt towards the fatwa. So the motivation behind the mention of authors in the fatwas must be something other than its information value. I would like to propose two complementary accounts for this finding; both accounts are based on the non-binding character of the fatwa and on the fact that the questioner’s decision to adhere to its recommendations or not would depend on its persuasive quality. First, the regular mention of God, the prophet, and the hadith transmitters with the accompanying honorific expressions must generate a sense of reverence and piety in the questioner, which is bound to enhance the emotional appeal or pathos of the fatwa. This is an important persuasive element in view of the fact that seeking a fatwa in the first place is a strong indication of a believer’s need for spiritual guidance as to what would constitute appropriate Muslim conduct. Second, the frequent use of Ɂisnaad with sometimes lengthy lists of hadith transmitters can be taken, and probably legitimately so, as an indication of the mufti’s erudition and competence, which should reinforce his status or ethos in the eyes of the questioner. This persuasion device is reminiscent of what Latour (1987:131) calls black-boxing in academic discourse. In brief, black-boxing consists in compiling “a large number of elements” and making them “act as one” in order to make one’s writing convincing. As suggested by Block (1996: 70), black-boxing may be achieved through extensive citation of the research of other scholars, especially well-known ones, as a means of promoting one’s own research. The need for similar elements of pathos and ethos, so to speak, is absent in the case of court judgments. Here the exclusive reference to legal texts themselves using dates and article numbers highlights the primacy of the law and connotes a high degree of objectivity and detachment on the part of the court. Any indication of judges’ subjectivity or hint of personal involvement in the crafting of the text will be viewed with suspicion and alarm. In sum, this concern for objectivity coupled with the redundancy of attribution to a diffuse entity such as “the legislator” precludes mention of authorship in the citations of court judgments. 4.2. The use of quotations There is a clear difference between the fatwas and the court judgments regarding the use of quotations. While direct quotations are the most frequent means of incorporating material from the Quran and hadith, in the court judgments they represent only a small fraction compared to the other devices: simple identification of relevant laws, brief indication of their content, and indirect quotes. This difference can be explained in terms similar to the ones provided earlier for authorship: the need for the fatwa to persuade a particular believer seeking



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guidance and, conversely, the concern in the court judgment for efficient and detached application of the rule of law. In addition to appealing to the sense of piety and reverence that any reference to, or discussion of, the Quran and hadith creates in the community of believers, the fatwas, by using direct quotations, take advantage of the rhetorical sophistication and stylistic elegance of these texts to enhance their persuasive quality. Thus a high degree of cohesion is created by this congruence between the semantic content of the texts quoted and their formal properties (Jakobson 1960), which is likely to have a positive effect on the reader of the fatwa and facilitates his acceptance of its recommendations. In the court judgments, however, a brief indication of the content of legal texts or their mere identification through the use of dates and numbers seems to be sufficient. Such brevity of reference is not only appropriate but even desirable. Indeed extensive quotations of the law may be quite superfluous, since the argumentation in court judgments, especially those rendered by superior courts as is the case here, is primarily intended for lawyers and other legal experts who should be familiar with the content of legal texts and who, in case of doubt, possess the means and the skills for consulting a variety of legal manuals or other sources available to them. In sum, the difference between fatwas and court judgments regarding how texts are quoted reflects a more general phenomenon often discussed in writing theories: the impact of audience awareness on the rhetorical organization of texts. In this instance, ordinary lay people and legal experts constitute different kinds of audiences that require different types of rhetoric. It is undeniable that even in the case of court judgments, lay people are ultimately the parties concerned; however, given the complexity of legal language, most of the time lawyers or other law professionals are called upon to mediate between them and the courts and hopefully to explain to them the content of court decisions in terms they are able to understand. 4.3. Variation in syntactic patterns The fatwas rely heavily on the use of reported clauses to introduce materials from the Quran and hadith, whereas the court judgments exhibit a high frequency of adjunct structures and Ɂiḍaafa constructions that include reference to laws. This difference is perhaps best accounted for through historical developments. The fatwas represent an old genre in the Islamic legal tradition, which over the centuries has developed a distinct character not only in terms of topical content but also in terms of rhetorical practices. Given the respect for tradition in Islamic education (Wagner & Lotfi 1980, Rahman 1982, Eickelman 1985), it should not be surprising that present-day fatwas continue to adhere to old rhetorical practices. In fact, a casual comparison of old fatwas and contemporary ones reveals several similarities in the formulation of citations as suggested by examples (14) and (15).

126 AHMED FAKHRI

(14) fi ṣaħiiħi muslim ʕan abii hurayrah raḍiya llaahu ʕanhu ʕani annabiyyi ṣalla llaahu ʕalayhi wa sallama Ɂannahu qaal: “almuɁminu alqawiyyu xayrun wa Ɂaħabbu Ɂilaa llaahi…” In Muslim’s sound collection according to Abi Hurayrah [honorific expression], the prophet [honorific expression] said: “God prefers strong believers…” Ibn Taymiyya, 13th /14th centuries (2002, vol. 1:108)

(15) fi ṣaħiihi muslim ʕan abii hurayrah raḍiya llaahu ʕanhu ʕani annabiyyi ṣalla llaahu ʕalayhi wa sallama Ɂannahu qaal: “juzzuu ashshawaariba…” In Muslim’s sound collection according to Abi Hurayrah [honorific expression] the prophet [honorific expression] said: “trim your moustaches…” Rifaaii (1988, vol. 3:315)

The Moroccan Supreme Court judgments, on the other hand, seem to reflect practices involving laws codified and referred to in the western tradition with dates and numbered divisions, for example. It is plausible that the syntactic patterns observed, namely adjunct structures and genitive constructions, are the result of rhetorical borrowing. This explanation is in line with Fakhri (2002), which suggests that the discourse of Moroccan legal texts has been influenced by French legal rhetoric as a consequence of historical, socio-cultural, and educational factors associated with the presence of France in Morocco in the first half of the twentieth century. Examples (16) and (17), which are taken respectively from the Moroccan Supreme Court Judgments and from judgments by the French “Cour de Cassation” show a high degree of similarity that cannot be easily dismissed as coincidental. (16) a. binaaɁan ʕalaa alfaṣli 345 min qaanuuni almisṭarati almadaniyyati… According to article 345 of the code of civil procedure… (Almilaf, 2005, vol. 5:255.) b. ʕamalan bimuqtaḍayaati alfaṣli 929 min qaanuuni alɁiltizaamaati wa alʕuquudi In application of the stipulations of article 929 of the code of obligations and contracts. (qaḍaaɁ almajlisi alɁaʕlaa, 2006, vol. 64/65:22) (17) a. Vu l’article 1382 du code civil… Considering article 1382 of the civil code… (Cour de Cassation, Decision 68-10.276, February 27, 1970.) b. En application des articles R. 142-1 et R. 142-18 du code de la securite In application of articles R 142-1 and R 142-18 of the code of social security. (Cour de Cassation, Decision 03948, December 2002)

This kind of variation exhibited in the fatwas and court judgments points out the hybridity and diversity of Arabic rhetoric resulting from the preservation of internal traditional practices and the borrowing of patterns from other rhetorical traditions. Figure 1 captures this phenomenon as an interface between diachronic fixity, borrowing, and synchronic variation in Arabic rhetoric.



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Old Fatwas (Example 14)

Other Rhetoric (French Cour de Cassation: Example 17)



Diachronic Fixity

Borrowing



127

Contemporary Fatwas Court Judgments (Moroccan (Example 15) Supreme Court: Example: 16)

Figure 1: Synchronic variation

4.4. Reporting verbs: lexical and tense choices The analysis of the data reveals that qaal “say” and naṣṣ “stipulate” are the main reporting verbs employed in the fatwas and the court judgments, respectively. The reason for the lexical difference (qaal versus naṣṣ) is obvious: it is the variable emphasis on authorship or texts as discussed earlier. What is worth considering is the fact that both verbs are non-evaluative. In order to understand the significance of this observation, let’s recall that the literature on the use of citations shows a great deal of variation regarding the choice of reporting verbs. For example, Hyland (2000:26) mentions that his data include 400 different reporting verbs, although almost half of them occur only once. This variation in the use of reporting verbs is motivated, at least partially, by writers’ decisions to carefully and skillfully select those verbs that will best serve their purposes. Evaluative verbs, for instance, allow writers to quote positively or negatively others’ research in order to promote their own. It is certain that similar involvement and manipulation on the part of writers of fatwas or court judgments would be quite inappropriate given the authority and solemnness of the texts reported. Even the few verbs in the data that are potentially evaluative only serve to highlight such authority. This is clearly the case of the verbs thabata “to ascertain,” Ɂawjaba “to require,” and nahaa “to forbid” mentioned above. Therefore, the reliance on the neutral verbs qaal “say” and naṣṣ “stipulate” is quite appropriate. Regarding the choice of the past or the present tense for the reporting verbs, the two sets of data display opposite practices: the fatwas use the past form qaala “said” and the court judgments, the present yanuṣṣu “stipulates.” The very few exceptions in each set of data do not allow for meaningful accounts for the switch from one tense to the other. We must admit, however, that, in general, explanations for tense/aspect choices in discourse have often been problematic (Swales 1990). In academic discourse, the choice of the past or the present to report others’ research is sometimes claimed to reflect different degrees of the writer’s commitment to or distance from the research reported. Explanations of this sort often lack intuitive appeal and sound speculative at best. Thus in the present discussion, I will only venture a tentative account for the difference in tense preference between

128 AHMED FAKHRI fatwas and court judgments. It is quite possible that this difference simply reflects rhetorical traditions for each genre. Thus, in the fatwas, expressions using the past tense, such as qaala ʕazza wa jalla “[He=God] said [honorific expression]”, have become, through repeated use, unchangeable formulaic chunks that serve as an efficient way of identifying the text reported as Quranic. In the court judgments, the use of the present tense to report the content of legal codes and statutes is reminiscent of the consecrated usage of the same tense in English or French in phrases such as the law stipulates that… and La loi stipule que…. In fact it would not be far-fetched to claim that the present tense in the Moroccan Supreme Court judgments reflects French usage, given the many rhetorical influences of French legal rhetoric on Arabic legal texts as has been discussed earlier (section 4.3). 5. Conclusion The main conclusion that emerges from this discussion is that citations in the two genres of legal opinion considered display different practices regarding the variable emphasis on authors and texts, the incorporation of previous material as quotes and summaries, the selection of syntactic patterns, and the lexical and tense choices concerning reporting verbs. Some of these differences have been attributed to the functional distinction between the institutions of ɁiftaaɁ and qaḍaaɁ: fatwas are non-binding texts where muftis attempt to persuade ordinary lay questioners, while court judgments are compulsory decisions intended for law professionals who participate in the objective administration of justice. Other differences have been accounted for through historical factors. It has been suggested that the fatwas considered, which belong to an old genre in the Islamic legal tradition, have retained aspects of the rhetorical practices of that tradition. The court judgments appear to have adopted modern practices borrowed from western rhetoric. These findings highlight the hybridity of Arabic discourse that symbolically echoes the tension between tradition and modernity that still lurks in Arab and Islamic cultures. Such rhetorical complexity and its diverse sources are worthy of further inquiry not only because of the linguistic insights that may be gained but also because such inquiry has the potential of providing better understanding of cultural thought patterns embedded in Arabic texts. References Al-Batal, Mahmoud. 1990. “Connectives as Cohesive Elements in a Modern Expository Arabic Text”. Perspectives on Arabic Linguistics II ed. by Mushira Eid & John McCarthy, 234-268. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Al-Jabri, Mohamed. 2003. takwiinu alʕaqli alʕarabiyyi [The formation of the Arab mind]. Casablanca: Daaru annashri.



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Language Policy and Factors inFLUENCING IT IN SOME MIDDLE EASTERN COUNTRIES AND MOROCCO1 ABDERRAHMANE ZOUHIR University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign 1. Introduction Language policy and planning of any country reflects its political options, its traditions, and its values which shape language politics in diverse settings. This entails that language policy must be understood in connection with the broad social, political, economic, and cultural forces that shape it. Perceived this way, studies in language policies should be investigated using a critical approach à la Ricento & Hornberger (1996), Pennycook (2001), Tollefson (2002), among others. Theories such as these are built on critical thinking that focuses on how political, cultural, historical, and economic factors influence both national policies and citizens’ perceptions. In this paper I try to describe the complex relations between cultural, historical, religious, and political ideologies and language policies in Israel, Lebanon, and Turkey. I show in each case study that the factors cited above shape and influence any decision making in language policy. Therefore, language policy and planning cannot be interpreted and explained without a thorough awareness of these factors. I argue that the debate within language policy as set out in these countries can apply to other countries. Accordingly, I built a model where I show that historical, religious, cultural and political factors influence the language policy. Then I apply that model to the Moroccan situation to demonstrate that there are similarities and differences with the situations of the countries cited above. I conclude by inviting and warning anyone interested in language policy to consider it from a critical approach: understanding the cultural, religious, historical, and political dimensions that affect and shape it.

A preliminary version of this article was presented at the Twenty-First Annual Symposium on Arabic Linguistics held at Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah. I would like to thank the participants there for their useful comments and helpful suggestions. All shortcomings remain my own responsibility. 1

134 ABDERRAHMANE ZOUHIR 2. Literature Review on Language Planning and Policy Theories Language planning and policy is a topic of scholarly interest and a sphere of inquiry. Tollefson (2002) argues that language policies are central to some social and political processes. More specifically, language planning and policy must be understood in connection with broad social, political, and economic forces that shape education and social life. His assumptions on language planning and politics are built on critical linguistics “which focuses on the study of language within its social, political, and historical context, with primary concern for (in)equality, linguistic discrimination, and language rights” (Tollefson 2002: 3). Moreover, his arguments are based on a critical perspective which investigates how language policies affect the lives of people who have no influence over the policy making process. From this discussion, it can be argued that Tollefson’s critical approach is basically similar to Pennycook’s (2001) Critical Applied Linguistics (CAL). Pennycook (2001) explains that CAL is used to describe a way of bringing rigorous analysis to textual understanding. It is an attempt to relate aspects of language to broader social relations. It is an approach that aims to show how linguistic practices are linked to the wider sociopolitical structures of power and domination. Like Tollefson’s approach, Pennycook’s CAL goes beyond work that only describes. It addresses issues of power, resistance, disparity, and difference. According to Pennycook, CAL needs to incorporate views of language, society, and power that are capable of dealing with questions of access, power, disparity, and difference. Issues about the dominance of certain languages over others have been tackled most tellingly by Phillipson (1992) through his notion on linguistic imperialism. He argues that English has been spread for political and economic reasons, and it poses a major threat to other languages. It is prompted through multiple agencies and to the exclusion of other languages. Wiley (2000) reports that educational language planning and policies are best understood in their relationship to political and social dimensions. He asserts that language policy must take into account the social, economic, political, and educational contexts in which people with unequal power and resources contend with one another. In his discussion of language planning, Wiley (1996) contends that corpus planning, status planning, and language acquisition planning should be involved in any planning activity. He argues that corpus planning involves activities related to standardizing the written language. Status planning involves identifying languages for different purposes. Language acquisition is related to language spread, especially through education. Wiley also identifies three major goals for language planning, namely, language, political, and economic goals. For Ricento & Hornberger (1996), language planning and policy is not neutral. It is motivated by different goals and has different components that interact and affect one another. For them, language planning and policy is a construct that involves three interrelated components, namely agents, levels, and processes of language planning. Ricento & Hornberger (1996) think that language planning



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policy processes and the politics that affect them interact across the national and institutional layers. From this discussion and literature review about language planning and policy, it becomes clear that language planning and policy is not neutral. Rather, it is motivated by different goals. Indeed, it is essential to understand the debate within language policy as set forth here to be able to approach the language policy in Morocco critically. However, issues of language policy in Morocco cannot be interpreted and explained without an historical, social, and sociolinguistic awareness of language policy of some Middle Eastern countries. In the section that follows, I discuss language planning and policy framework in Lebanon, Turkey and Israel. The underlying guiding principle is to show that language is not only a tool by which people communicate with each other, but also reflects social identity. 3. Language Situation and Policy in Lebanon Lebanon is a small, largely mountainous country in the Middle East. It is complex linguistically. Four languages share the linguistic space that makes the Lebanese cultural scene. Arabic, French, English and Armenian are the languages used in Lebanon. Arabic and French are “intimately interwoven with issues of national identity in Lebanon” (Suleiman 2003: 204). Standard Arabic advocates associate Standard Arabic with pan-Arab nationalism. It is the same language that is used in the Arabization process. Mohammad (1985) asserts that Standard Arabic is “remarkably uniform throughout the Arab world” (p. 1). Suleiman notices that Muslims are the main supporters of the variety and the nationalist ideology it underpins in Lebanon. This situation is reminiscent of Egyptian nationalism. It is a claim that Arabic speakers are united by a shared history, language and culture. The first stirring of Arab nationalism started in Egypt where the Turks sought to use the Empire by assimilating non-Turkish groups — using coercion if necessary — into Turkish culture and language (Suleiman 2003). Arabs started to see Arabic as a metaphorical homeland in which “a group’s national identity is rooted and to which it gives sustenance and life (Suleiman 2003:113). Suleiman (2003) asserts that promotion of colloquial Arabic as a marker of national identity tends to be associated with inward looking Lebanese nationalism which sees Standard Arabic as an instrument of pan-Arab cultural and political hegemony. Therefore, Lebanese Arabic is favored instead. The supporters of this variety are Christians, particularly the Maronites. Diab (2000) provides a historical review of the language situation in Lebanon and shows how the Western missionaries in the 18th and 19th centuries and the colonization by France after the end of the World War I until Lebanese independence in 1943 had a major influence on the learning and teaching of French in Lebanon. Diab explains that the most active of these missionaries were the French Jesuits. They established strong relations with the Maronite Christians and founded many schools based on the French system of education (p. 7). Most Maronite and

136 ABDERRAHMANE ZOUHIR Catholic Lebanese communities today “still have strong affinities for France, a country that they think of as their protector” (Suleiman 2003:204). Suleiman also asserts that some advocates of French stressed its function as a medium of cultural and spiritual expression which “enables the Christians, mainly the Maronites, to keep their contact with the Christian West, mainly France” (p. 205). The presence of French in Lebanon, therefore, is endowed with political, religious and cultural connotations. French underpins a concept of Lebanese national identity (Diab 2000). Suleiman (2003:204) sees this type of identity as separate from Arab nationalism. Religiously, French gives prominence to Maronite confessional identity within the Lebanese body of politics. Culturally, it signifies Lebanese linguistic hybridity as a way of supplanting any monolinguistic articulations of the national self (p. 206). The linguistic situation in Lebanon is also enriched by Armenian and English languages. Armenian is restricted to the small Armenian community in Lebanon. It is promoted as an instrument of keeping alive the Armenian cultural identity. With respect to English, Diab (2000) contends that English was first introduced in Lebanon by the American missionaries who founded many schools, culminating in the establishment of the American University of Beirut. The American University of Beirut uses English as the medium of instruction and is viewed as the leading institution of higher learning in the Middle East (p. 8). After Lebanese independence in 1943, Arabic became the only official language in Lebanon. In 1946, English became one of the two (English and French) compulsory foreign languages. The Lebanese policy makers gave equal importance to French. English and French became deeply rooted in the Lebanese educational system and dominant as the medium of instruction in many schools. Diab (2000) explains that after the civil war in 1989, language policy makers in Lebanon emphasized the importance of Arabic as the only official language and acknowledged the importance of French and English. Diab asserts that the language reform issued in 1997 “gave equal weight to Arabic and either English or French, depending on whether the particular school is English or French medium” (p. 12). Diab notices that English is gaining more ground in Lebanon due to political and practical considerations and has started to become more influential than French. Because of this important growth of English in Lebanon, the (Lebanese) National Center for Educational Research and Development is seeking the possibility of developing EFL curriculum to be implemented nation wide in Lebanon (Diab 2000). The historical background and language situation about Lebanon given above highlights the linguistic complexity of this country and that the language is a form of cultural, political and religious practices that links its speakers to their history, endowing them with a sense of national identity. In what follows I will talk about the language situation and policy of two Middle Eastern non-Arab countries, namely, Turkey and Israel.



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4. Language Policy in Turkey The language policy adopted in Turkey was a deliberate and radical campaign to “purify” the Turkish language from Arabic and Persian words that had been a part of the language since the Ottoman Empire, and substitute them with Turkish words. Mustafa Kemal Attaturk, the founder and first president of the modern Turkish republic, was the first to initiate the language reform to promote national unity and identity and to reorient Turkey toward the West. The Turkish government adopted one revolutionary reform after another. According to Eskicumali (1994), “the most important of those was the separation of religion and state” (p. 18). Eskicumali divides Attaturk’s reforms into two parts. In the first, the era of the 1920s, the focus was upon the creation of the structure of the modern state, including those pertaining to education. During the second part, the era of the 1930s, the emphasis was economic, social and cultural transformation (p. 234). In a similar vein, Bingol (2002) provides a detailed description of language policy in Turkey and argues that the modernists, with the support of Kemal Attaturk and his successor Ismet Inonu, and without resistance from opposing groups, were able to implement the modernization policy from the early 1920s to the late 1940s. During this time Turkey changed from a theocracy to a secular republic. Bingol explains that the official day of rest was moved from Friday to Sunday and the traditional fez and the veil were banned. However, the modernists’ position was shaken from the late 1940s to the early 1980s. They faced a strong resistance from Turkish nationalists and Islamists. Bingol asserts that the Kemalist attempt to modernize the language was completely abandoned in 1983 with the nationalization of the Turkish Language Society and its takeover by Turkish nationalists (p. 31). He also contends that the modernists’ efforts to transform the Turkish language have remained incomplete and far from successful. According to Suleiman (2004), language policy in Turkey is subject to article 3 of the constitution (1982), which states that “The Turkish State, with its territory and nation, is an indivisible entity. Its language is Turkish” (p. 22). This entails that the Turkish constitution denies that a Turkish citizen can have a mother tongue. The ban on languages other than Turkish violates linguistic rights and contravenes “the obligations placed on Turkey by the 1924 Treaty of Lausanne, which contains clauses safeguarding the linguistic rights of all Turkish citizens, regardless of their ethnic or religious backgrounds” (Suleiman 2004:22). Suleiman reported extreme examples of cases where minority groups such as Arabs and Kurds are assaulted by officials for not speaking Turkish. He also claims that Turkish laws prohibited provisions for Arabic education (p. 22). However, in spite of the massive onslaught against it, the Kurdish language has survived in Turkey. Suleiman attributes this survival to the fact that the Kurds live in an isolated community in south-east Turkey. Suleiman compares the policy of enforced linguistic and ethnic assimilation in Turkey to the situation of Turkish in Bulgaria between 1984 and 1990 when the “wave of chauvinistic Bulgarian nationalism […] led to the imposition of policies which infringed the human and

138 ABDERRAHMANE ZOUHIR linguistic rights of Turkish Bulgarians” (p. 23). This policy was abandoned in Bulgaria in 1990 while the situation and language policy of banning Kurdish and Arabic remains substantially unchanged. Amazingly, the ban on Kurdish in Turkey strengthened Kurdish identity and turned the Kurdish language into the symbol of resistance par excellence. This observation undermines Ayturk’s (2005) claim that the Turkish language has no rival and “all Turks conversed in Turkish, though they spoke different dialects of the same language” (p. 244). Arabic and Kurdish bans in public places coupled with enforced name changes are what characterize the language policy and language situation in Turkey. 5. Language Situation and Policy in Israel The revival of the Hebrew language is generally considered one of the outstanding sociolinguistic phenomena of modern times. Hebrew revival had two tasks to achieve. The first involved the status of the language which aimed at “bringing about a shift in the Jewish community of Palestine from the use of the dominant Yiddish and several other languages to Hebrew, used by Jews for millennia as a language of Jewish literacy and religion” (Nahir 2002:293). The other task involved the corpus of the language called codification. Nahir explains that codification in the revival was partly done by individuals. The men most closely associated with this revival are Eliezer Ben Yahuda and Ben Avi “who drew words from the earlier texts or created their own only when they need them” (p. 271). Nahir asserts that the success of Hebrew revival was due to the collaborative efforts of the Language Planning Agency and the Hebrew Language Committee. Nahir also confirmed that the unprecedented revival of Hebrew has resulted from both status and corpus planning. Ayturk (2005) argues that the Hebrew revival represents Jewish national identity. He explains that “Zionist ideology was based on a rejection of the diasporic existence of the Jews and aimed at recreating a Hebrew speaking community and government on the ancient land of the Jews” (p. 238). In this vein, Ayturk draws a comparison of the language factor in Zionism and Turkish nationalism. Regarding similarities, Ayturk asserts that both Zionist and Turkish nationalism are ethnic nationalism which gave emphasis to the so-called objective factors of nationhood, such as blood relationship and language over subjective factors like common history and national feeling (see Ayturk 2005 for more details). Besides, revivalism was one of the central tenets of both Zionism and Turkish nationalism (p. 240). Language also had a symbolic value, and knowledge of the language marks off a social group from others who cannot speak, read or write. Ayturk (2005:241) points out that the difference between Turkish and Zionist nationalism is the close association between language revival and the national land for Zionism. In the Turkish case, however, no such need to link up language with land was ever felt. According to Fellman (1971), the schools were the decisive setting for the revival of Hebrew. Ayturk (2005) argues that the alphabet makes it difficult to



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read a Hebrew text. It therefore poses a challenge to learners and even to native Hebrew speakers (p. 180). The reform of the Hebrew alphabet has been an issue that has engaged linguists and non linguists. One of the proposed reforms was Romanization of the alphabet, which entails “the substitution of a modified version of the Latin characters for the traditional, square letters of the Hebrew language” (p. 180). Ayturk provides a detailed description of the struggle between the proponents of the old writing system and the romantizers, and explains why romantization failed in the Hebrew case and succeeded in the Turkish. Given this, now let us see the Israeli Jews’ attitude towards Arabic and the Arabs’ perception and attitude towards Hebrew. Suleiman (2004) contends that the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is responsible for a set of linguistic attitudes and practices among Arabs and Israeli Jews. Suleiman argues that the Israeli Jews treat Arabic as the enemy. Some also treat it as the language of a low-status national minority. Therefore, Suleiman sees that motivation to learn Arabic in Israel is driven mainly by security considerations. This explains the strong involvement of the Israeli military in teaching Arabic. Along this line of reasoning, Pinto (2005) sees that “Israeli ruling has recently shifted from an instrument view to an intrinsic view of the value of Arabic” (p. 1). He also contends that the legal framework regarding the status of official languages, which governed during the British Mandatory Period, has turned into “a vague framework that has produced a major decline in the status of the Arabic language” (p. 77). Pinto explains that the reason why Arabic was not cancelled as an official language was because “Israel did not want to give the international community justification for a claim that the new Jewish state wanted to eradicate the Arab local community” (p. 78). Pinto notices that although the Arabic language appears on coins and identity cards, Hebrew enjoys superior status as the main language of Israel. Hebrew is the language in which laws and regulations are enacted. It is the language in which speeches are made in the Knesset. It is also the language of the government’s publications for the general public and in which the public (including Israeli Arabs) addresses the government (Pinto 2005). Pinto (2005) also asserts that as a result of Izhak Navon’s educational reform in 1990, Jewish pupils in junior high schools learn Arabic as a third language, but rarely continue studying it in their high school studies (p. 82). Deutch (2005) thinks that the complicating element in the case of Arabic in Israel is that “there was an underlying anxiety that the recognition of Arabic as equal in status to Hebrew would undermine the character of Israel as a nation-state since the nation is often associated with language as a marker of its identity” (p. 272). Unlike Pinto, Deutch (2005) strongly asserts that the status of Arabic remained secondary as it was under the Mandatory regime. He reported Saban & Amara’s (2004) claim that “the Israeli Law, like the Mandatory Law, does not formulate a comprehensive bilingual arrangement. It does not grant Arabic the full and comprehensive status of an official language” (p. 269). He also confirms that the recognition of a national

140 ABDERRAHMANE ZOUHIR minority within the Israeli boundaries would conflict with its very existence (p. 270). The Israeli Arabs’ attitudes towards Hebrew are equally unflattering. Suleiman (2003) explains that Hebrew is looked at as the language of a colonial-style enemy who occupies Arab lands. Suleiman also confirms that the presence of Hebrew in the Middle East is delegitimized as an intrusion from the outside. He asserts that interest in Hebrew in the Arab world is driven by security considerations (p. 215). The following discussion will focus on the three major ethnic languages in Israel: English, Russian and Amharic. Deutch (2005) provides a detailed analysis of the statues of English in Israel. He contends that it was the dominant language during the Mandatory period. He confirms that Section 15 (b) of the Law of Administration Ordinance abolished the requirement of the authorities to use English, but it did not alter the right of citizens to use English in all government offices and courts. He reported Spolsky’s (2004:280) view of English in Israel that the development of English, as in other countries of the world, “is not the simple end result of language management. Rather, it reflects local and individual language acquisition decisions, responding to changes in the complex ecology of the world’s language system” (p. 281). Deutch also notices that English is used in many contexts and taught in most of the schools. It appears on street signs and public places (p. 281). It is also the native language of people who immigrated to Israel from English-speaking countries. Because of the importance of English for this group of people, they tend to remain bilingual. The status of Russian and Amharic is different from English. Deutch (2005) attributes this difference to the fact that these languages do not share the universal status of the English language. Russian and Amharic existence in Israel was the result of the massive immigration from Russia and Ethiopia. Deutch asserts that the Russian and Ethiopian ethnic groups integrate into the Israeli society and willingly acquire Hebrew. Deutch confirms that the fact these immigrating populations still maintain their languages, cultures and traditions alongside the new Israeli culture does not pose any threat to Israel’s national identity. For Deutch, this characteristic clearly distinguishes them from Arabic which has a national significance for its speakers. The above discussion provides a confirmation to the major issues and idea that guide the theoretical framework in the first section of this paper. There is nothing inevitable or natural about the way any language influences educational, social and economic conditions. Rather, the role of any language is essentially controlled. I concur with Tollefson (1991, 2002), and Pennycook (2001) in arguing that language policy is not neutral and it must be understood in connection with broad political and economic forces that shape the social life. The case studies of language policy in Turkey and Israel contribute to the conceptualization of nationalism, security, and political and religious affiliation. With these considerations in mind, there are certain basic points to be included in any comprehensive plan to outline a model



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Historical Factors

Religious Factors

Language Policy

Cultural Factors

Political Factors

of language policy in the Middle East. These are historical, religious, cultural, and political factors which are interrelated and affect any language policy process. In the next section, I apply the model outlined above to the discussion of language situation and policy in Morocco. 6. The Linguistic Situation and Language Policy of Morocco Morocco is located at a point where the African and European crossroads almost meet, with the Mediterranean to the north, the Atlantic to the west, Algeria to the east and Mauritania to the south. It is a land of contrast. It is culturally an eastern country and geographically a western country. It is also socially and linguistically diverse, and its cultural make up is one of the richest in the Maghreb (i.e., North African countries). The cultural and linguistic context of Morocco is characterized by the significant use of Arabic as well as by the presence of Berber, French, Spanish and English.

6.1 The linguistic situation and language policy of Morocco before the French colonization Even before French colonization Moroccan society has had a long tradition of multilingualism. The cultural and linguistic context of Morocco before the French colonization is characterized by the significant use of Berber, Moroccan Arabic and Classical Arabic. 6.1.1 Berber. Berber is the term used by Europeans to refer to the indigenous languages of the Maghreb, spoken not only in Morocco, but also in Algeria, part of Tunisia, and parts of sub-Saharan countries. Estimates of the number of native Berber speakers in Morocco range from 40% to 45% of the population (Boukous 1995). Berber speakers in Morocco belong mainly to three distinct groups: namely,

142 ABDERRAHMANE ZOUHIR Tashelhit, Tamazight, and Tarifit. Each variety is characterized by much internal variation (Sadiqi 2003). 6.1.2 Moroccan Arabic. Moroccan Arabic is the native language of the majority of the population. Moroccans, like most Arab speakers, tend to see their dialect as ‘deviant’ from Standard Arabic. The difference between the two forms is great. Ennaji’s (2005) study on Moroccan Arabic shows that it has a regular phonology, a rich morphosyntax and a simple morphology. 6.1.3 Standard Arabic. Standard Arabic has always been a language of prestige in Morocco. It is used for religion, education, and official functions (Wagner 1993). It is the medium of instruction in public schools and is used in literary works. Standard Arabic has also functioned as the language of national unity and Islamic identity. Before the French and Spanish colonization of Morocco, learning took place in Quranic schools. According to Boyle (2000), the curriculum of these traditional schools consisted of memorizing the Quran as well as learning to read and write. Quranic schools “play an important part in teaching children how to assume their traditional roles in the Muslim community of practice” (p. 2). Ennaji (2005) argues that Quranic schools “impose a mechanical and monotonous form of learning on the child whose interest is not aroused by such a form of study, which reduces the learner’s intellectual and cognitive motivation” (p. 216). However, Wagner (1993) sees the opposite and argues that Quranic schooling “has a significant effect on serial memory and does not generalize to other kinds of memory or cognitive skills such as discourse and pictorial memory” (p. 278). He also asserts that Quranic pre-schooled children outperformed non-preschooled children (p. 279). Neither Moroccan Arabic nor Berber were officially recognized as languages during this period of pre-colonization.

6.2 The linguistic situation and language policy of Morocco during the colonial period From 1912 to 1956, Morocco was governed as a French protectorate. As the linguistic legacy of the 44-year protectorate period, the indigenous traditional educational system was carried out in Arabic while the new educational system was carried out in French. The language policy adopted created a Moroccan elite group, the bourgeois, with French values and exaggerated the existing divisions among the people in Morocco (Ameziane 1983). The language policy adopted followed the ‘divide and rule’ concept through the establishment of the Dahir AlBarbari (i.e., Berber Decree) in 1930. This involves “the creation of yet another type of school, where French and Berber were taught, but Arabic was not” (Bentahila 1983: 8). The French also established ‘les Ecoles Franco-Israelites’ for the Jewish Moroccan community. This educational language policy “divided the Moroccan



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population into three groups: Arabs, Jews, and Berbers. Each group has its own culture and specific education” (Bentaouet-Kattan 2000:30). The Spanish zones followed the same language policy of promoting the Spanish language and culture at the expense of Arabic and Islamic schools. The policy adopted was not intended to promote economic development, but to create divisions among Moroccans. The curricula imposed by the French and the Spanish considered only their civilization, history, and values. The period of colonization destroyed the rich Islamic tradition of education (Bentaouet-Kattan 2000). At the time of independence, Morocco, like other countries, was faced with a devastating experience as a result of the colonial legacy. 6.3 Language policy post-independence After independence, the Moroccan government’s first effort was to combat illiteracy, which was predominantly linked to the country’s liberation from French colonization (Agnaou 2004). The government effort was aimed at contributing to a new political order and language policy. Morocco has a lot in common with other Arab countries seeking to establish themselves after colonial rule. These nations are characterized by a conflict between establishing national identity and practicality. More specifically, there is a need to establish national identity by introducing the indigenous languages and keeping the colonial language for its importance. The solution to this conflict varies from one country to another. In Chad, Gabon, Mali, and Senegal, French continued to be used even after independence. The case of Morocco and the other two countries of the Maghreb (i.e., Algeria and Tunisia) is different because of the Arabization program. The objective of the Arabization policy is to unite the country, an idea common to language policy in Malawi (Kayambazinthu 1999). In his study on language policy, Gafaiti (2002) explains that the revitalization of Arabic meant the revitalization of the national culture. He asserts that Arabic language provides the cultural and instrumental backbone of the Arabs’ identity. However, the Arabization policy in Morocco ignores the multilingual nature of the country, and the desire for “openings to the outside world, particularly Western Europe, offered by the French language” (Marley 2003:30). Therefore, the graduates of the French system and the modernists were not eager to embrace Arabization (Djite 1992). Arabization presented a dilemma for them because “French was equated with modern life whereas Arabic with its close association to Islam represented spiritual life and tradition” (Saad 1992:6). The most ardent supporters of Arabization were the purists or traditionalists who were motivated by nationalistic considerations. Rapid Arabization without adequate staffing, which was instituted immediately following independence, brought about a dramatic lowering of standards (Sirles 1985). Therefore, well-to-do bourgeoisie removed their children from public schools and sent them to the institutions of the French cultural mission instead (p. 216).

144 ABDERRAHMANE ZOUHIR The Charter for Educational Reform which adopted the Arabization did not put an end to the social agitation. The Berber leaders felt threatened by Arab nationalism, mainly by the central role it gave to Standard Arabic at the expense of Berber (which was not recognized as a national language) and they became increasingly vocal in their demands for linguistic rights (Marley 2004). It is clear from the discussion and findings stated above that there are certain basic questions about the linguistic situation after the failure of a complete application of Arabization. It is thus apparent that the overtly stated goals of Arabization were not being met, and a change in language policy in the age of globalization was needed. 6.4 Language policy in the age of globalization In considering how language policy is affected by globalization, it is revealing to note that Moroccan educational policy makers have reformed the curriculum and given an essential importance to the English language. The new educational policy in Morocco was initiated after a speech given by the late King of Morocco Hassan II in March 1999, in which he referred to the need to reform the Moroccan educational system and establish a new language policy in the curriculum. He appointed key stakeholders to establish the Royaume du Maroc Commission Special Education Formation (COSEF), an advisory committee that designed a new National Charter on Education. The education reform, produced in 2000, represents a dramatic change of policy. The aim of this policy was to overhaul the general university system and enable it to respond to the changes in Moroccan society. It increased the academic and financial autonomy of the university and changed the structure of the curriculum. The charter also acknowledged tacitly the failure of Arabization in the area of science and technology teaching. Article 115 acknowledged and heralded the importance of the most appropriate languages in teaching science and technology. French is never mentioned by name in the charter, which leaves the door open for the interpretation that the obvious implication of “appropriate” is English. In fact, English is gaining ground nowadays in Morocco. With the increasing importance of the use of English in business in Morocco and the interest of many English-speaking companies, there has also been establishment of private institutions where the teaching instruction is in English. It is to be noted that the charter also recognized the value and necessity of teaching Berber in schools. Recent developments, democratization and liberalization in Morocco give hope that Berber will not be condemned to a slow death. What applies to Berber must also apply to Arabic dialects in the Arab world, and Kurdish in Iraq and Turkey as they represent authenticity and identity for the population concerned. Given this extensive discussion of the language policy in Morocco, let us now investigate and discuss the similarities and differences between the Moroccan language policy and the study language cases in Israel, Lebanon and Turkey addressing the factors in the model above.



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The language and cultural identity in Morocco is marked by the use of Standard Arabic, Moroccan Arabic, Berber, French, and Spanish, which entails that Moroccan language policy is characterized by complexity and that it is socially and culturally diverse. Though the cultural and linguistic complexity of the Moroccan case is to some extent different from that of Lebanese, the policy of Arabization in terms of the political, cultural and social factors behind it are the same. The Arabization policy which has been adopted since independence is a reaffirmation of a national identity which has been obscured for years by the French colonization in both countries. The Arabization process in Morocco highlights a strong conflict between the values and beliefs of the traditionalists who are in favor of Arabization and the modernists who oppose it. It also highlights a tension between Arabs and Berbers who see Arabization as a threat to their identity. The tension that exists in Lebanon is remarkably different. We have seen that the conflict with regard to Arabization is between the traditionalists and the nationalists who see that the promotion of colloquial Lebanese Arabic as a marker of nationalism is better than Standard Arabic and the process of Arabization as this latter is an instrument of pan-Arab cultural and political hegemony. The post-independence years also highlight the tension with respect to French. For the Maronite Christians, French is a tool or medium of cultural and spiritual expression, and its presence in Lebanon is necessary, which contradicts the mission and the ideology behind Arabization. French in Morocco does not bear religious connotations. It is seen by the modernists as the language of technology and its presence is necessary for Moroccan development and communication with the outside world. Hebrew revival is an interesting issue. However, it is tricky if we look at the similarities between the language policy adopted in Israel and the language policy followed in Morocco. There are more differences than similarities because of political, cultural, religious and social differences between the two countries. However, a second look at the new National Charter on Education produced in 2000 and which I discussed above may provide an answer to the similarities existing between the two language policies. In fact, since the creation of the Royal Institute of Amazigh (Berber) Culture in 2001, the language policy makers officially recognize Berber as a language to be taught in Moroccan schools. To attain this goal, a script must be found and adopted. This raises a competition between proponents of the Latin alphabet and proponents of the Arabic alphabet. The competition between transcriptions has “political and ideological implications: the Arabic script is a way of tying Tamazight [i.e., Berber] to Arabic culture; the Western Roman script ties the language to a genealogical line stretching from the Roman empire to the French conquest” (Berger 2002). Berber proponents argue that the Latin script is better suited for writing Berber because it can be used on the internet. Arabic script proponents claim that it is the closest to the Berber language roots, and historically both Arabic and Berber belong to the HamitoSemitic family. They also claim that Berbers are Muslims and they will accept to

146 ABDERRAHMANE ZOUHIR write and read in Arabic script more readily than in the Latin script. To avoid the conflict between the two groups, Moroccan policy makers adopted Tifinagh which is over 2,000 years old and still in use by the Tuareg (Ennaji 2005). Therefore, Tifinagh revival in Morocco resembles the Hebrew revival process. The tension between proponents of the Latin and Arabic scripts is reminiscent of the tension in Israel between the proponents of the old writing system and the romanizers as we have seen. As stated above, Turkish language policy is the most extreme case because the onslaught on minority languages like Arabic and Kurdish is a form of active linguicide and violation of human and linguistic rights. Although Kurdish “is the mother tongue of as many as one in five inhabitants of Turkey, the government prohibits the teaching of Kurdish in schools and the broadcasting of Kurdish radio and television programs” (Ergil 2000: 122). True, Berber has been ignored in Morocco for many years, too. However, it has never been banned from public places as is the case with Arabic and Kurdish in Turkey. Berber is now being taught in some Moroccan elementary schools. It was and still is a basic component of Moroccan identity and provides an element of enrichment to Moroccan multilingualism. 7. Conclusion Language policy is determined by a multitude of cultural, political, social and religious factors. The case studies of language policy conducted above confirm the assumptions advocated by Tollefson (1991, 2002), Pennycook (2001), Wiley (2002), Ricento (2000), Ricento & Hornberger (1996), among others that language policy is not neutral and it is best understood in relationship to political, social, religious and cultural factors. I attempt to show in this paper how colonial, postcolonial, cultural and political forces have an impact on the language-making policy. My objective is to provide answers to the intricate and complex issues of language policy in some Middle Eastern countries and Morocco. I invite the reader to become acquainted with the different facets and perspectives of language policies in Israel, Lebanon, Morocco and Turkey, and caution the reader to consider each language policy in terms of cultural, religious, historical, and political dimensions. References Agnaou, Fatima. 2004. Gender, Literacy, and Empowerment in Morocco. New York: Routledge. Ameziane, Ahmed. 1983. A Study of the Implementation of Educational Objectives in Morocco since 1956 with Implications for Administrations. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Marquette University, Milwaukee. Ayturk, Ilker. 2005. Language and Nationalism: A comparative study of language revival and reform in Hebrew and Turkish. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Toronto.



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Bentahila, Abdelali. 1983. Language Attitudes among Arabic French Bilinguals in Morocco. England: Multilingual Matters. Berger, A. E. 2002. “The Impossible Wedding: Nationalism, languages, and the mother tongue in post colonial Algeria”. Algeria in Other Languages 2nd ed. by A. E. Berger, 60-78. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Bentaouet-Kattan, Raja. 2000. Language Planning in Education Reform: The case of Morocco. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Georgetown University. Bingol, Yelmaz. 2002. Revisiting Turkish Language Policy in Light of the Actors’ Norms and Identity Model. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Indiana University. Boukous, Ahmed. 1995. Societe, langue et culture au Maroc. Rabat, Morocco: Publications de la Faculte des Letters. Boyle, Helen Nolan. 2000. Quranic Schools in Morocco : Agents of preservation and change. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Pittsburgh. Deutch, Yocheved. 2005. “Language Law in Israel”. Language Policy 4.261-285. Djite, Paulin G. 1992. “The Arabization of Algeria: Linguistic and sociological motivations”. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 98.15-28. Diab, Rula Lutfi. 2000. Lebanese Students’ Belief about Learning English and French: A study of university students in a multilingual context. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, The University of Texas at Austin. Ennaji, Moha. 2005. Multilingualism, Cultural Identity, and Education in Morocco. New York: Springer Science. Ergil, Dogu. 2000. “The Kurdish Question in Turkey”. Journal of Democracy 11.122-135. Eskicumali, Ahmet. 1994. Ideology and Education: Reconstructing the Turkish curriculum for social and cultural change, 1923-1946. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison. Fawwaz Mohammad, Al-Albed Al-Haq. F. 1985. A Case Study of Language Planning in Jordan. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, The University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison. Fellman, Jack Steven. 1971. The Role of Eliezer Ben Yehuda in the Revival of the Hebrew Language. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Harvard University. Gafaiti, Hafid. 2002. “The Monotheism of the Other: Language and de/construction of national identity in postcolonial Algeria”. Algeria in Other Languages ed. by Anne-Emmanuelle Berger, 19-43. Cornell: Cornell University Press. Kayambazinthu, Edrinnie. 1999. “The Language Planning Situation in Malawi”. Language Planning in Malawi, Mozambique and the Philippines ed. by Robert B. Kaplan & Richard B. Baldauf. Great Britain: Short Run Press Ltd. Marley, Dawn. 2004. “Language Attitudes in Morocco Following Recent Changes in Language Policy”. Language Policy 3.25-46. Nahir, Moshe. 2002. “Corpus Planning and Codification in the Hebrew Revival”. Language Problems and Language Planning 26.271-298.

148 ABDERRAHMANE ZOUHIR Pennycook, Alastrair. 2001. Critical Applied Linguistics: A critical introduction. Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum. Phillipson, Robert. 1992. Linguistic Imperialism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Pinto, Meital. 2005. Language Rights in Israel: Meeting the challenges. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Toronto. Ricento, Thomas & Nancy Hornberger. 1996. “Unpeeling the Onion: Language planning and policy and the ELT professional”. TESOL Quarterly 30.401-427. Ricento, Thomas. 2000. “Historical and Theoretical Perspectives in Language Policy and Planning”. Journal of Sociolinguistics 4.196-213. Saad, Zohra. 1992. Language Planning and Policy Attitudes: A case study of Arabization in Algeria. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Columbia University. Saban, Ilan & Mohammad Amara. 2004. “The status of Arabic in Israel: Reflections on the power of law to produce social change”. Israel Law Review 36:5-39. Sadiqi, Fatima. 2003. Women, Gender and Language in Morocco. Leiden: Koninklijke Brill. Sirles, Craig Allan. 1985. An Evaluative Procedure for Language Planning: The case of Morocco. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Northwestern University. Spolsky, Bernard. 2004. Language Policy. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Suleiman, Yassir. 2003. The Arabic Language and National Identity. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Suleiman, Yassir. 2004. A War of Words: Language and conflict in the Middle East. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Tollefson, James. 1991. Planning Language, Planning Equality. London: Longman. Tollefson, James. 2002. “Introduction: Critical issues in educational language policy”. Language Policies in Education: Critical theories ed. by J. W. Tollefson, 3-16. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Wagner, Daniel. 1993. Literacy, Culture, & Development: Becoming literate in Morocco. England: Cambridge University Press. Wiley, Terrence G. 1996. “Language Planning and Policy”. Sociolinguistics and Language Teaching ed. by S. L. McKay & N. H. Hornberger, 103-147. New York: Cambridge University Press. Wiley, Terrence G. 2002. “Accessing Language Rights in Education: A brief history of the US Context”. Language Policies in Education: Critical issues ed. by J. W. Tollefson, 39-64. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

THE PERCEPTION OF ARAB-ACCENTED SPEECH BY AMERICAN NATIVE SPEAKERS AND NON-NATIVE SPEAKERS FROM EAST AND SOUTH-EAST ASIA Selim Ben Said The Pennsylvania State University 1. Introduction The issue of accents has been an area of discussion and research in several branches of linguistics and each sub-field has defined accented speech in a slightly different way to match its own theoretical framework and focus of research interest. While this paper draws ideas from a diversity of perspectives, the discussion will be limited to the examination of attitudes to accented speech within a purely sociolinguistics thread. 1.1 Accent in sociolinguistics Sociolinguistics examines accent in view of variations on all levels of language, phonetic, lexical and grammatical, in the context of diverse social settings. This field of research defines an accent as a badge of social identity; in this light, Becker (1995:37) argues that “an accent is the part of a person’s language that serves to identify the speaker’s regional origin or national/ethnic identity no matter what language the person is speaking”. Thus, in sociolinguistic terms an accent defines people by displaying their belonging to a particular speech community. It is important, however, to note that several sociolinguistic studies have emphasized that accents are not always tantamount to dialects. Giles (1970) quoted in Hiraga (2005:291), for instance, provides a detailed differentiation between accent and dialect by pointing out that:

The term ‘dialect’ basically implies variations from the standard code at most levels of linguistic analysis, whereas ‘accent’ merely implies a manner of pronunciation with grammatical, syntactical, morphological and lexical levels being regarded as more or less commensurate with the standard.

This distinction is crucial in the field of sociolinguistics and also in the context of this study whose central aim is not to examine dialectal differences, but to investigate attitudes towards the Arab-accented speech of non-native speakers of English.

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1.2 Investigating non-native accented speech The examination of accented speech in this study will be explored with respect to the speakers’ performance in General American English (GAE hereafter). GAE thus serves merely as a comparison entity, and is not used as a standard towards which non-native speakers should conform. This study not only follows a substantial tradition of research which has been performed within the area of accented speech but also aims to add some new dimensions in view of the research methodology, instrument and the variables of interest and control. 2. Literature on Attitudes towards Accented Speech A review of related literature on attitudes towards accented speech can be organized in three subcategories: 1) studies investigating attitudes to and perceptions of non-native accents of English (Lindemann 2003, Mugler 2002, Alford & Strother 1990); 2) studies that have examined attitudes to and perceptions of nonnative accents of languages other than English (Mc Lendon 1999); and 3) studies that have looked at non-native accents in view of pedagogical issues pertaining to undergraduate international teaching assistants in the U.S. context (Boyd 2003) and second language learners of English (Derwing 2003). In investigating accented speech, a number of studies have researched non-native accents of English; this fact is not surprising when we consider the large number of English speakers in the world and the wide use of English in educational, scientific, political, and multimedia discourse. The majority of studies have also either included NS or NNS participants, but very few have compared these two groups. Another emerging observation is related to the independent variable of gender which, although present in several studies, has rarely been examined in view of both the subject group and the stimulus-providers’ group. Additionally, a variety of studies have only included stimulus-providers from one gender (either male or female), but very rarely investigated both genders. This research aimed to include both male and female stimulus providers and subjects. Many studies that have examined linguistic attitudes have used Lambert’s (1967) matched-guise technique (MGT).1 However, this procedure has several flaws and shortcomings. One of the problems of the MGT concerns the construct validity of the instrument; more specifically, it is difficult to say whether the use of one speaker modifying his/her accent could be considered a valid operationalization of different accents. In this respect, the present study has involved a data collection instrument that included stimulus providers from authentic non-native accents of similar age, level of proficiency in English, and both genders. Finally, none of the previously reviewed studies examined accents in view of linguistic typology and more precisely how the common genetic closeness between the L1s of the participants (judges) and the L1s of the stimulus providers could affect 1

For a short rationale of the MGT, see Hiraga (2005:291).



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their judgments towards non-native accents. Overall, the present investigation was conceived in view of the plethora of previous research designs and instruments and with the intention to expand and contribute to the existing tradition and methods used to examine attitudes to accented speech. The next section will elaborate on each aspect of the methodology that guided this investigation. 3. Methodology 3.1 Research problems The primary objective of this research was to investigate whether NSs and NNSs of GAE have different perceptions of and attitudes toward non-native accents of English. It also aimed to determine whether these two groups have different attitudes to four different accents (Middle-Eastern,2 Latino, East European, and Southeast Asian). Gender differences were also examined in view of participants’ attitudes to the accents investigated. 3.2 Research questions There are three central research questions in this study. The first asked whether there was a significant difference between the two groups in their attitudes to the overall accents of English and was formulated as follows: RQ#1: a) Is there a significant difference between NSs and NNSs of American English in their overall attitudes to non-native accents of English?; b) Does gender significantly affect attitudes to non-native accents of English?; c) Is there a significant interaction between group (NSs and NNSs) and gender (male vs. female) in view of attitudes to non-native accents of English? The second research question was aimed at observing the specific differences observed for each respective accent and addressed the following question: RQ#2: a) Is there a significant difference between NSs and NNSs of American English in their attitudes to the specific non-native-by-gender accents of American English? b) Does gender of the participants have a significant effect on their attitudes to the specific non-native-by-gender accents of English? c) Is there a significant interaction between groups (NSs and NNSs) and gender (male vs. female) in view of attitudes to the specific non-native-by-gender accents of English? The third question was interested in examining the tendencies whereby both groups expressed the accents that they liked and disliked the most and was formulated as follows: RQ#3: Which are the most liked and the least liked nonnative-by-gender accents of English? 3.3 Variables 3.3.1 Independent variables. This study was interested in two independent variables IVs; group and gender. Both IVs included two levels, Group (NSs and NNSs of Although four accents were investigated, this paper will examine the findings relevant to the Arab accent of English. 2

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American English), Gender (Male and Female). Given the categorical nature of these variables, they were assigned nominal values. 3.3.2 Dependent variables. Question 1. The dependent variable in question 1 was calculated as the total of attitude scores for all non-native accents. Question 2. The eight dependent variables in question 2 represented the four non-native accents for each gender. They were calculated as separate attitude scores, including:

(a) (b) (c) (d) (e) (f) (g) (h)

Attitude score for the Arab male accent Attitude score for the Arab female accent Attitude score for the Latino male accent Attitude score for the Latino female accent Attitude score for the East European male accent Attitude score for the East European female accent Attitude score for the Southeast Asian male accent Attitude score for the Southeast Asian female accent

Question 3. This question involved identifying the highest and lowest mean scores on all pair-wise adjectives that were used to evaluate participants’ attitudes toward the accents of interest. It involved simple descriptive statistics and because of the high number of adjective pairs, it was considered inappropriate to carry out tests of significance. 3.4 Participants Two groups of participants were selected for the purpose of this investigation. The first group was composed of 32 (11M, 21F) undergraduate native speakers of American English from a midwestern American university. The second group involved 39 non-native speakers of English (16M, 23F) from the same university. These participants were students from five different east and southeast Asian countries, namely, Taiwan, Thailand, South Korea, Japan and China. The choice of NNSs from an exclusively Asian background was motivated by convenience due to the large Asian population on the university campus, but also for research purposes and intellectual curiosity since no findings in the literature report how an exclusively east and southeast Asian population reacts to Arab-accented English speech. Some variables regarding the participants were not investigated, but they were controlled to minimize threats to the validity of the study. Age was controlled by focusing only on a target population of 20- to 30-year-olds. Additionally, the NSs’ group was asked to provide information about their experience of learning second languages. Thus, it became clear that out of the 38 NSs who completed the questionnaire, six were monolingual and the rest fell into the category ‘studied an L2 before’. Therefore, the six monolingual NSs were taken out of the sample, controlling for the final NS group to be representative only of NSs who have had some experience in learning other languages.



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3.5 Stimulus providers The stimulus providers selected for this study were eight different speakers (four males, four females); the Middle Eastern or Arab pair which are the focus of this paper included a male speaker from Jordan and a female speaker from Lebanon. All speakers were recorded separately and were instructed to read a short passage about the geographic location of the U.S. They were also given the opportunity to practice reading the passage prior to the actual recording. This precaution was taken to guarantee a relaxed, clear and uninterrupted delivery of the reading. When recording the voices, several variables were controlled in view of the validity of the instrument, including age, level of proficiency, and tendency for hypercorrection. Age was controlled by selecting speakers of the same age group as the participants (20-30). It was difficult to measure the speakers’ levels of proficiency in English; they were selected from the population of international graduate teaching assistants (based on the fact that for international students to be given an assistantship they must pass an oral international teaching assistants’ exam that determines their ability to use English as a language of instruction). Initially, 20 stimulus providers read the passage and were tape-recorded. Since the study required eight non-native accents, equally divided between male and female voices, the initial pool of readers was carefully evaluated on the quality of delivery; those who were not fluent or did not have good voice projection were excluded until the final set of speakers was identified. In order to rule out tendencies for hypercorrection, the speakers were told that the recording was aimed at assessing their punctuation marking rather than their accents; thus, keeping them blind to the purpose of the study. Also, two American NSs (one male, one female) distractor stimuli were added in order to keep the participants blind to the real interest of the study and in this way to minimize certain biases. The distractor voices were of the same age group as the participants. 3.6 Research instrument 3.6.1 Speech samples and preparation of the stimulus tapes. Stimulus providers were selected according to the accents that were of interest to this study. The speech samples were recorded at different occasions, then organized in a random order and copied into an audio CD. Randomization of the accents was achieved as each accent was assigned a respective number from one to ten. These numbers were then put in a box and were picked randomly. The passage was a neutral text describing the geography of the United States and was read by all speakers. The choice of a neutral passage was motivated by the desire not to include material which could bias or influence the responses of the participants in any respect. Neutrality was opted for to avoid sensitive or controversial topics which may have affected the responses, but also to include a topic which everybody would be able to relate to. By providing one single passage and setting the delivery context to formal, variables such as syntax, word choice and voice quality were controlled, thus leaving accent as the only variable under consideration in this study. The

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length of the passage was also controlled against being too long or too short. If too short, the participants would not have had enough information to evaluate the accent. If too long, it could have affected the quality of the reading as well as the involvement of the listener. Therefore, the average reading length of the passage was set at 20 seconds. 3.6.2 Attitudinal survey. The survey used to collect the data included two subsections. Section 1 aimed to elicit participants’ attitudes to the specific accents by using a Likert Scale with five bipolar adjectives, each measured on a scale of 1 to 5. The higher the number was, the more positive the attitude to the non-native accent. The maximum achievable score on this part of the questionnaire was 25; the minimum was 5. Example 1 illustrates the format of the questions in this section. (1) How do you find this person’s way of speaking? Unpleasant

1---------2---------3---------4---------5

Pleasant

Ordinary

1---------2---------3---------4---------5

Romantic

Cold

1---------2---------3---------4---------5

Warm

Unrefined

1---------2---------3---------4---------5

Refined

Difficult to Understand

1---------2---------3---------4---------5

Easy to Understand

Section 2 aimed to elicit participants’ perceptions of the bearers of the respective accents and was also measured by the same Likert scale with 5 bipolar adjectives. The questions included in section 2 are shown in example 2. (2) How would you describe the speaker? Unpleasant

1---------2---------3---------4---------5

Pleasant

Ordinary

1---------2---------3---------4---------5

Romantic

Cold

1---------2---------3---------4---------5

Warm

Unrefined

1---------2---------3---------4---------5

Refined

Difficult to Understand

1---------2---------3---------4---------5

Easy to Understand

Example 1.



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155

The choice of adjectives for Part 1 of the questionnaire was influenced by several studies on accents (Arthur Farrar Bradford 1974, Edwards 1977, Lambert 1967), and was also based on the feedback provided by consultants in linguistics and outside the field. Thus, the final version of the instruments deviated from the established tradition of following Lambert’s three attitude categories of Competence, Social Attractiveness, and Personal Integrity. In effect, as seen from the examples above, a two-category measure was accepted, one focusing on the accent itself and the other on the bearer of the accent. 3.6.3 Procedures. The native speaker participants were administered the survey as a group in an undergraduate lecture class. Overall, it took 40 minutes to complete the whole questionnaire. However, the same procedure was not possible with the non-native participants since they were not enrolled in the same classes. For this reason, the non-native participants were administered the survey on an individual basis in the researcher’s office. The average time for completing the survey was the same as for the native group, but the collection of the data was done over a longer period of time, approximately three months. Prior to taking the survey, participants were given instructions about the specifics of the tasks. In order to keep them blind to the real purpose of the experiment, a partial deception was used by telling them that the intent of the questionnaire was to assess perceptions of spoken English rather than non-native accents. 3.7 Analysis of the data The analysis of the data involved statistical methods. Specifically, the analysis related to the three research questions were as follows: RQ#1: To answer this question, a two-way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) was performed at alpha = .05. This procedure was considered appropriate since there was one dependent variable (total score) and two independent variables, group (native vs. non-native) and gender (male vs. female). RQ#2: This question was addressed by performing a two-way Multivariate Analysis (MANOVA) at alpha = .05. The procedure was chosen because the interest was in eight dependent variables, and the two independent variables mentioned in Question 1. RQ#3: The analysis involved descriptive statistics of calculating the means and identifying the highest and lowest values. 4. Results This section presents the results of the data analyses following the logic of the research questions as they were outlined in section 3. Overall, three research questions were formulated involving statistical tests of significance. All statistical tests were performed at alpha = .05. RQ#1: The dependent variable in this question was the overall attitude score, derived from 10 items, each including two bipolar adjectives, measured on a scale of 1 to 5. The higher the number was, the more positive the attitude to accented

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speech. The maximum score on each individual accent was 50, illustrating a highly positive attitude to the examined accent; the minimum score was 10, showing a very negative attitude. Since eight individual accents (four non-native accents x two gender) were studied, the total maximum score amounted to 400, and the lowest to 80. The independent variables included gender (male vs. female), and group (native vs. non-native). The interaction between gender and group was also included in the statistical model. The descriptive statistics for the effect of group, gender, and group*gender are summarized in Tables 1, 2 and 3. In order to see if the differences in means between the levels of the independent variables were significant, that is, systematic and not due to chance, the data were further analyzed through a two-way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA). Before performing the two-way ANOVA, Levene’s Test of Equality of Error Variances was conducted to rule against the possibility of unequal variances. The results showed that the variances were homogeneous and not significantly different: F (3, 67) = 2.66, p = 0.55. This allowed the ANOVA analyses to be performed without concern for a violation of the underlying assumptions. The omnibus twoway ANOVA test revealed that the independent variable group (native vs. nonnative) had a significant effect on the attitude towards accented speech: F (1, 67) = 22.69, p < .000. Since group had two levels, comparing the means was sufficient to establish the direction of the difference. Thus, it became clear that the Gender

N

Mean

SD

Minimum

Maximum

Male

27

235.37

25.34

180

279

Female

44

253.77

32.77

184

338

Table 1: Descriptive statistics for native/non-native speakers group Group

N

Mean

SD

Minimum

Maximum

NSs

32

230.37

24.37

180

279

NNSs

39

259.64

30.25

210

338

Table 2: Descriptive statistics for native/non-native speakers group Group NSs NNSs

Gender

N

Mean

SD

Male

11

216.00

20.02

Female

21

237.90

23.39

Male

16

248.68

19.54

Female

23

267.26

34.23

Table 3: Descriptive statistics for group by gender



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THE PERCEPTION OF ARAB ACCENTED SPEECH

NNS group (mean = 259.64) had a significantly more positive attitude than the NS group (mean = 230.37). The effect of gender was also significant: F (1, 67) = 9.65, p =.003. More precisely, the female subjects (Mean = 253.25) had a significantly more positive attitude to accented speech than the male group (mean = 235.37). However, the interaction effect between group and gender was not significant, p = .799. RQ#2 investigated attitudes to four non-native accents of GAE for each gender, which resulted in a total of eight accents. The dependent variables investigated in Question 2 were the attitude scores on the four non-native accents, with four male and four female stimulus providers for each accent (a total of eight dependent measures). Attitude scores were obtained from each respective accent using the same data as in RQ#1, but this time rather than taking the total attitude mean score, the mean score on each dependent variable was calculated separately. High numbers conveyed more positive attitudes to the examined accent, with a maximum possible score of 50, and a minimum score of 10. The independent variables included group with two levels, native vs. non-native, and gender, with two levels, male vs. female. The interaction between group and gender was also included in the statistical equation. The descriptive statistics for the independent variables group and gender are reported in Tables 4 and 5. Since there were eight dependent variables (four accents x two genders), it was considered appropriate to use a Multivariate Analysis of Variance (MANOVA), in order to examine the effect of the two independent variables on all dependent variables in one statistical procedure. The MANOVA was preceded by Box’s M test of equality of covariance matrices at alpha = .05 to test whether the covariance matrices for the dependent variables were significantly different. The results of the Native Speaker

Non-Native Speaker

Accents

Mean

SD

N

Mean

SD

N

Arab Male

22.43

4.89

32

27.00

3.84

39

Arab Female

30.12

5.41

32

32.38

6.57

39

Latino Male

29.12

5.57

32

35.58

8.45

39

Latino Female

29.78

5.17

32

32.48

5.77

39

East European Male

33.56

4.18

32

36.41

5.20

39

East European Female

33.28

4.66

32

34.02

6.35

39

Southeast Asian Male

22.90

5.56

32

27.15

5.62

39

Southeast Asian Female

29.15

6.23

32

34.58

6.89

39

Table 4: Descriptive statistics for native/non-native speaker group

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SELIM BEN SAID Male

Accents

Female

Mean

SD

N

Mean

SD

N

Arab Male

25.22

5.42

27

24.77

4.58

44

Arab Female

29.96

6.17

27

32.22

6.03

44

Latino Male

31.11

7.01

27

33.63

8.38

44

Latino Female

29.77

5.45

27

32.18

5.61

44

East European Male

33.85

4.81

27

35.90

4.92

44

East European Female

31.77

5.30

27

34.86

5.55

44

Southeast Asian Male

25.51

5.37

27

26.29

6.09

44

Southeast Asian Female

30.14

4.27

27

33.36

8.18

44

Table 5: Descriptive statistics for male/female genders

Box’s M test showed that the covariance matrices were not significantly different and that the assumption of equal covariance matrices was observed: Box’s M = 148.07, F (108, 5507.03) = 1.02, p = .402. Thus, MANOVA was performed and the results revealed that the independent variable group had a significant effect on the attitude towards the eight non-native accents, λ = .65, F (8, 60) = 3.98, p = .001, Partial Ƞ2 = .347. The MANOVA also showed that the independent variable gender had a slightly significant effect on the attitudes to the eight respective accents, λ = .78, F (8, 60) = 2.04, p = .057, Partial n2 = .214. The fact that gender yielded an overall effect that only slightly approached significance could be, as revealed later by the test of Between-Subjects effect, because the significant F(3, 67)

Significance (p value)

1 Arab Male

2.26

.08

2 Arab Female

0.65

.58

3 Latino Male

3.87

.01

4 Latino Female

0.48

.69

5 Eastern European Male

0.77

.51

6 Eastern European Female

2.72

.05

7 Southeast Asian Male

1.45

.23

8 Southeast Asian Female

3.07

.03

Dependent Variables

The alpha level for Levene’s test was set at .01 since this test is very sensitive to minor differences (George & Mallery, 2005) Table 6: Levene’s test of equality of error variances



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F(1, 67)

Significance (p value)

Partial n2

1 Arab Male

17.59

.000*

.208

2 Latino Male

14.03

.000*

.173

3 Southeast Asian Male

13.33

.001*

.166

4 Southeast Asian Female

11.12

.001*

.142

5 Latino Female

5.93

.018*

.081

6 Eastern European Male

5.83

.018*

.080

7 Arab Female

2.28

.135

.033

8 Eastern European Female

.84

.363

.012

Dependent Variables

All statistically significant results are marked by an asterisk. Table 7: Between-subjects results for the effect of group

differences were only observed on half of the dependent variables. The interaction effect between group and gender was not significant, λ = .88, F (8, 60) = 1.01, p = .433. The significant MANOVA test was followed by univariate BetweenSubjects’ analyses in order to identify more precisely where exactly the significant differences were. Beforehand, Levene’s Test of Equality of Error Variances was also conducted to rule against the possibility of unequal variances. Levene’s results, as summarized in Table 6, revealed that the assumption of equal variances was observed at alpha = .01. The results of the univariate analyses of Between-Subjects Effects as summarized in Table 7 showed that the independent variable group had a F(1, 67)

Significance (p value)

Partial n2

1 Southeast Asian Male

6.13

.016*

.084

2 Eastern European Female

5.91

.018*

.081

3 Southeast Asian Female

4.62

.035*

.065

4 Latino Female

4.40

.040*

.062

5 East European Male

3.47

.067

.049

6 Latino Male

2.83

.097

.041

7 Arab Female

2.46

.121

.036

8 Arab Male

.012

.914

.000

Dependent Variables

*

All statistically significant results are marked by an asterisk. Table 8: Between-subjects results for the effect of gender

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significant effect on subjects’ attitudes to the following six accents: Arab male, Latino male, Southeast Asian male, Southeast Asian female, Latino female and Eastern European male. Group had no significant effect on subjects’ attitudes to Arab female and Eastern European female. The Between-Subjects test for the independent variable gender yielded significant differences for some accents and lack of significant differences for others. Table 8 summarizes the results. As seen from Table 8, the significant effect of gender was observed only on the following accents: Southeast Asian male, East European female, Southeast Asian female, and Latino female. Gender had no significant effect on participants’ attitudes to Arab male, Arab female, Latino male, and Eastern European male. The Group

Score

Manner of Speaking Pleasant

Native

Most Positive

Speakers

Least Positive

Non-

Most Positive

Native

Speakers

Least Positive

Romantic

Warm

Refined

Understandable

Male Male E European E European (M=3.50) (M=2.56)

Male Male E European E European (M=3.06) (M=3.34)

Male E European (M=4.09)

Female Female E European E European (M=3.46) (M=2.90)

Female Female E European E European (M=3.28) (M=3.28)

Female E European (M=3.59)

Male Arab (M=1.84)

Male Arab (M=1.56)

Male Arab (M=2.06)

Male SE Asian (M=2.34)

Male Arab (M=1.59)

Female Arab (M=2.90)

Female Arab (M=2.31)

Female Arab (M=2.93)

Female SE Asian (M=2.34)

Female SE Asian (M=2.40)

Male Male E European Latino (M=3.58) (M=3.25)

Male Latino (M=3.53)

Male Latino (M=3.66)

Male E European (M=4.25)

Female SE Asian (M=3.58)

Female SE Asian (M=3.38)

Female SE Asian (M=3.94)

Female E European (M=3.30)

Female Latino & E European (M=3.79)

Male Arab (M=2.48)

Male Arab (M=2.02)

Male Arab (M=2.30)

Male SE Asian (M=2.480

Male Arab (M=.89)

Female Latino (M=2.92)

Female Latino (M=2.76

Female Arab (M=3)

Female Latino (M=3.20)

Female SE Asian (M=3.17)

Table 9: The most/least positively rated accents by manner of speaking



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interaction between the independent variables group and gender had no significant effect on subjects’ attitudes to any of the examined accents. RQ#3 aimed at investigating which non-native accents were the most liked and the least liked and was also interested in examining how the preferences were distributed with respect to the male and female variants of each accent. In order to be able to better understand perceptions of specific accents, descriptive analyses were performed on each separate bipolar set of adjectives. Since the first five adjective contrasts examined perceptions related to the manner of speaking, and the second five adjective contrasts examined perceptions of the speakers themselves, the descriptive analyses were performed separately for each set of five contrasts. Group

Score

Speaker Educated

Native

Most Positive

Speakers

Least Positive

Non-

Most Positive

Native

Speakers

Least Positive

High Class

Pleasant

Friendly

Confident

Male Male E European E European (M=3.43) (M=3.34)

Male Male E European E European (M=3.43) (M=3.28)

Male E European (M=3.50)

Female Female E European E European (M=3.43) (M=3.18)

Female Female E European SE Asian (M=3.43) (M=3.84)

Female Arab (M=3.43)

Male SE Asian (M=2.21)

Male SE Asian (M=2.37)

Male Arab (M=2.12)

Male Latino (M=2.96)

Male SE Asian (M=2.18)

Female SE Asian (M=2.81)

Female SE Asian (M=2.87)

Female Arab (M=2.93)

Female Arab (M=2.90)

Female Latino (M=2.71)

Male Male E European E European (M=4.05) (M=3.84)

Male Male E European Latino (M=3.61) (M=3.58)

Male E European (M=4.10)

Female Latino (M=3.71)

Female E European (M=3.53)

Female SE Asian (M=3.61)

Female SE Asian (M=4.20)

Female Arab (M=3.66)

Male SE Asian (M=2.64)

Male SE Asian (M=2.64)

Male Arab (M=2.38)

Male Arab (M=2.64)

Male SE Asian (M=2.20)

Female SE Asian (M=3.17)

Female SE Asian (M=3.10)

Female Latino (M=3.07)

Female Arab (M=3.07)

Female Latino (M=2.97)

Table 10: The most/least positively rated accents by manner of speaking

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The purpose was to identify accents that were perceived as the most positive or the least positive in both of the above mentioned categories. Accordingly, the summary of results is presented in two separate tables, Table 9 for manner of speaking, and Table 10 for the speakers. With respect to the manner of speaking, the investigation overall showed that the NSs had a marked positive preference for the male and female Eastern European accents on all adjectives. The same group revealed a negative attitude towards male and female Arab accents on the following adjectives: pleasant, romantic, warm, and understandable (the last one only for the Arab male accent), and towards male and female Southeast Asian accents on the adjectives refined and understandable (the latter in reference to the Southeast Asian female accent only). As regards the NNSs, the results were more heterogeneous, giving preferences to a richer variety of accents on the different adjectives. For example, the most positive attitudes expressed for the male Eastern European accent were on the adjectives pleasant, refined and understandable, while the male Latino accent was rated high on the adjectives romantic and warm. On the other hand, the attitudes towards the female accents showed a clear preference for the female Southeast Asian accent on the adjectives pleasant, romantic and warm; for the Eastern European female on the adjectives refined and understandable; and for the Latino female accent on this same last adjective understandable. Regarding the least positively rated accents, the NNSs predominantly rated the male Arab accent negatively on the adjectives pleasant, romantic, warm, and understandable, and the Southeast Asian male accent on the adjective refined. The least positively rated accents for the NNSs were the Latino female on the adjectives pleasant, romantic and refined, the Arab female on the adjective warm and the Southeast Asian female on the adjective understandable. Overall, both the NSs and NNSs had a marked preference for the Eastern European male accent on adjectives related to pleasantness, refinement and understandability and for the Eastern European female on adjectives related to refinement and understandability. The least positively rated accents in view of manner of speaking, by the NSs and the NNSs were the Arab male accent on pleasantness, romanticism, warmth, and understandability; the Southeast Asian male accent on refinement; the Arab female accent on warmth; and the Southeast Asian female accent on understandability.3 So far, we have presented the results of the quantitative data analysis. Some interesting differences and similarities between the native and non-native speakers and between the two genders were observed on all variables of interest. These findings and their research implications will be discussed and interpreted in the next section with specific emphasis on findings pertaining to the Arab-accented speech. 3

The NNSs group rated the Eastern European female and Latino female equally on this adjective.



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5. Discussion and Conclusions 5.1 Discussion With respect to the first research question, the results showed that NNSs viewed non-native accents in a significantly more positive way than the NSs. Also, the female subjects showed a significantly more positive attitude than their male counterparts. There was no significant interaction on any of the sublevels of the independent variables. The significant differences regarding the NNSs and the NSs cannot be directly compared to previous research since very few studies have investigated attitudes to accents comparing these two groups and different perspectives. In fact, the existing research on this issue mainly focused on comparing NS groups with NNS groups on regional American English accents (Alford & Strother 1990). The examination by Alford & Strother found significant differences between NSs and NNSs in their perceptions of the regional accents that were the focus of interest in their study. The significant differences between the NS and NNS groups involved in this investigation were expected in view of a principle of familiarity (DaltonPuffer et al. 1997, Young 2003), according to which people show more positive attitude to things they can associate with. In the context of this study, all NN subjects were also second language learners who had a substantial experience in learning English. This fact may explain why they were more tolerant of non-native accented English and more aware of the difficulties related to achieving native-like proficiency and pronunciation. Yet, since this study involved NSs who had also had some experience in learning a second language, it was expected that the NSs would also show tolerance and understanding of non-native accents of English. In this sense, examining the group means, we can see that the actual difference, despite the significant differences, was not of great practical importance. That is, both NSs and NNSs showed a moderate rather than a highly positive attitude to non-native accents. The independent variable gender had a significant effect on the attitude towards accented speech. More specifically, female participants had a markedly more positive attitude towards the non-native accents than their male counterparts. The statistical results, which revealed that the female participants had an overall less conservative attitude to non-native accents than their male counterparts, support the findings reported by McLendon (1999). However, they contradict the results of other studies that have found the opposite tendency (Podberesky et al. 1990, Schairer 1992). One potential explanation for this discrepancy is that these differences may be sample-specific and should not be generalized over larger populations. That is, depending on the specific characteristics of different populations such as culture, social class, ethnic group, age-related factors, second language experience, etc., the effect of gender may show different results. The findings pertaining to the second research question showed that the independent variable group had a significant effect on subjects’ attitudes to six accented varieties and more specifically to the Arab male accented speech.

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Specifically, it was revealed that the NNSs viewed the Arab male accent in a significantly more positive way than the NSs. In fact, these results did not bring much overall additional information to the ones reported in relation to RQ# 1, but it revealed a clear distinction with respect to how NS and NNS differ in their judgments of the Arab male’s accentedness. More specifically, RQ#2 suggested that some of the accents, such as the Arab male’s, were rated higher than others. Interestingly, when closely examining the patterns it can be noted that while the Eastern European male accent received the highest evaluations by both groups, the Arab male accent was still the most negatively perceived by both NSs and NNSs. As mentioned earlier in reference to the findings regarding RQ#1, attitudes to nonnative accents in view of native and non-native groups have not been explored before, so they can not be interpreted in view of previous studies. With respect to the present study, one plausible reason why NNSs showed more tolerance to accents could be attributed to their experience of being second language learners. In relation to the effect of gender, the results showed that the female participants displayed a significantly more positive attitude than their male counterparts to the following accents: Latino female, Southeast Asian male, Southeast Asian female and Eastern European female. Thus, it became clear that the significant differences between the male and female participants were only on the above four accents, among which three were female and one was male. The overall differences between the male and female subject subgroups can be partially related to previous findings in the literature (Dalton-Puffer et al. 1997, Young 2003) according to which participants usually have a more positive attitude to accents they identify with and a more negative attitude to accents they do not identify with. In the context of the present study, the female group showed a more positive attitude to three out of the four female accents, which could be attributed to a gender-based solidarity or preference manifested by the female subjects towards some female non-native accents of English. The reasons why the same difference did not show on the only other female accent, which was the female Arab accent, might include the linguistic distance between the L1s of the subjects and Arabic, as well as the influence of socio-political factors. These will be discussed in more detail in relation to Question 3. Examining the means for the male subject subgroup on the eight accents of interest, further evidence in support of the familiarity principle was provided. The male subjects gave higher scores to two out of the four male accents. More precisely, they rated the male Latino and the male Eastern European accents higher than the female counterpart accents. On the other hand, the male subjects rated the male Southeast Asian and the male Arab lower than the respective female accent. The reason why the male subjects showed a highly positive attitude to the male Latino and the male Eastern European accents could be partially attributed to a gender-based affinity to accents of the same gender. Also, it could be due to the fact that these two non-native accents may resemble native-like accents because of the linguistic closeness between English, on the one hand, and Spanish and Romanian



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on the other. As mentioned in section 3, the above three languages are classified as belonging to the Indo-European language family, while the rest of the L1s of the stimulus providers belong to the Semitic (Arabic) and Sino-Tibetan (Mandarin) language families (O’Grady et al. 2005). However, linguistic typology may not be the only factor that contributes to how accents are shaped and perceived. In a deeper interpretation of the familiarity principle, it is recommended that the above results be examined in the context of a possible complex four-way interaction between the gender of the participant (judge), the gender of the stimulus provider, the L1 of the participant and the language of the stimulus. Overall, the results for Questions 1 and 2 showed some statistical differences that could be attributed to being a native or a non-native speaker as well as to being male or female. The main interpretations of these differences were made in relation to a principle of familiarity (Dalton-Puffer et al. 1997, Young 2003), either in view of language typology or in view of second language experience. In the context of the present study, the variation of attitudes towards the above-mentioned accents could be partially explained by the linguistic similarities and differences between the languages represented in the stimulus providers and the participants. For example, the more positive attitude of NNSs towards the male and female Southeast Asian accents could be attributed to the similarities of the L1s of the stimulus providers and the NN subjects. That is, the L1 of the stimulus providers was Mandarin, while the L1s of the NNSs included Mandarin, Thai, Japanese and Korean. All of these languages share common features in their phonetic and suprasegmental systems which are usually reflected in the oral production of a second language. There are other aspects of familiarity such as ethnic and social similarities and differences that will be referred to in the next question. The third research question was formulated as: Which are the most liked and the least liked non-native-by-gender accents of English? This question was investigated both in view of the participants’ perceptions of non-native speakers’ manner of speaking as well as their perceptions of the speakers themselves. The findings pertaining to the most and least positively rated accents in view of the manner of speaking revealed that for NSs of GAE, the most preferred accents were the Eastern European male and female. With respect to the least-liked accents, NSs assigned negative ratings to the Arab male and female accents, followed by the Southeast Asian male and female accents. Regarding the most-liked accents, these results provide support for the findings of previous studies (Dalton-Puffer et al. 1997, Gill 1994, Young 2003) according to which North American respondents ascribed higher scores to accents similar to their own, thus displaying an ethnocentric attitude to accented speech. NSs’ preference for the Eastern European accent was expressed on all the adjectives relating to the manner of speaking. In the context of the present study, the Eastern European languages, included among the stimuli of the present study, were Bulgarian and Romanian. By their phonetic and suprasegmental features these two languages are closer to English, than are Arabic and Mandarin, because of their common belonging to the Indo-European language

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family (O’Grady et al. 2005). This linguistic similarity may, to a certain extent, explain the indisputable preference of the NSs for the Eastern European accents. However, it cannot explain why NSs did not assign higher ratings to the Latino (in this study, Spanish) accents since, as already mentioned, Spanish is also an IndoEuropean language. In the context of the U.S., the Spanish (Latino) accent is often associated with the image of the Latino immigrant workers who are perceived negatively because of their undocumented status (an issue that was a political ‘hot topic’ at the time of this investigation). In this sense, it can be speculated that attitudes to accents are shaped under the influence of a myriad of variables that go above the level of linguistic and ethnocentric affinities and may include sociopolitical factors. NSs’ less positive attitudes towards the Arab and the Southeast Asian accents confirmed findings by previous studies, particularly with respect to the Arab accents (Johnson & Frederick 1994). NSs’ negative judgments of this accent may be due to a number of factors such as linguistic distance between Arabic and English due to their belonging to two different language families (Semitic and Indo-European); insufficient cultural contact between the Arab ethnic minority and the American NSs; recent reflections of socio-political tensions, and others. The results for NNSs on manner of speaking showed a less binary pattern, mainly because the preferences were less clear-cut and more heterogeneous than for the NSs. As regards the least-liked accents, the NNSs’ judgments reflected NSs’ attitudes since they also evaluated the manner of speaking of the Arab male as the least positive. This tendency was observed on all adjectives except for refinement, which was negatively marked for the male Southeast Asian accent. This finding is interesting since it was not expected of the NNSs to assign negative ratings to an Asian accent since they, themselves, were Asian. However, this pattern was also observed in the case of the Southeast Asian female accent which was the least positively rated accent on the adjective of understandability. It is also noteworthy to mention that NNSs’ negative attitudes towards both male and female Southeast Asian accents were expressed in relation to refinement, pleasantness, and romanticism. A potential explanation of this deviation from the familiarity principle could be the fact that the NNSs were also second language learners of English and, as already suggested by previous research (Dalton-Puffer et al. 1997, Derwing 2003), second language learners tend to have negative perceptions of their own accents. The findings pertaining to the most and least positively rated accents in view of the speaker indicated that NSs had again a marked preference for the male Eastern European accent on all adjectives. This finding further supported the results discussed in Questions 1 and 2. In view of negative perceptions, NSs judged the male Southeast Asian speaker as predominantly the least liked one, while the Arab male speaker was rated negatively only on pleasantness. This was an interesting finding which suggested that NSs judged the Arab male speaker differently from his manner of speaking. In addition, the Latino male speaker was rated low in view of friendliness. As regards the least positively judged female



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speakers, NSs evaluated both the Southeast Asian female and the Arab female negatively. This pattern was closely analogous to the attitudes displayed towards manner of speaking. It showed that NSs were overall consistent in their judgments about the manner of speaking and the speaker, showing only minor exceptions. With respect to NNSs’ attitudes in relation to the speakers, the male Eastern European and the male Latino speakers were evaluated highly on the adjective friendly. This finding not only parallels NSs’ judgments, but also reflects the tendency which was observed in the case of judgments towards the manner of speaking. These results could be explained by the fact that for NNSs both the male Eastern European and the male Latino were perceived as accents closer to the native-like variety and for this reason were evaluated positively in view of the manner of speaking and the speakers. Regarding the most liked female speakers, NNSs gave a more favorable rating to the Southeast Asian female on pleasantness and friendliness, a result that reflected the tendency observed in view of the manner of speaking. The other most positively ranked female speakers were the Latino female on educated, the Eastern European female on high class and the Arab female on confident. This diversity in the NNSs’ evaluations of the speakers in comparison to the NSs’ predominant preference for the East European speakers, may be because the NNSs were more accepting of non-native accents than NSs. Therefore, they may have judged the speakers objectively without being influenced by the speakers’ accents. As far as the least liked speakers are concerned, NNSs evaluated the Southeast Asian male the most negatively, followed by the Arab male speaker. With respect to the female speakers, the least liked speakers were, respectively, the Southeast Asian female, the Latino female and the Arab female. Overall, the results with respect to the speaker showed two different patterns of perceptions; the one pertaining to the status of the speaker, reflected on the adjectives educated and high class, and the other pertaining to the personality of the speaker, and included the adjectives pleasant, friendly and confident. In view of both status and personality, it appeared that NSs ascribed predominantly more positive ratings to the Eastern European male and female accents, and gave negative ratings to the Arab male, Arab female, Southeast Asian male and Southeast Asian male accents. In this respect, NSs’ attitudes to the speakers were rigid and undifferentiated from their perceptions of the manner of speaking. On the other hand, the NNSs’ judgments showed a clearly different pattern. That is, the NNSs expressed positive attitudes not only towards the male and female Eastern European accents, but also towards the Latino male accent. NNSs’ negative attitudes were primarily expressed towards the Arab male accent, thus exhibiting a similar reaction as the NSs. Yet, this negative attitude was expressed only on the adjectives of personality (pleasant and friendly) and not on status. This heterogeneity in the attitudes of NNSs towards the non-native accents revealed a more balanced pattern of biases related to the manner of speaking and the speakers themselves.

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The results related to the most liked and the least liked accents showed that participants’ evaluations in view of the manner of speaking and in view of the speakers were sometimes undifferentiated and at other times distinctively separated. The reasons for this fluctuating tendency could be various, some stemming from linguistic typology, others from ethnocentric affinity, and yet others due to self-critical perceptions of the accents people associate themselves with. The complexity of these underlying factors is challenging and could not be interpreted fully in the context of a single study. However, they should become an objective to be investigated in future research on accents. 5.2 Conclusion Putting together the results of this study, two main conclusions can be made. First, the reasons why people perceive some accents more positively than others can be explained, to a great extent, by the familiarity principle (or lack of it), which in the context of the present study was observed in the following aspects.

(a)



(b) (c) (d)

Linguistic closeness or distance between the L1s of the participants (judges) and the L1s of the stimulus providers. Gender-based affinities to accents. Personal experience in learning a second language. Ethnocentric identification with an accent.

However, some findings of this study also suggested that the familiarity principle could not explain all patterns displayed in relation to accent. For example, there were some exceptions that pointed to the fact that other variables of a sociopolitical nature may also influence people’s attitudes to (non-native) accents and even have a much stronger impact than linguistic and gender factors or second language learning experiences. In this sense, it could be speculated that factors of a socio-political nature may lead to negative familiarity. That is, accents that are linguistically similar to the target accent, and would have been positively perceived because of this linguistic closeness, may, in fact, elicit negative attitudes due to socio-politically-shaped negative stereotypes. 5.3 Pedagogical implications Stemming from the above-mentioned conclusions, this study identified three main recommendations that could be useful to pedagogical contexts where non-native teachers or teaching assistants are involved. First, it is recommended that school or college curricula offer general education courses in language and culture that will familiarize students with the linguistic and cultural diversity in the world and, in this way, make them more open-minded to native and non-native accents. Second, non-native teachers or teaching assistants should be aware that a non-native accent could be negatively perceived if it impedes their ability to provide clear instruction and understandable input. In this sense, they should work towards overcoming pronunciation inaccuracies that negatively affect their oral



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skills. Third, second language teachers, along with trying to help their students develop accurate pronunciation and intonation proficiency, should also encourage positive and open-minded attitudes to non-native accents in order not to instill psychological barriers and low self-esteem in the learners. 5.4 Recommendations for future research This study has contributed to accent-related research by examining attitudes to non-native accents of GAE with respect to two central variables, group (NSs vs. NNSs of GAE) and gender (male vs. female). In the process of the data collection and analyses and in interpreting the results, some observations were made that could inform future research about areas that need further investigation. The most important of these are outlined below: (1) The stimulus providers in this study were speakers of four different L1s, one of each gender. Since a sample of two speakers is too small to generalize the results, it is recommended that future research include bigger samples that will allow the results to be interpreted with more certainty. Additionally, using a larger sample of speakers will also reduce the speaker effect in terms of voice quality, clarity of enunciation, timbre, diction, etc. (2) In view of the stimulus providers, the study also involved two native General American English samples, but these two accents were solely used as distractors and for this reason were not examined in the data analyses. However, it might be interesting to future studies to include the native accents in the analyses in order to give another dimension to the interpretation of the results. (3) Regarding the participants, it is recommended for future studies to examine the effect of other demographic variables, such as age, education, social class, occupation, place of residence, etc. Another interesting area of investigation pertains to the group of NSs. In this study, all the NS participants had some experience in learning a second language, and the results could not be generalized to NSs who had never studied a second language. Future studies on accents may consider comparing these two groups. (4) This study made reference to language typology when interpreting the results. Some interesting associations between the L1s of the participants and the L1s of the stimulus providers were found in explaining certain patterns of attitudes to non-native accents. Since previous research had not taken language typology into consideration, it was not possible to compare and triangulate conclusions made in this aspect. Therefore, it would be interesting and valuable if future studies tried to examine their data in view of the linguistic similarities and differences between the languages involved. 5.5 Limitations of the study This study has examined attitudes to non-native accents of GAE through a questionnaire that consisted of forced choice answers. More specifically, the range

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of answers was limited to a set of adjectives, which the participants might not have chosen had they been given the opportunity to provide their own answers. The present study involved NSs of General American English who have all had some experience in learning a second language. Therefore, the results should not be extended to NSs who have never studied a second language. Besides, the NNS group involved participants from Southeast Asia, and for this reason the results can only be valid with respect to this specific group. In addition, both the NS and NNS groups were college students from a U.S. university campus and the findings concerning these two groups should not be generalized beyond the samples studied. Part 1 of this study included a questionnaire that consisted of forced choice answers limited to a set of adjectives. Had the participants been given the opportunity to define the accents using their own adjectives, they might not have selected the ones they were offered. Also, had they been given the option to ‘disagree’ or mark a certain question as ‘not relevant’, they might have expressed fewer biases. The number of stimulus providers of each accent was limited to two and, because of the very small samples, it is difficult to conclude whether all of the findings could be attributed to the effect of the accents or to the effect of the speakers. That is, the attitudes revealed in this study may have also been influenced by the speakers’ voice quality, diction, enunciation, timbre, and other paralinguistic factors. 5.6 Contributions of the study This research is one of the first which has compared NSs and NNSs of GAE on their attitudes to Arab-accented English. In addition, it has made a contribution by also examining the variable of gender. In contrast, previous studies mainly employed the matched-guise technique with only one speaker. Another unexplored area this study touched upon was related to the language typology of the L1s of the participants and the stimulus providers. More precisely, the linguistic similarities and differences between the languages involved were used in the interpretation of the results. Finally, this study has tried to provide a new dimension in interpreting attitudes to accented speech, but also to offer new insights to understanding accents from psycholinguistic, sociolinguistic, and pedagogical perspectives. REFERENCES Alford, Randall L. & Judith B. Strother. 1990. “Attitudes of Native and Nonnative Speakers Toward Selected Regional Accents of U.S. English”. TESOL Quarterly 24:3.479-495. Arthur, Bradford, Dorothee Farrar & George Bradford. 1974. “Evaluation Reactions of College Students to Dialect Differences in the English of Mexican Americans”. Language and Speech 17:3.255-270.



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Becker, Carl P. 1995. The Etiology of Foreign Accent: Towards a phonological component of identity. M.A. thesis, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale. Boyd, Sally. 2003. “Foreign-born Teachers in a Multilingual Classroom in Sweden: The role of attitudes to foreign accent”. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism 6:3.283-295. Dalton-Puffer, Christiane, Gunther Kaltenboeck & Ute Smit. 1997. “Learner Attitudes and L2 Pronunciation in Austria”. World Englishes 16:1.115-128. Derwing, Tracy M. 2003. “What Do ESL Students Say about Their Accents?” The Canadian Modern Language Review 59:4.547-566. Edwards, J.R. 1977. “Students’ Reaction to Irish Regional Accents”. Language and Speech 20.280-286. George, Darren & Paul Mallery. 2005. SPSS for Windows Step by Step. 5th ed. Boston, MA: Pearson Education. Giles, Howard. 1970. “Evaluative Reactions to Accents”. Educational Review 22.211- 227. Gill, Mary M. 1994. “Accent and Stereotypes: Their effect on perceptions of teacher and lecture comprehension”. Journal of Applied Communication Research 22.348-361. Hiraga, Yuko. 2005. “British Attitudes towards Six Varieties of English in the USA and Britain”. World Englishes 24:3.289-308. Johnson, Ruth & Frederick L. Frederick. 1994. Native Speakers’ Perceptions of Nonnative Speakers: Related to phonetic errors and spoken grammatical errors. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages. Baltimore: MD. Lambert, Wallace E. 1967. “A Social Psychology of Bilingualism”. Journal of Social Issues 23:2.91-109. Lindemann, Stephanie. 2003. “Koreans, Chinese or Indians? Attitudes and ideologies about non-native English speakers in the United States”. Journal of Sociolinguistics 37:3.48-364. Mc Lendon, Mary E. 1999. Language Attitudes and Foreign Accent: A study of Russians’ perceptions of non-native speakers. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Texas, Austin. Mugler, France. 2002. “Attitudes to Accents in English: A Pacific study”. Te Reo 45.65-89. O’Grady, William, John Archibald, Mark Aronoff & Janie Rees-Miller. 2005. Contemporary Linguistics: An introduction. 5th ed. Bedford: St. Martin’s. Podberesky, Rosita, Robert H. Deluty, & Stanley Feldstein. 1990. “Evaluations of Spanish- and Oriental-accented English Speakers”. Social Behavior and Personality 18:1.53-63.

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Schairer, Karen E. 1992. “Native Speaker Reaction to Non-native Speech”. The Modern Language Journal 76:3.309-319. Young, Colleen E. 2003. “College Students’ Reactions to Accents of L2 Learners of Spanish and English”. Selected Proceedings of the First Workshop on Spanish Sociolinguistics ed. by L. Sayahi 107-111. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project.

LINGUISTIC LOSSES IN THE TRANSLATION OF ARABIC LITERARY TEXTS Hanada Al-Masri Middlebury College 1. Introduction The existing literature on the theory, practice, and history of translation is huge. Although it is generally agreed upon that the meaning of any word in any language is unique owing to differences in frequency, usage, connotations, and lexical gaps in other languages in context (Newmark 1991:8), such literature—produced mostly in the twentieth-century (cf. Bassnett-McGuire 1980, Hart 1998)—broadly defines translation as the matching between the source text and the target text. Such matching was given different labels: “similarity,” “analogy,” “adequacy,” “invariance,” “congruence,” “correspondence,” “transfer,” “relevance,” “equivalence” (Broeck 1976, Bassnett-McGuire 1980, Larson 1984, Hart 1998, Pedersen 1988, Newmark 1991). As for translation process per se, it was given many various and sometimes overlapping definitions. Newmark (1991) offered the labels “communicative” and “semantic” translation to account for the various functions of translation. Nida (1964) proposed “dynamic equivalence/formal equivalence”; Catford (1965): “cultural translation/linguistic translation”; House (1981): “overt translation/ covert translation.” For the purposes of this paper, the term ‘equivalence’ is adopted to refer to the sameness of effect that signs in the source and target texts have on the audience for which they are intended (following Kruger 2001). The aim of this paper, accordingly, is to provide a complete inventory of the linguistic elements which systematically pose difficulties in literary translation. These losses are referred to in this paper as ‘linguistic losses’. 2. Previous Research This paper explains linguistic losses occurring in literary translation within the framework of three theories: equivalence, semiotic translation, and markedness. According to Newmark (1991:3), it is “a common academic dead-end pursuit” to try to define equivalence. However, for the sake of generality, it could be argued that equivalence was pursued along two lines in translation studies: the first lays emphasis on the semantic problems; hence the transfer of the semantic content from the source language into the target language. The second explores

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equivalence in relation to literary texts (cf. Pedersen 1988 Bassnett-McGuire 1980). Catford (1965:36) proposes that the issue of equivalence would be better dealt with in terms of “relevance.” By this, Catford refers to the dependence of meaning on situation. Relevance, to him, is the ability to communicate messages from the source-language text into the target-language text. Neubert (1967)—cited in Bassnett-McGuire (1980:27)—approaches equivalence from the viewpoint of the text. He postulates that equivalence must be considered a semiotic category, comprising syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic components. According to him, these components are arranged hierarchically so that semantic equivalence takes priority over syntactic equivalence, and pragmatic equivalence modifies both of the other elements. Dinda Gorlée (1994:170) criticizes the traditional (non-semiotic) views of equivalence that ideally place the source text and the translated text in a one-to-one correspondence. Instead, she (1994:174) proposed the term “semiotic equivalence” and classified it into three aspects termed “qualitative equivalence,” “referential equivalence” and “significational equivalence,” based on Peirce’s universal categories (firstness, secondness, and thirdness). Since the analysis in this paper is also based on semiotic equivalence, it is worth introducing Gorlée’s theory with some detail. Her first type, qualitative equivalence, is related to Peirce’s category of firstness. According to this type, the source text and its translation are “self-reflexive dual construct.” That is to say, they do not need anything beyond themselves to be understood as signs sharing a number of qualities (sensory or material properties). Gorlée (1994:174) remarks that this type refers to the phonemic/external characteristic of the signs (e.g., sonnets or marriage contracts), where the signs themselves are indicative of meaning and their features are abstracted from external realities. According to this type, both the source and the target texts may show symmetrical equivalence, which makes them—morphologically (same length of paragraphs), or syntactically (similar structure/use of punctuation)—immediately recognizable as similar signs. The second type of semiotic equivalence is referential equivalence, which corresponds to Peirce’s secondness, the category of object. In this type, Gorlée distinguishes between the sign’s immediate object and the sign’s dynamical object. The immediate object (literal meaning) is the idea “called up directly by a particular sign-use,” in which the relation between the sign and its immediate object represents firstness to secondness. The dynamical object, on the other hand, can only be understood by trying “to understand what is implied by the immediate object” (1994:176-7). Gorlée (1994:174) interestingly argues that, at this point in translation, it is “‘loose’ sameness created through any kind of semiotic interpretation.” By this she means the immediate object is subject to change in and through the semiosis process of translation. Therefore, the respective immediate objects of the source text and the translation need not be the same, either on the micro-level (i.e., words, sentences), nor on the macro-level (i.e., textual). At this point, the signs should give (through their immediate objects) “hints” which must lead to the same underlying idea. Once the immediate objects give the referential



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meaning, the dynamical object, the real feeling or concept which causes the sign relation, comes into play. Unlike the immediate objects, the dynamical objects of the source sign and of the translated sign will always need to be identically the same. Such relation between the two signs “must be mediated by a semiosis which makes it possible for one to be a logical consequence of the other” (Gorlée 1994:178). Since this type of equivalence is illustrated by the idiomatic expressions in different languages—where cultural factors are strongly prevalent—contextual information should supplement the immediate objects (Gorlée 1994:177). That is, in order to get to know the dynamical object of a sign, one should try to understand what is implied by the immediate object (1994:177). Following Peirce, this requires “experience.” Without such a common experiential ground, knowledge of what the message really means (its dynamical object) is blocked (Gorlée 1994:177). Finally, Gorlée’s significational equivalence corresponds to Peirce’s thirdness (the category of the interpretant). It refers to the relation between the interpretant and the object, where the interpretant is supposed to indicate the same things or facts as the primary sign. Gorlée (1994:181) relates this aspect to Peirce’s maxim of pragmatism, where the ultimate goal is to achieve the total knowledge of the sign. Accordingly, sign and object become related through the interpretant, which is “the law or habit (weak or strong)”; hence an effect of the semiosis can occur. To put it differently, in order to gain access to that goal via the sign and its immediate object, and then to the dynamical object, one needs to make new interpretations/significations, which are constantly put forth, negotiated, interpreted and reinterpreted until we achieve our ultimate goal. Although the equivalence between sign and its interpretant is “logically impossible” (Gorlée 1994:181), Gorlée emphasizes the role of the translator in achieving total knowledge of the meaning of a sign. Having established the necessary background, let us turn our discussion to the role of semiotics in translation. Only recently, many researchers have shifted their focus to the new trend in translation studies and looked at translation as a semiotic phenomenon. In order to establish the role of semiotics in translation, one could start by observing the similarities between the two concepts. Translation addresses aspects of communication and is concerned with the use, interpretation and manipulation of messages or texts (signs); semiotics does exactly the same. Furthermore, in semiotics, the meaning of a sign is viewed as another sign, which makes the whole process of sign interpretation an endless process. Translation likewise demonstrates the ongoing and open-ended process of continuity (semiosis); it produces a multiplicity of different possible interpretations (Gorlée 1994:86). To this end, we propose that the process of translation should be looked at as a semiosis process of interpretation (CP: 5. 594, 1903). Now let us investigate how the translated text could be analyzed semiotically. The process will be discussed with a special reference to literary texts. In the broadest sense of semiotic translation, both source and translation represent signs forming part of a semiotic chain—a sequence of interpretive signs. The process

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starts with the verbal sign (be it a word, a phrase, a sentence, or a text) entering the mind of the translator. In literary texts, these signs are novel linguistic features that strike the reader/translator as interesting and capture his attention. In the next phase, the translator’s mind will spontaneously start generating a flow of possible equivalents in the target language that may correspond to the sign in the source text. These equivalents are tentative and open to change, thus functioning as a starting point in the semiosis process. Colapietro (2003:202) relates this stage to the shock of the unfamiliar. That is, when we are confronted by novelty, or “the inapplicability of our present habits,” the translator is alarmed that something needs to be interpreted. In literary texts, this second phase may be called “defamiliarization” (Miall & Kuiken 1994:390) which causes the translator to slow down so as to relate the novel/unfamiliar signs to his experience. After that, the translator continues with a series of interpretations corresponding to Peirce’s second and third logical interpretants. He analyzes his first spontaneous choices of signs, then carefully chooses what might be the best solution to the translation problem. The final phase is the so-called “the” perfect translation, in which the translator determines the best choice by unconsciously associating the sign chosen to the sign-user community, i.e., Peirce’s “habit.” In literary texts, this final phase could be referred to as “refamiliarization.” According to Miall & Kuiken (1994:395), refamiliarization is the process whereby “the reader may review the textual context in order to discern, delimit, or develop the novel meanings suggested by the foregrounding passage.” On the phonetic level, for example, the translator may reconsider the context that enables him to identify the striking feelings of acoustic effects. On the other end of the scale, the reader, in turn, decodes and translates the sign used by the translator. It is worth noting that although translation is the outcome of the third logical interpretant, it does not necessarily mean that the product is highly perfected. This is due to the fact that the translator interprets signs twice, three times, and so on, moved from the source verbal sign before reaching the final translation (Gorlée 1994). While this might indicate the translator’s serious efforts to reach the perfect solution, it also carries a serious implication for the inevitability of losses in translation. In other words, during the process of translation the source text may contain signs that cannot be interpreted by target readers; hence posing difficulties in translation due to linguistic barriers or insufficient knowledge of the source language and culture. To summarize, the semiotic approach to translation has the following merits: first, Peirce’s theory “allows room for the study of both representation in cultures (a study of generals) and individual processes of interpretation (a study of tokens, which may well be types for any given individual but are not necessarily valued as such by the culture) (Réthoré 1993:393). Second, the semiosis process has the advantage of treating the sign as part of the interpretation process, unlike most of the linguistic approaches that deal with the sign in isolation as a static unit. This makes semiosis greater in breadth in dealing with the sign (Gorlée 1994:177). Third, the semiotic approach to translation provides us with the tool to measure the



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validity of a translation both on the linguistic and the functional levels. It enables us to deal with interdisciplinary phenomenon, therefore accommodates both the translational aspects and the linguistic/cultural ones (Kruger 2001:194). Finally, the most valuable merit of the semiotic approach is the quest for a sign which adheres to the most important characteristic of the source sign, as opposed to the quest for ideal sign-norm (Gorlée 1994:185). The final theory applied to the analysis in this paper is the theory of markedness. According to Battistella (1996/1990:19), the concept of markedness is connected with the idea of language hierarchy, i.e., language is hierarchically organized through general principles (sign systems), and through specific principles (linguistic sign systems). Battistella proposes that language hierarchy has three functions: ranking of oppositions, reflecting the dominance of more general terms over less general ones, and indicating that certain aspects of language are being marked while others are unmarked. Accordingly, opposition imposes equivalence upon language, hierarchy is an evaluative component that organizes related categories, and markedness is the projection of hierarchy onto the equivalence implied by opposition (Battistella 1990:21). One application of markedness is the “principle of assimilation,” which was originally proposed by Henning Anderson (1972:44-5). According to this principle, marked elements tend to occur in marked contexts, while unmarked elements occur in unmarked contexts. It follows that there is a strong relation between the linguistic signs and their contexts or between the markedness of meanings (signified), and the markedness of expressions (signifiers), as Battistella (1990:7) prefers to call it. This principle is also related to the analysis of losses in the present paper. Since markedness generally refers to the deviation from the normal (Waugh 1982 Wurzel 1998), we propose that literary translation is marked since it is always context-sensitive, i.e., knowledge of the social and referential contexts of a literary work is a requirement for the understanding of their implications. It follows that the contexts of literary texts are marked to target readers on the ground of the source text being unmarked. Waugh (1982:310) postulates, “the context could be a given culture and so the markedness of a given opposition may be different from one culture to another.” In conclusion, the relevance of markedness theory to this study is based on the premise that target readers’ awareness of the marked sign is largely influenced by the amount of information presented to them by the translator. If we associate the degree of losses with the degree by which the source-text message is affected, we could propose a hierarchy of linguistic losses by ranking them on the markedness continuum. Assuming a linear continuum of the degrees, the hierarchy of losses is determined by the degree of information lost and the degree of the knowledge required by target readers to understand and appreciate the cultural and aesthetic effects of the source text. The higher the level of knowledge required, the more marked the losses. A detailed analysis of markedness in relation to losses is presented in section 4.3 of this paper.

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3. Definitions and Methodology 3.1 Definition For the purposes of this paper, linguistic losses are broadly defined as the loss of verbal signs that pose difficulties in translation and affect the semantic and/or pragmatic (extralinguistic) values of the source text. These losses could be serious (blocking the understanding of the communicative message intended in the source text); tolerable (affecting the style and the aesthetic values of the source text); or complete (affecting both the communicative message and the overall aesthetic values of the source text). Such losses are due to many factors such as mistranslation of information, misunderstanding of the relationship between words, literal translation of what is semantically/pragmatically more loaded in one language than the other, and over-familiarity with the source text. 3.2 Data collection The corpus of this paper is based on two collections of contemporary Arabic short stories along with their translations into English. The first collection is entitled Three Egyptian Short Stories (Thalath Qisas Misriyah). The collection includes “Farahat’s Republic,” “The Wallet,” and “Abu Sayyid.” This collection is written by Youssef Idris (1991) and consists of a total of 25 pages. The second collection is entitled Five Innovative Egyptian Short Stories (Khams Qisas Misriyyah). The collection includes: “The Pigs,” “The Torpedo,” “Nobody Complained,” “The Reader and the Glass of Milk,” and “Men.” This collection is written by Saad El-Khadem (1994) and has a total of 23 pages. Similar to the first collection, the language of this collection is a combination of both Modern Standard Arabic and dialectical Egyptian Arabic. The significance of this lies in the fact that dialectical Arabic is a genuine representation of cultural norms, which in turn are important reflections of different linguistic phenomena. This effect could have been marginalized had the text been written in Modern Standard Arabic only. The two source authors are chosen for two main reasons: first, they are two of the most remarkable contemporary writers in Egypt. Youssef Idris is a major exponent of the radical movement from romanticism to committed realism in modern Egyptian literature, particularly in the field of short fiction. His familiarity with the masses makes him feel at home with the crowd and enables him to reveal the truth of Egyptian society. Saad El-Khadem is both a writer and a translator, known for his numerous scholarly studies in German and comparative literature. El-Khadem has also done extensive editorial work and literary translations. The second reason for choosing these authors is due to the nature of the literary productions of the two authors. Both of their works are derived from daily life situations, which are dramatized through the artistic touches of connotations and literary devices. Accordingly, they are true representations of the cultural beliefs, cognitive attitudes and social costumes of the Arabic/Egyptian culture. This makes them interesting from a translational viewpoint and excellent material for both semantic and cultural analyses.



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The English versions of the two collections are translated by Saad ElGabalawy (except for the short story “Men,” which was translated by its author). The translator is a native speaker of Arabic and is known for his accuracy, clearness, and naturalness. 3.3 Procedures The losses discussed here will be analyzed within the framework of the semiotic/pragmatic approach to translation—based on Peirce’s (1931-1966) general theory of signs. We will not attempt to give an exhaustive account of Peirce’s thoughts, but will limit ourselves to the ideas having direct connection to our main themes. The following pragmatic and semiotic parameters are used as criteria for the analysis of losses. The pragmatic parameters include extralinguistic elements, defined in this paper, following Nord (1991:43), as those elements involved in the communication process that can be guessed at “simply by observing the situation in which the text is used.” These parameters include: the sender (original author); the receiver (target reader); the communication channel (the source text written in Arabic, and the target text translated into English); the system (the culture where the message is produced); the context of situation (which is here particular to the source language); and the ‘initiator’ (as used by Hatim & Mason 1997) who is the translator. These parameters are variables with relevance in the communication process, i.e., translation. The semiotic parameters used, on the other hand, are “text type” and “intertextuality.” This paper deals with literary text type. This fact is central to the analysis and is closely connected to the pragmatic parameters since literary texts are complex entities and rich materials for idiomatic and metaphoric expressions. Intertextuality includes “all those factors which enable text users to identify a given text element or sequence of elements in terms of their knowledge of one or more previously encountered texts or elements” (Hatim & Mason 1997:17-18). Malmkjær (1991:469) also defines intertextuality as “the way in which the use of a certain text depends on knowledge of other texts.” This is also a relevant criterion because the examples used in the source text contain information that depends, for their understanding, on the knowledge of other texts (e.g., idiomatic and metaphoric expressions); hence the effect of intertextuality on textual coherence. In short, these parameters enable us to assess translation and to determine the degree of losses in the translated text. Two methods of analysis are adopted in this paper: the comparative method and the analytical method. The comparative method aims at comparing two versions of the same text (the English translation and the Arabic source). Newmark (1991:163) argues “the only way to assess the deficiencies of the translation is to examine the linguistic differences between it and the original.” Guided by this, the comparative method is expected to give insights onto two levels of deficiencies: texts as linguistic entities and texts as reflections of culture. Accordingly, it is hoped that losses will be better explained as either a result of linguistic or cultural gaps. Within the comparative method, losses will also be compared and

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categorized on the continuum of markedness. The analytical method, on the other hand, is conducted by means of a close analysis of examples, not so much to pass judgments on the product; rather, to analyze the strategies adopted by the translator and how they led to the losses. The data are analyzed as a complete inventory of the losses resulting from the lack of equivalence in literary translation. Following Holmes’s (1994:87) guidelines, we started our analysis with describing a set of distinctive features for those verbal signs that strike us as significant and deserving of analytical analysis. With the aid of a set of comparison rules, we then compared the two texts in order to determine the correspondences between them. Finally, from that comparison, we built a hierarchy of linguistic losses (e.g., serious, moderate, or complete). The type of loss is determined by the degree of information that exists in the source verbal sign but is lost in the translated sign. The losses are discussed in relation to the issue of equivalence. To illustrate, the loss would be classified as ‘serious’ when a certain verbal sign seriously affects the communicative message. In order to assess the level of equivalence to be established, the criterion of analysis is based on two levels of translational units: word level and textual level. The former is concerned with linguistic equivalence. It is used to investigate the losses resulting from word-for-word translation. Pedersen (1988:24) postulates “the smaller the average size of the units, the closer is source language to target language.” On the other hand, for the purpose of evaluating translational equivalence from the viewpoint of target readers, the analysis on the textual level becomes crucial (cf. Nida & Taber 1969:101). The textual level (including paragraph(s), and text) is concerned with the losses of the overall coherence of the sourcelanguage text (textual equivalence). Another test used to assess cases of inequivalence in this paper is the socalled “back translation.” Unlike actual translation which is made directly from the source language to the target language, back translation refers to the translation of the target text back into its source language. Newmark (1991:7) views back translation as a conclusive test, in any type of translation, to determine the degree of equivalence between source text and target text. He proposes that back translation of words and clauses “may be useful in dealing with errors; therefore interference, interlanguage or unconscious translationese can be illuminated by back-translation, as an aid in the production of creative discourse or texts” (Newmark 1991:61). Finally, it is worth mentioning that the examples in the body of analysis are presented in four different forms: the first line represents each example in its source-language form (Arabic); the second line represents our transliteration of the example in English; the third line is our literal (word-for-word) translation of the source language; and the fourth line is the example in its English form, as reproduced by the translator. Each example will be followed by the text from which it is taken. This method of presentation serves to show clearly such instances of mistranslation, literal translation, functional translation, and so on.



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4. Results and Discussion 4.1 Results The results derived from the analysis show that during the process of meaning transference, the translator made some adjustments to the source text at different levels (words, phrases and sentences). These translation strategies affected the source text in a variety of ways:

1.

Paraphrasing: explanation of elements which would otherwise be meaningless to the target reader. Paraphrasing is adopted as a strategy generally to explain verbal signs that have cultural connotation. A specific example where paraphrasing occurs in translation is social deixis, which makes reference to gender or social class (Horton 1999). Although the use of this strategy indicates the translator’s adherence to the “principle of acceptability” (Toury 1985, 1995, and 1986:1123), it causes semantic and pragmatic losses by leveling out the social relations portrayed in the source text.



2.

Elaboration: this strategy is also motivated by the target reader’s need to understand the source text. Elaboration takes two forms: (1) explication: rendering the source text’s implicit information explicit (as in the case of ellipsis); (2) expansion: providing extra information to the target text. Examples of this type include the expansion of idiomatic expressions and the use of two target-language words to explain one word in the source language, usually synonyms and antonyms.



3.

Adaptation: source language elements are replaced by equivalent target language elements to achieve equivalence. That is, when the source element would informationally be opaque to the target readers, the translator looks for cultural equivalents rather than linguistic equivalents. Examples are the replacement of source language synonyms, antonyms, hyponyms, and cultural expressions by target language equivalents.



4.

Modification of Style: some characteristics unique to the source-language style are modified to fit in the target-language writing system. These modifications include changing of the Arabic rhetorical patterns (questions into statements), changing of the acoustic effects, modification or omission of Arabic discourse markers, and loss of iteration and exaggeration which are elements of coherence in the Arabic style (cf. Sa’adeddin 1989). These changes result in the loss of the pragmatic intentions of the source author and the aesthetic features of his style.



5.

Literal Translation: giving priority to the “principle of adequacy” (Toury 1985, 1995 and 1986:1123), the translator opts for word-for-word translation of cultural expressions that are non-existent in the target culture. This causes serious losses to the pragmatic dimensions of the source language.



6.

Use of Source Language Element (mainly cultural) without Explaining it in the Target Language: this creates problems of understanding since target readers are left to guess the meaning on their own.



7.

Complete Omission of Source-language Elements: whereby words, phrases, or sentences are not translated at all into the target text. These omissions generally fall within linguistic or cultural inequivalences (but mostly cultural). Complete omission is observed to

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HANADA AL-MASRI affect verbs, adjectives, adverbs, discourse markers, and figurative expressions (similes, metaphors, and idioms) that are culture-bound. These results are in congruence with the results reached by Samaniego (2001) in her analysis of the translation of newspaper texts.

4.2 Classification and discussion As mentioned earlier, linguistic losses resulting from the translation of Arabic texts are classified broadly, according to their effect on the source text, into three types: tolerable losses, serious losses and complete losses. Each of these main types constitutes a number of subcategories relevant to the degree by which the source text is affected; this would ultimately form a hierarchy of losses. Following is a detailed analysis. 4.2.1 Tolerable losses. Tolerable losses refer to losses that affect the dramatization of the text. They are ‘tolerable’ because they do not seriously affect the content of the source message; however they are ‘losses’ in the sense that they involve modifications or omissions to the source text, affecting its aesthetic values; hence defeating the main purpose of reading fiction, i.e., literary appreciation. Tolerable losses occurred in two broad subcategories: losses in style and losses in the semantic relations between words. 4.2.1.1 Tolerable losses in style. Translation caused losses to the style of the source author in the following ways: loss of rhetorical patterns (1), loss of iteration (2), loss of acoustic effects/onomatopoeia (3), loss of discourse markers (4), loss of exaggeration (5), and digression (6a-b). These characteristics of Arabic style are referred to as “markers of orality” (Sa’adeddin 1989:38). Compare the following examples (see Appendix A for orthographic conventions): (1) (2)

‫هو يعني ‘جيش اخلال ص’ كان عمره اداني حاجة؟‬

huwwa yaʕni geeš il-xalaaṣ kaan ʕumru iddaani ħaaga? He(3MS) so called “army the salvation” was(3MS) life (3MS) gave me anything? “The Salvation Army never gave me anything.” (Nobody Complained)

‫ورمضان مغلق عينيه ومصر على اغالقهما‬

…wa ramaḍan muɣliq ʕaynaihi wa muṣirr ʕala iɣlaaqihimaa …and Ramadan closing eyes(3MSPoss) and insist on closing(3dualS) “…Ramadan closed his eyes firmly, ø.” (Abu Sayyid)

(3)

‫وخرجت دورية االليل تئز و تتمايل‬

(4)

!‫آه لو كنت أقدر‬

wa xarajat dawriyat al-layl taʔizz wa tatamaayal And went(3FS) patrol the night buzzing and swinging “the night patrol then went out ø in full swing” (Farahat’s Republic) ʔaah law kuntu ʔaqdir Oh wish was(1MS) able “ø I wish I could” (Nobody Complained)



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(5)

‫وأصبح للرجل مراكب ال تعد وال حتصى‬

wa-asbaħ li-al-rajul maraakib laa tuʕadd wa-la and became for the man ships neither counted and not “the man owned countless ships” (Farahat’s Republic)

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tuħṣaa calculated

(6) a. ‫تدرس أحياء في املدارس‬ ّ ‫انت ممكن قوي انك‬ ʔinta mumkin ʔawi ʔinnak tidarris ʔaħyaaʔ fii al-madaaris You possible very that you(2MS) teach biology in the schools “you could teach biology ø.” (Nobody Complained). b. ‫ب‬-‫ل‬-‫هل دوالب كلمة عربية سليمة؟ سوف أبحث عنها حتت د‬ hal ‘doolaab’ kalima ʕarabiyya saliima? sawfa abħaṯ ʕanhaa taħta Is ‘armoire’ word Arabic correct? Will (1S) search for it(3FS) under ‘dlb’ ‘dlb’(triliteral root) “what kind of word is that [armoire]? I’ll look it up in the dictionary” (The Reader and the Glass of Milk)

All the examples show that the content of the source message is not affected. Yet, what is negatively affected is the author’s style, which thus distorts the aesthetic appreciation of the work. Looking at this more closely, example (1) shows the rhetorical style of the author is rendered into statements. By doing so, the translator has failed to transfer the author’s ideas to target readers; he ultimately deprived the source text of its vividness and rendered a boring and neutral translation. In the example, the source character/author used a rhetorical question to express the degree of contempt for ‘salvation army’. The word “ʕumru= in his life” was particularly chosen to imply that connotation which translation has failed to capture. From a pragmatic viewpoint, this performative force of words is what allows us to reach the relevant inference. In this regard, Gutt (1991:82) comments: “typically language allows for ‘skewing’ between ‘surface’ and ‘deep’ structures: for example, there can be ‘skewing’ between the grammatical form of a language and its illocutionary force, a typical case in point being ‘rhetorical questions’[…].” Example (2) shows how iteration—a main characteristic of the Arabic style— is negatively affected or lost. Iteration in this example has two interconnected functions, emphasis and foreshadowing. It not only describes the normative act of closing the eyes—as the translation suggests—but also emphasizes this act as a point of departure for further developments in the plot, i.e., it prepares target readers to expect this as a hint. Now, in order to grasp this stylistic purpose, extralinguistic elements have to be accounted for; this is where a semiotic interpretation comes into play. It was argued earlier that semiotics account for the interpretation of both verbal and non-verbal signs (where pragmatic elements are constituents of the non-verbal part of semiotics). In this case, semiotic interpretation draws attention to the sign and prompts the reader to analyze it first as a verbal sign, then to relate it to its surrounding non-verbal environment. The context of situation plays a major role here in reaching the correct interpretation: the character’s closing of his eyes and

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his persistence in keeping them closed foreshadows his feelings of bitterness and embarrassment at facing reality (revealed gradually as the plot develops, as the character realizes that he has became sexually disfunctional). Accordingly, for the functions of iteration to be fully captured, they have to be looked at more seriously and analyzed transparently during the translation process. It is generally agreed that verbs have a large number of collocations which are subject to topic and vary in contexts (Newmark 1991:91). On the phonetic level, the full omission of the verb taʔizz in example (3) is a loss of the acoustic effect, or the “foregrounding element” as Miall & Kuiken (1994:390) view it (cf. chapter 1 for more details on foregrounding). The verb taʔizz is generally used in Arabic with reference to the buzzing of a bee. The author uses it metaphorically to extend the acoustic and visual images of the bee to that of the hardworking and active night patrol at the police station. The function of this stylistic device is to create effects on the reader different from those of the everyday language; hence its omission in translation deprives the target reader from enjoying such metaphorical similarity. Semiotically speaking, the acoustic intention of the sign (verb) could be taken as part of the expression of that sign. According to Hjelmslev (1943:116), it is part of the connotation of the sign, i.e., a kind of meaning which follows from the speaker having chosen one expression instead of another possible one for a certain context. Example (4) illustrates how Arabic discourse markers are translated. Discourse markers are broadly defined as economic devices used to achieve a specific communication function (Loveday 1982:120). In the example, the exclamation word ʔaah! “oh!” is completely lost in translation. The omission of this marker causes a tolerable loss since it is stylistic. The loss is justified on the grounds that it is compensated for by the adjacent particle law “wish.” Again, the communicative message is delivered, in a modified way though, in order to meet the expectations of target readers. Nonetheless, translation betrayed the cultural ideology of the source author. Exaggeration and digression—illustrated in examples (5) and (6) respectively— are also characteristics common to Arabic style. These characteristics were criticized by Allen (1970:94) who remarks “Arabic organization is circular and non-cumulative, and Arabic writers come to the same point two or three times from different angles so that a native English reader has the curious feeling that nothing is happening.” Let us look closely at the examples to evaluate the aforementioned claim. In example (5), exaggeration is achieved in the source text through the use of two synonymous verbs: tuʕadd “counted,” and tuħṣaa “calculated” to exaggerate the number of ships that the character owns. Digression, on the other hand, is illustrated in examples (6). In (6a) for instance, the source author uses the adjective phrase mumkin ʔawi “very possible” and the prepositional phrase fii al-madaaris “in schools” to provide details about events and characters in the story. These phrases were considered by the translator superfluous information, hence disregarded completely as unimportant. In fact, digression here serves two



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functions: first, it reflects the degree of enthusiasm and the sense of hope by which character A encourages character B. Second, it reveals the level of education of character B; whereby he could only teach at the school level. Example (6b) shows that the details provided are not a mere digression; rather they carry informational value, namely, the use of Arabic dictionaries, which differs from those of English. The translator opted for a general paraphrasing using the word ‘dictionary’ instead of ‘how to use the dictionary’. This could be justified from a translational view since the translation is directed towards target readers. However, what is considered by the translator as digression proves to give an insightful detail about the Arabic way of looking up a word in the dictionary (using the triliteral root of the word). As noted from the examples above, the translator altered these characteristics of Arabic style and opted for brevity to fit in the writing system of the target language. The resulting translation was a loss of the overall style of the author. In light of this, we would disagree with Allen’s claim and argue that the “circular organization of Arabic style” might only be true at face value. That is to say, exaggeration and digression are stylistic devices that serve a variety of functions; hence their use is not merely random. We believe they are cohesive devices used by Arab writers to achieve coherence of the text. These devices also help the reader to move logically through the various events in the narrative. This could only be captured by a trained translator who would help his target readers to achieve this goal. To sum up, we share the view of Nida & Taber (1974:97) that “the style of discourse inevitably produces important connotative values, quite apart from the connotations of the words or the themes which might be treated.” 4.2.1.2 Tolerable losses in word relations. Similar to the losses of style, tolerable losses were observed to cause changes in the semantic relations between words in translation. The examples below represent the effect of translation on synonymy (7), antonymy (8), and hyponymy (9), respectively: (7) a. b.

‫ أو خمسة طوال عراض‬...‫أربعة مخبرين‬

ʔarbaʕit muxbiriin… ʔaw xamsa ṭiwaal ʕiraaḍ Four detectives… or five tall oblate (flattened at both ends) “four or five bulky detectives” (Farahat’s Republic)

‫تشبيه مناسب وان كان مبتذال‬

tašbiih munaasib wa-ʔin kaana mubtaðalan Simile suitable and even was (3MS) vulgar “An apt simile, even though obscene and vulgar” (The Torpedo)

(8) a. ‫ايه املسخرة والرقص اللي ال جتيب و ال تودي‬ ʔeeh il-masxara wi-l-raʔṣ illi la tigiib wi-la tiwaddi What the derision and the dancing that neither bring and nor take “not this clowning and belly dancing which is good for nothing” (Farahat’s Republic)

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b. (9)

‫هل تصدق النساء كل هذه األكاذيب؟ انه يلقي بالوعود ميينًا و يسار ًا‬

hal tuṣaddiq al-nisaaʔ kull haðihi al-ʔakaaðeeb? ʔinnahu yulqi Do believe the women all these lies? He throws bi-al-wuʕuud yamiinan wa-yasaaran in the promises right and left “Do these women believe all those lies? He scatters promises here and there” (Pigs)

...‫يعني الدنيا ضاقت بوجهه‬

yaʕni al-dunya ḍaaqat bi-wajhihi… that is the world became narrow in face (3MSPoss) “was not there any other place in the whole world?” (Farahat’s Republic)

The semantic differences between the two languages are represented by synonymy. Nida & Taber (1974:73) define synonymies as “words which share several (but not all) essential components and thus can be used to substitute for one another in some (but not all) contexts without any appreciable differences of meaning in these contexts.” In Arabic, the synonymous adjectives in (7a) ṭiwaal “tall” and ʕiraaḍ “oblate” share some of their essential semantic components. The two adjectives are used with reference to the appearance of human beings. Both are also used in the description of objects; hence they can be used interchangeably in some, but not all, contexts. Comparing the English translation, we find that the two Arabic adjectives were replaced by one adjective, i.e., ‘bulky’. This is an example of how the two adjectives are completely different in the two languages in question, both in reference and context. The English literal translation of the word ʕiraaḍ is “oblate,” which is used to describe the shape of things like a sphere and things that are flattened at both ends. Hence, if used for human beings, it would be inappropriate and would create senses that are not inherent to the sign. The translator has employed his knowledge of the difference between the two languages, and compensated the differences through effectively replacing the two source adjectives by one target word “bulky.” However, the translator could have used the phrase “squared off” to yield a better translation. In this sense, the loss is tolerable, where the content of the source message is not affected; rather it is a loss of the aesthetics meant by the use of synonymy, i.e., the specification features of the men’s size. Unlike (7a), translation adopted a reversed strategy in example (7b). That is, instead of narrowing down the two source synonyms into one equivalent word in the target language, translation expanded the meaning, where one source word was elaborated by two synonymous target words. It’s worth pointing out that this example should not be looked at as a loss, rather as a modifying strategy. This handling of synonyms (through two reversed strategies) suggests two facts: the flexibility among languages, and the justified need for adaptation of the source text. In this regard, Neubert & Shreve (1992:23) believe that the translator must usually modify the source text using a variety of strategies such as explication



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or deletion in order to produce a more satisfactory and pragmatically adequate translation. The examples in (8) illustrate the use of antonyms, which are also crucial components of the Arabic narrative conventions. Antonym refers to the “relations in the lexicon between words that have opposite meanings” (Matthews 1997:20). In example (8a), the two source antonyms: tigiib “bring” and tiwaddi “take” are substituted by a formulaic phrase in English “good for nothing.” Likewise, the antonyms in (8b) yamiinan “right” and yasaaran “left” are replaced by a modified antonym in translation “here” and “there,” respectively. Let us see how translation in examples (8) caused a loss to the semantic relations holding between antonyms. In (8a), the translation altered the semantic relations of movement and direction implied by the opposite source verbs; these antonyms were particularly chosen by the author to describe the derision of the situation, relating this to the act of belly dancing (with a derogatory attitude) in a metaphoric way. It is worth pointing out that some, but not all, Arabs look down at belly dancing as a form of derision, not art. Likewise, example (8b) shows a loss of the spatial and temporal relations implied by the two source antonyms, where the character is being accused of carelessly scattering promises wherever and whenever. As noted, alterations to these semantic relations in translation are meant to make the statement intelligible for target readers. Accordingly, the overall loss is tolerable since it does not affect the message of the source text. Example (9) represents the loss/change of hyponymy, which describes “the relation between two lexical units in which the meaning of the first is included in that of the second” (Matthews 1997:167). Hyponymy in example (9) holds between the two source words al-dunya “world” and wajhihi “his face.” These words were modified in the English translation into “place” and “world,” respectively, where they share certain components (mainly spatial qualities) that are expressed by the inclusion relation. The source words, on the other hand, are used only figuratively; whereby the meaning of ‘world’ is narrowed down to that of ‘face’. Apparently, the two words in Arabic have different components than their English counterparts. To be more specific, the word ‘world’ reflects a spatial dimension, whereas that of ‘face’ refers to a human feature. For more efficient translation, the translator could have maintained the relations between words, translating the phrase as ‘his world became narrowed down to that before him’. This type of loss is tolerable since the content is not affected, and the change was meant to fit the new structure into the system of reference of the target language. This, however, is a loss of the cultural realities as reflected by the source author. 4.2.2 Serious losses. Serious losses are losses that cause serious changes to the content of the source message. They are primarily pragmatic; i.e., they are losses of the non-verbal signs that accompany and complement verbal signs. These losses result from overlooking the pragmatic force of words and expressions, or the subinterpretation of their connotative meanings. It is observed that serious losses

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in the present paper were the result of literal translation and faithfulness to the denotative meaning of words at the expense of their pragmatic connotations. In order to account for serious losses more comprehensively, we subcategorized them into the following hierarchy of losses: loss of the pragmatic connotations (10); mistranslation of meaning (11); loss of social deixis (12); loss of the speaker’s/ author’s theme (13); loss of the idiomatic expressions (14); and loss of ellipses (15). It is worth pointing out that the difference between tolerable losses and serious losses is based on the type of translation adopted, which in turn affects the transference of the source message. Tolerable losses are semantic-based; they occur when the translator is so faithful to the content of the source text that he overlooks the literary expressions chosen by the source author, hence defeating the purpose behind reading literature. Serious losses, on the other hand, are pragmatic-based. They are the losses resulting from overlooking the pragmatic values of the source text; that is, the translator translates statements in isolation from their situational contexts. Both types of losses are interconnected since we cannot actually separate the message content from its use. Accordingly, both sides of the coin (tolerable or serious) are ‘losses’ that result from the lack of a balanced transference of verbal and non-verbal signs. In this regard, Nida & Taber (1969:8-11) argue that if one insists on too much focus on formal equivalence, the result is likely to be a kind of language which is almost incomprehensible. 4.2.2.1 Loss of pragmatic connotations. The loss of pragmatic connotations could seriously affect the source text. Losses of this type are subcategorized into the following: losses in the semantic/pragmatic force of words (10a), loss of pragmatic implicitness (10b), and loss of the semantic components of words that are culturally different in the two languages (10c). The following are illustrative examples: (10) a. ‫فحلف طالق بالثالثة ليكسر قصادها ذراعي‬ …fa-ħalaf ṭalaaq bi-al-ṯalaaṯa li-yaksir quṣaadha ðiraaʕii …so swore (3MS) divorce in the three to break (3MS) in return arm (1SPoss) “so he made a triple oath to divorce me unless he broke my arm” (Farahat’s Republic) b. ‫واحلجرة األخرى تعج باملراقبات و صاحبات احلرفة‬ wa-al-ħujra al-uxraa taʕijju bi-al-muraaqabaat wa-ṣaaħibaat And the room the other full of the probated women and the women al-ħirfa of the craft. “and the other room was full of prostitutes and women on probation” (Farahat’s Republic) c. ‫وفي عينيها كحل أفسدته الدموع‬ wa-fii ʕaynayha koħl ʔafsadathu al-dumuuʕ and in eyes her black cosmetic powder spoiled it the tears “with Kohl around her eyes smeared by tears” (Farahat’s Republic)



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Example (10a) is an instance of literal translation of the source item. The translation is elusive in the sense that it does not explain to target readers the significance of the Arabic ‘triple oath’, which is semantically more loaded and pragmatically more forceful than what the translation suggests. Such literal translation seriously and outrageously distorts the meaning behind the phrase. This example could be viewed—in agreement with Newmark (1991:83)—as an instance of ‘lexical interference.’ In order to understand how translation causes a serious loss, we need first to get familiar with the non-verbal surroundings of the source expression. Pragmatically speaking, the connotations behind the “triple oath” reveal a series of complex acts derived from the Islamic laws regulating marriage. The connotative background of “triple oath” could be explained as follows: when a man takes a triple oath to divorce his wife, he suffers the penalty of losing her. That is to say, he cannot simply remarry her unless she remarries, goes on with her new life, and then gets a second divorce (which is an extreme case). Only then could he remarry his divorced wife, if and only if she wishes to. It needs to be understood that the “triple oath” is a complex process that emphasizes two values: marriage relationships are valuable and have to be respected and divorce should not be taken haphazardly. It should be noted that the complexity of Arabic ṭalaq “oath” is paradoxically easy, as the ṭalaq is a single performative act/statement said three times—which is why it is an effective threat. In the source example, the husband understands the connotations behind his vow and so made it conditional. That is, if his wife does not follow what he says, he will either divorce her or break her arm. The source reader, being familiar with such connotations in his native language/culture, would be able to follow the character’s actions and words in a much more logical way. Comparing this to the translation, we realize that it renders the source expression as a mere wording of the man’s vow. In this sense, what is translated is only the verbal part of the sign into another verbal sign. This gives a false impression of the significance of the sign, i.e., the man merely verbalized a strong oath. In addition, the translator mistranslates the word quṣaadha as “unless,” thus totally ignoring the optionality of either divorcing the wife or breaking her arm. It follows that translation is awkward because it ignores these implications, hence causing a double loss: a loss of the semantic load of meaning and a loss of the pragmatic force of the source expression. It is argued this incomprehensiveness in translation is due to the translator’s over-familiarity with the source language, where he unconsciously presupposes target readers’ familiarity with what they read. In this regard, Nida & Taber (1974:99) suggest “too much knowledge of the subject matter can be a deterrent to effective translation.” All of the connotations above should have been supplemented by an explanatory footnote (it is worth pointing out that here and elsewhere we deliberately refrain from providing functional translation since it is beyond the scope of this paper). Example (10b) is an instance of verbal taboo in the source language. Arabic, like most languages, considers sex a taboo subject, and so the example

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makes implicit reference to prostitutes. The implicitness in reference indicates the conservative nature of Arab culture and reflects the author’s respect for such cultural values. Any subject which could be considered taboo or repulsive remains within the limits of what is politically correct. The translation has caused a loss to these pragmatic forces of implicitness by explicating the source phrase “women of the craft” into “prostitutes.” Even though translation successfully communicated the content of the source message, it seriously dismissed pragmatic effects—which are far more important here. In this regard, the loss is characteristically a loss of the social aspects, or “social cohesion,” as Hart (1998:75) prefers to call it. On a different level of analysis, this loss of pragmatic implicitness could be looked at as a loss of the connotative value of the source signs. Following Nida & Taber’s (1974:91) view (which is also applicable to Arabic), taboos contain an “aspect of meaning which deals with our emotional reactions to words.” As noted, the emotional force of words, especially in literary texts, is equally important to the content and should not be marginalized. Example (10c) shows the use of transliteration as a strategy to account for the source word koħl. This transliteration causes a loss to the semantic components, and the pragmatic effects of the source word in question. The translator has chosen to transfer the cultural word ‘koħl’ as it is in its source form. The problem here lies in the fact that the source language is basically foreign to the target audience who may or may not be familiar with the source-culture word. In this case, the translator is caught between the need to capture the local flavor of the source language and the need to be understood by the audience outside the cultural and linguistic situation. As a result, target readers are left to interpret the meaning of the word koħl on their own. One of the possible solutions could be the translation of koħl into “eyeliner” as the closest semantic equivalent. Nonetheless, the problem still pertains because the senses (semantic components) of the two words in question are not the same in the two languages. The source word koħl has more semantic components than its equivalent target word “eyeliner.” It differs in its texture, features and even the manner in which it is used. Pragmatically speaking, the word koħl draws an image in the minds of source readers which could not be captured by the word “eyeliner,” i.e., the image of a black texture smeared by tears. In terms of usage, Arab women use koħl as the most basic and most popular material to beautify themselves, regardless of their social class. In conclusion, the examples presented so far illustrate how translation affects the semantic/pragmatic forces of the source text and causes a loss by creating new connotations in the target text that are slightly or sharply in contrast with those in the source text. 4.2.2.2 Mistranslation of meaning. Example (11) illustrates mistranslation, or falsification of meaning, as another type of loss that seriously affects the content of the source message.



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191

“‫”وله شارب كثيف وحاجبان مخيفان‬ wa-lahu šaarib kaṯiif wa-ħaajibaan muxiifaan And has (3MS) mustache thick and eyebrow (dual) fearsome (dual) “and he has a thick mustache and awesome eyebrows” (The Torpedo)

The example clearly illustrates how translation plainly falsifies the meaning of the source expression. It completely reverses the intended meaning by unfaithfully replacing the source adjective “fearsome” with “awesome.” Accordingly, the positive connotation intended in the source message is changed into a negative one. That is to say, the source expression “fearsome eyebrows” was intended positively to emphasize power and dominance. Translation rendered the expression incorrectly as “awesome eyebrows” (a womanly characteristic), hence betraying the intended image of the main character. On the other hand, translation caused a loss to the literary elements of suspension and ambiguity which affect the total appreciation of the aesthetic effect. This instance of mistranslation is an instance of ‘translationese,’ which Newmark (1991:78) defines as “an error due to ignorance or carelessness which is common when the TL [target language] is not the translator’s language of habitual use, and not uncommon when it is” (Newmark 1991:78). From a semiotic perspective, mistranslation occurs when “the meaning is not conveyed fully, or at all, from the one language or mode of expression to the other, or it is not accurately or fully realized in the action” (Short 2003:218). 4.2.2.3 Loss of deixis. Deixis refers to “the way in which the reference of certain elements in a sentence is determined in relation to a specific speaker and addressee and a specific time and place of utterance” (Matthews 1997:89). Levinson (1983:55) views deixis as one of the core areas within pragmatics. Short (2003:226) discusses the problem of translating an emotive phrase (e.g., an insult or an endearment) from a semiotic perspective. Short (2003:226) argues that the meanings of such expressions could be analyzed as types of interpretants (logical and emotional) that a phrase usually ellicits. That is to say, translation might cause a loss even on the emotional level. Horton (1999) proposes that the discussion of deixis is crucial to the process of characterization in drama. He particularly refers to ‘social deixis,’ i.e., the words that refer to gender or social class. The loss of social deixis is illustrated in (12): (12) a. b.

‫مالك يا ولية؟‬

maalik yaa waliyya? What (2FS) hey broad “What’s the matter, woman?” (Farahat’s Republic)

‫وايه يدخلك السيما يا بت؟‬

wa ʔeeh yidaxxalik al-seema ya bit? And why enter (3FS) the cinema hey girly “and why do you go to the cinema, girl?” (Farahat’s Republic)

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c. ‫فضك‬ َ ‫يا شيخ‬ ya šayx fuḍḍak Hey religious man forget (2MS) “Just forget it, brother” (Farahat’s Republic)

Following Horton (1999), social deixis are represented here in the form of honorifics, i.e., terms of respect used to address high-ranking people. Social honorifics are closely related to Arab social life. Such honorifics may be troublesome in translation, particularly since they might be unknown to target readers. In example (12a,b), the terms in bold are used to address a woman, normally of a lower social status. As could be noted, these addressee terms were altered or ‘leveled out’ in translation, as Baker (1996:184) suggests. That is, they have been pulled towards the center of the extreme continuum and hence have lost their pragmatic value. Horton (1999:54) correctly suggests that “indexical features signal the relationing of the characters vis-à-vis each other in terms of their social identities.” This includes status relationships marked by such variables as solidarity and power. Culturally speaking, Arabs downplay the role of women in society (cf. Farghal 1995: 205). Examples (12a,b) illustrate how translation causes a serious alternation to the speaker’s attitude; it neutralizes the derogatory implication meant by the speaker. This, in turn, implies significant alterations to the interpersonal dimension of the discourse. In a conservative culture (Arab), men are looked up to as superior, dominant, and powerful. They reflect this image of superiority through language use. This, however, is not to be confused with the idea that Arabic lacks explicit endearment expressions that have positive implications. Rather, due to its conservative culture, such deixis are used very privately. The other side of the coin is the addressee forms between men and other men, which are also reflections of the social and cultural attitudes of the Arab culture, unlike the deixis used to downplay the role of women. Example (12c) illustrates the attitude of respect towards men, where the word šayx was used by the main character, Farahat, to address his friend. The word šayx was originally used to address a Muslim religious man who had made the pilgrimage to Mecca, as a title of reverence. Later, the title was extended and generalized as a form of respect in addressing men. The English translation leveled out/replaced the source title with the modified word ‘brother’ to compensate for its nonexistence in the target culture. By doing so, it lost all the social implications reflected in the source text. Horton (1999:65) argues against such leveling out/adaptation and suggests that the translator should be guided by contextual clues to help him reflect the social markers or deixis of the source text. Richardson (1998) believes that the tendency to preserve the source language and to avoid adaptation lies in the fear that the resulting translation would lose an important factor, the uniqueness of the worldview of the author. However, Richardson (1998:126) himself calls for adaptation in translation. His argument is based on the idea that deixis of the source text are a product of the source culture and hence need to be adapted when transformed into the target text. Richardson (1998:131) interestingly points out



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that the interplay of the three deictic dimensions carries important implications on the social, cultural, or political levels drawn by the use of particular deixis in the source text. Therefore, the translator should use the deictic perspective appropriate for the target language. Richardson, in this case, is referring to what is pragmatically known as “equivalent pragmatic effect,” i.e., to making the translation “do the same things” as the source text (Richardson 1998:137). It could be concluded that deixis is a central literary instrument in the process of dramatization. It reflects the relationship between characters and the complexity of the social attitudes reflected in a literary text and thus should not be ignored in translation. 4.2.2.4 Loss of the speaker’s/author’s theme. This kind of loss, which was also clear in the examples above, is serious in the sense that it affects an important pragmatic dimension, namely, the speaker’s/author’s attitude. Example (13) represents the general attitude of degradation towards women: (13) ‫ما قادرينش على أبو كرش‬...‫آه يا نسوان‬ Ɂaah ya niswaan… ma Ɂadrinš ʕala Ɂabu karš Oh you women… not able to control owner belly “oh, you’re all women… you could not defeat the ‘potbelly’” (Farahat’s Republic)

Although the literal translation is correct, the word ‘women’ was translated in isolation from its context. This is an important pragmatic factor since it is directly related to the speaker’s attitude and its loss affects its pragmatic force. The use of the word ‘women’ to address men, in (13), implies the negative connotation of weakness. Nida (1964:40) stresses the importance of context in translation, saying, “the tendency to think of a word… as apart from an actual communication event is fundamentally a mistake, for once we have isolated a word from its living context, we no longer possess the insight necessary to appreciate fully its real function.” 4.2.2.5 Losses of cultural expressions and idioms. Similar to other serious losses, this kind causes a loss of the pragmatic meaning, which in this case refers to the cultural values and the social norms of the source language. It is worth pointing out that the loss of cultural expressions and idioms (14, below) is the most frequent type of loss. (14) ‫اال راسه و ألف سيف ما ياخد وال مليم‬ Ɂilla raasu wi-Ɂalf sayf ma yaaxud wala malliim Unless head (3MSPoss) and thousand sword not take (3MS) even penny “but he refused to take a single penny” (Farahat’s Republic)

The example in (14) is one of the many examples of cultural terms that are lost in translation. Newmark (1991:8) defines cultural words as “objects or activities with connotations that are specific to one community.” The translation of example (14) shows the replacement of an entire source phrase by one target

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verb, “refused.” In Arabic, the cultural phrase is semantically/pragmatically more loaded than simply “refuse” to do something. It expresses the degree and forcefulness of refusal. It literally means, “even if a thousand of swords were challenging the person threatening him to do something against his will he would not do so.” Apart from the omission of the whole phrase, the source word “sword” itself is pragmatically too important to be deleted. In the Arabic culture, the sword is considered the man’s weapon, his honor and his source of pride. All of these implications are lost in translation. Newmark (1991:5) proposes that cultural terms should be accounted for in translation since “they transport the readership uncritically into the target language culture.” 4.2.2.6 Loss of ellipsis. (15) ‫ وال هاممهم‬...‫وأوالد ال‬ wa Ɂawlaad il-… wala haamimhum And sons the… not even care (3MP) “and these sons of bitches couldn’t care less” (Farahat’s Republic)

Ellipsis is used here as a strategy by the source author to be politically correct and to show respect for his source readers and their social norms. The function of ellipsis in example (15) is to omit a verbal taboo, i.e., swearing. Translation has explicated the taboo expression, causing a loss of the pragmatic force of the ellipsis. The term “taboo” is understood here to be a taboo “against the word and not the referent”—following Nida & Taber’s (1974:91) view. Hatim & Mason (1997:196) stress the important function of implicitness and remark: “in context, the speaker can leave so much unsaid, yet express the attitude in question. But what is unsaid by no means leaves the utterance incomplete; on the contrary, the utterance will be ‘pregnant’ with meaning as a result.” It is evident that explication was deployed as a compensation strategy. In this regard, Hart (1998:82) comments: “In intercultural mediation, compensation is one of the resources most deployed in order to overcome gaps in cultural background context required for full understanding of meaning. However compensation usually requires an upgrade in quantity… another mechanism which can be compensated is quality by making explicit what is implicit.” 4.2.3 Complete losses. ‘Complete losses’ is used here for the lack of a better term. This kind of loss refers to the complete loss or omission of verbal signs from the source text. Complete losses could be tolerable or serious, depending on how we look at them. They are tolerable when their functional meaning is not important, that is, when they are not components of the actual meaning of the source message. In this respect, they only affect the aesthetic value of the text. On the other hand, complete losses are serious when the source expression is removed from its pragmatic context and its unique usage. Complete losses were



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observed to affect adjectives (16), emotion verbs (17), cultural metaphoric terms (18), imprecatives (19), and idioms (20). Compare the following: (16) ‫وأصبح أملس كجلد الطبلة املشدود‬ wa-Ɂasbaħa amlas ka-jild al-ṭabla al-mašdood And became (3NS) smooth like leather the drum the stretched “and the skin became as smooth as a drum ø” (Farahat’s Republic) (17)

‫وأنا أحس أنه يحدث نفسه أكثر ما يحدثني‬

wa-Ɂana uħissu Ɂannahu yuħaddiṯu nafsahu Ɂakṯar ma And I feel (1MS) that (3MS) talk self (3MSObj) more than yuħaddiṯu-nii talk (3MS) me “and ø resumed his talk as if thinking aloud” (Farahat’s Republic)

(18) ‫ولكنه لم يستطع—كالضباط احلقيقيني—إخماد ضجتهم‬ wa-laakinahu lam yastaṭiʕ (ka-al-ḍubbaaṭ al-ħaqiiqiyiin) Ɂِxmaad ḍajjatahum and but (3MS) not able (like the captains the real) subdue clamor (3MP) “he could not ø subdue their clamor” (Farahat’s Republic) (19) ‫روح جك ريح خماسي‬ rooħ gak riiħ xumaasi Go(2MS) got(2MS) wind storm (sirocco) “get lost ø !” (Farahat’s Republic) (20) !‫حلق ايه يا بت اللي خدوه؟ حلّق حوش‬ ħalaq Ɂeeh ya bit illi xaduuh? ħallaq ħooš? Earrings what hey girl that took (3MP)? Make (2MS) circle catch “What kind of earrings did they take, girl? ø” (Farahat’s Republic)

Example (16) shows that the adjective ‘stretched’ is completely lost in translation. This usually happens when the adjective is a matter of language collocation, i.e., “words joined together in phrases or sentences to form semantically unified expressions” (Larson 1984:144). As noted, the word is completely lost because it functions as ornamentation, and so its omission does not affect the content of the message. Still, it is a loss of the aesthetic flavor chosen by the source author. The loss in (17) is a loss of an emotive verb, which reflects the character’s feelings and his alliance with other characters. Again, this is a tolerable loss, since it affects the aesthetic value of the text. Nonetheless, target readers are denied the enjoyable effects that source readers might experience. In other words, they are pulled away from the world of the literary text in which characters feel and interact, resembling the real world. In (18), the cultural metaphoric term is completely lost. This is a serious loss since it affects the speaker’s attitude. The context of situation indicates how the officer on duty was trying hard to measure up to his position. But being lower in rank than real captains, he could not do his job properly. What target readers lose

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is an important textual foreshadowing that both prepares them for the utopian world of the speaker and reveals the character’s development later in the story. Furthermore, target readers lose the sarcastic attitude of the speaker. It is obvious that such losses seriously affect the element of characterization. Example (19) represents a cultural term of cursing, or what Levinson (1983:42) calls “imprecatives.” As noted, the translation successfully replaces the source idiomatic expression of swearing with an equivalent swearing in the target language. However, the loss is serious since the Arabic idiom carries far more cultural implications than mere swearing. It implies the influence of the surrounding environment in shaping people’s ways of thinking and social practices (la parole). Originally, the Arabic meaning of the expression riiħ xumaasi’ was “sirocco.” It refers to the phenomenon of the fifty-day summer wind storm. This wind storm starts in the Gulf area and crosses over the Arabian desert to the neighboring Arab countries. It is very hot, dry, full of sand, and carries everything away. Later on, the degree of annoyance and irritation that people feel during the storm was extended to the presence of somebody undesirable. In (19), the speaker (officer) uses this image in the form of swearing, wishing the tornado would carry away the person complaining so that he would not have to listen to his complaints any more. This implicit loss of linguistic expression and the dependency relationship on the environment might be the result of what Sweetser (1995:592) calls “broader cultural cognitive structures.” Example (20) illustrates how idioms are completely lost in translation. The idiom is used in the context where the sergeant-major questions a woman about her lost earrings. Again, what is completely lost is the pragmatic force of the speaker’s utterance; hence the loss is serious. The speaker uses a sarcastic tone, judging the woman by her poor appearance, and so makes fun of the idea that she could possibly own something. The truth value of the Arabic idiom can be inferred by back-translating it into “make a circle and catch the run-away thief.” This idiom is a reflection of the feelings of solidarity prevalent among neighbors in the Arabic culture. It expresses the values of neighborhood solidarity, familiarity, and strong social ties. Each neighbor feels it is his duty to protect his neighbor’s property as if it were his own. Out of such solidarity, people use this idiom to call for help and support from passersby to catch a fleeing thief. In short, the decoding of such losses and the appreciation of their aesthetic effects require high levels of knowledge on the part of target readers. In this regard, Hart draws attention to the importance and invisibility of cultural context. She remarks “the translator must be particularly sensitive to the situationality of the original text, the socio-cultural context for which it was produced, and assess the differences with respect to the situation in which the mediated text is to be activated” (1998:147). To summarize, the core of linguistic loss lies in the lack of balance between the semantic content of the source message, and its pragmatic communicative value. Newmark (1991:104) correctly describes the process of literary translation where he states, “there is a tendency to undertranslate, viz. to normalize by generalizing, to understate, in all



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translation but particularly in literary translation… in literary translation economy is more important and accuracy suffers.” 4.3 Markedness theory This section discusses the hierarchical arrangement of losses according to the theory of markedness. It was proposed earlier that literary language is generally hard to translate; accordingly, figurative expressions chosen by the source author are unfamiliar verbal signs to target readers, and hence marked on the grounds of the unmarked conventional use of verbal signs. It is postulated that target readers’ awareness of the marked verbal sign is largely influenced by the amount of information presented to them through the translator. If the degree of losses is associated with that by which the source-text message is affected, a hierarchy of linguistic losses could be proposed, whereby losses are ranked on the markedness continuum. Assuming a linear continuum, linguistic losses range from the least marked to the most marked. The hierarchy of losses is determined by two criteria: the degree of information lost and how it affects the understanding of the source text, and the markedness of context in which the losses occur. According to the “principle of assimilation” (see section 2), marked elements tend to occur in marked contexts, while unmarked elements occur in unmarked. The higher the degree by which the source text is affected, the more marked the losses. The following diagram illustrates the classification of losses on the markedness continuum. To start with, the three broad types of linguistic losses (tolerable, serious, and complete) are ranked on the markedness continuum, and so compose a general hierarchy of losses. Then, a more detailed sub-hierarchy is proposed to account for all the losses within each type. Looking at complete losses, they are observed to have a mild effect on the source text because they slightly affect the content of the source message; and they occur in unmarked contexts. Accordingly, they rank first on the markedness continuum (the least marked). Tolerable losses rank second on the continuum; they are more marked than complete losses, but less marked than serious losses. As such, they are called mid-marked. Finally, serious losses rank third on the continuum. They seriously affect the understanding of the source message and occur in marked contexts, mostly cultural. This makes them the most marked and the hardest to translate. A general summary of losses is presented in Table 1. Building on the general hierarchy of losses, a more detailed one shows the following: the first sub-hierarchy concerns tolerable losses, whereby the loss of semantic relations between words is less marked than losses in style; accordingly, they rank as mid-low marked. Losses in style are unique characteristics of the source language and so are more marked (mid-high marked). The second hierarchy is that of serious losses. Within these losses, the loss of social deixes ranks first on the continuum as the least marked (most-low marked). This loss is justified since it lacks a cultural equivalent in the target text; accordingly, translation did not affect the source text in the same way as other

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(21) Markedness Classification

Unmarked

Marked

Least-Low-Marked

Direction of Markedness increase

Complete Least-High-Marked Mid-Low-Marked Tolerable Mid-High-Marked Most-Low-Marked

Serious

Most-Mid1-Marked Most-Mid2-Marked Most-High-Marked

losses did. On the other hand, losses affecting the object of the author’s intention, idiomatic expressions, and ellipsis rank second on the markedness continuum (most-mid1 marked). These losses are more marked than the loss of deixis because the degree with which they affect the source text is more obvious. In this regard, Mason (1998:181) argues that ellipsis could be an instance of markedness, hence bound to create contextual effects. Third on the markedness continuum is the loss of pragmatic connotations (most-mid2 marked). This loss is more marked than the aforementioned losses since their incomprehensive translation renders them unintelligible to target

Type of Loss

Markedness Continuum



Complete Tolerable Serious

Least-marked Mid-marked Most-marked

Table 1: A summary of losses in relation to the markedness continuum



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Type of Loss

199

Markedness Continuum

Complete Tolerable

adjectives, verbs, metaphors Least-low-marked imperatives, idioms Least-high-marked semantic relationships style

Least-low-marked Least-high-marked

Serious

social deixis author’s object of intention, idiomatic expressions, ellipsis pragmatic connotations mistranslation

Most-low-marked Most-mid1-marked Most-mid2-marked Most-high-marked

Table 2: A summary of detailed losses in relation to the markedness continuum

readers. However, it is less marked than mistranslation, which ranks the highest on the continuum (most-high marked). Mistranslation is the most marked since it causes a breakdown in the communication process. The final sub-hierarchy is that within complete losses. These losses are generally mild. The loss of adjectives, verbs, and metaphors is observed to be less marked than the losses of imperatives and idioms, which occurred in more marked contexts. As such, the former is given the value (least-low marked), while the latter is (least-high marked). Table (2) summarizes these losses. To sum up, the translator of the source text might have been tempted to oversimplify or ‘overinterpret’ the familiar to match his expectations. In this case, the translator turns himself into what Anderson (2003:391) calls a “cognitive blinder” for the unmarked and expected. Instead, the translator should have defamiliarized himself from the source text, rendering the unfamiliar familiar, and the familiar unfamiliar. By doing so, he would have a better sense of what could be marked in the target culture so as to explain it more clearly to target readers. 5. Conclusions The analysis in this paper shows that during the process of literary translation, the source text inevitably suffers losses due to linguistic barriers or insufficient knowledge of the source language and culture. The differences in the mentality and thought patterns of Arabic and English speakers, due to the wide ‘distance’ between the two, is a major factor in deterring target readers from correctly interpreting the source text. The investigation of translation strategies shows that the translator, during his quest for equivalence, opted for either formal equivalence or communicative equivalence. Looking more closely at the losses caused by these strategies, it is observed that the focus on only one type of equivalence (formal or communicative) is responsible for creating a hierarchy of linguistic losses. In the present paper, the

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translator’s focus on formal equivalence resulted in tolerable and serious losses as follows: first, the translator’s modifications of the style in the source language caused tolerable losses to such literary devices as Arabic rhetorical patterns (e.g., example 1), iteration (e.g., 2), acoustic effects (e.g., 3), discourse markers (e.g., 4), exaggeration (e.g., 5), and digression (e.g., 6). Second, the translator’s modification strategy interfered in the semantic relations between words (as representatives of the author’s literary choices), causing losses or alterations to these relations (e.g., 7, 8). Third, the translator sometimes opted for literal translation (e.g., 10a), causing serious losses of pragmatic elements such as the author’s message. Finally, the translator’s use of a source-language sign without actually translating it into a target equivalent caused culturally serious losses (e.g., 10c). In all these cases, translation resulted in either serious pragmatic losses or tolerable semantic losses due to its primary focus on the form or content, and disregarding the effect of the source text. On other occasions, the translator’s goal was to achieve communicative equivalence. For example, he used paraphrasing and elaboration by means of explication and expansion of word meanings (e.g., 10-15). Other times, the translator made complete omissions of source words (e.g., 16-20) on the grounds that they are communicatively trivial. In all of these examples, the translator was targetlanguage oriented. That is, prompted by the needs of target readers to understand the linguistic signs of the source text, the translator resorted to explaining verbal signs, particularly those that are culturally rooted and have no equivalents in the target culture. It is argued here that even though the resulting translation successfully communicated the content of the source message, it was not doing justice to the source text. It is claimed, accordingly, that the losses caused by such a translation are serious losses. To support this claim, back translation (represented in line 3 of each example) was used to test the importance of losses. It was discoverd that these linguistic signs have a unique function as literary devices. That is to say, being pragmatically loaded with connotations, they furnish the background and prepare readers for instances of foregrounding, foreshadowing, defamiliarization, alienation, and so forth. These devices are crucial to the dramatization of the text and to the development of its plot. They also involve the reader in the world of the literary text. More generally, the losses are considered serious in the translation of literary texts, particularly in Arabic texts, where conservativeness and implicitness are major devices that characterize the linguistic features of Arabic language and the norms of Arabic culture. These losses have important linguistic and pragmatic dimensions that should be maintained in the translation of literary works. In sum, both formal and communicative equivalences play their role in rendering acceptable translation. Formal equivalence was fine in accounting for expressions that have truth-values. Communicative equivalence, on the other hand, was successful in accounting for communicative values. But what if both values were present in a source-language sign? In this case, formal and communicative approaches are deficient in dealing with this issue since they are one-sided. Formal equivalence



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focused only on the grammatico-lexical correspondences, and so overlooked the extra-linguistic factors of the source text. Communicative equivalence, on the other hand, focused on transferring the content of the source message, ignoring important stylistic devices, particularly in those texts appreciated for their aesthetic effects. Building on these deficiencies of formal and communicative approaches, the semiotic perspective proves to be more efficient in dealing with the translation of literary texts, which are complex entities by nature. Now, how does the semiotic approach contribute to the question of equivalence? Semiotically speaking, translation is a process of interpretation built gradually and logically through what Peirce called logical interpretants. Unlike formal or communicative approaches, which deal with the sign in isolation as a static unit, semiotic equivalence has the advantage of comprehensively accounting for the sign as part of the semiosis/ interpretation process, which handles the sign in more breadth. According to this approach, the translation of verbal and nonverbal signs is achieved by taking into consideration both semantic and pragmatic values of the source text. The two types of objects in Peirce’s theory are taken to be indicators of the degree by which semiotic equivalence is achieved. The “immediate object” takes the sign at its face value, i.e., as represented directly in a particular sign use. It is worth pointing out that a translator who adopts a formal approach to equivalence ends his interpretation process at this stage (literal meaning), according to which, tolerable or serious losses occur. On the other hand, a translator who adopts semiotic equivalence moves onto a higher level of interpretation, namely, that of the ‘dynamic object.’ During this stage, the translator looks for the meaning inside the sign and so connects it to the real circumstances upon which a meaning is based. At this point, translation of cultural expressions becomes relevant; cultural factors are accounted for since they are supplemented with contextual information, through the immediate object. In short, the concept of meaning would be understood here in relation to the situational correlation of the sign. The dynamic object functions as a tool with which the validity of a translation is tested (both on linguistic and cultural levels). After that, the translator continues with a series of interpretations corresponding to Peirce’s second logical interpretant where he analyzes his first spontaneous choices of signs, then carefully chooses what might be the best solution to the translation problem. While this could be the stage where a translator adopting the communicative approach stops, a translator adopting a semiotic equivalence moves further to the final phase of interpretation (third logical interpretant), or the so-called “perfect” translation. It is at this stage when the translator determines the best choice by unconsciously associating the sign chosen to the sign-user community, i.e., Peirce’s “habit.” In literary texts, this final phase could be looked at as a “refamiliarization” process. As such, the semiotic approach allows for more creativity and variability, where the meaning is open for interpretation by the receiver of the sign and the contextual clues of the text.

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In sum, the application of the semiotic approach and Markedness theory in literary translation yields better translation and marginalizes linguistic losses by providing target readers with the background knowledge necessary for decoding the source messages and understanding the connotations inherent in the source text. Furthermore, from a target reader’s perspective, resolving the literary markedness of the source text is crucial and requires the translator to defamiliarize himself with the source text in order to render the unfamiliar familiar. REFERENCES Allen, H. B. 1970. “A Monotonous Dialogue”. TEFL in the Middle East ed. by F. Larudee, 93-103. Cairo: American University of Cairo Press. Anderson, Henning. 1972. “Diphthongization”. Language 48:1.11-50. Anderson, Myrdene. 2003. “Ethnography as Translation”. Translation Translation: Approaches to Translation Studies, 21 ed. by Susan Petrilli, 389-396. Amsterdam: Rodopi. Baker, Mona. 1996. “Corpus-Based Translation Studies: The challenges that lie ahead”. Terminology, LSP and Translation: Studies in language engineering ed. by Henas & Juan C. Sagar. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Bassnett-McGuire, Susan. 1980. Translation Studies. London: Methuen. Battistella, Edwin. 1990. Markedness: The evaluative superstructure of language. Albany: State University of New York Press. Battistella, Edwin. 1996. The Logic of Markedness. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Catford, J. 1965. A Linguistic Theory of Translation: An essay in applied linguistics. London: Oxford University Press. Colapietro, Vincent. 2003. “Translating Signs Otherwise”. Translation Translation: Approaches to Translation Studies, 21 ed. by Susan Petrilli, 189-215. Amsterdam: Rodopi. El-Khadem, Saad. 1994. Five Innovative Egyptian Short Stories. Fredericton, N.B.: York Press. Farghal, Mohammed. 1995. “Lexical and Discoursal Problems in English-Arabic Translation”. Meta XL (1): 54-67. Gorlée, Dinda L. 1994. Semiotics and the Problem of Translation: With special reference to the semiotics of Charles S. Peirce. (=Approaches to Translation Studies 12). Amsterdam: Rodopi. Gutt, E. 1991. Translation and Relevance: Cognition and context. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Hart, Margaret. 1998. Translation of the Sense of Humour: Literary limitations. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Universidad de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Las Palmas.



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Hatim, Basil & Ian Mason. 1997. The Translator as Communicator. London: Routledge. Hjelmslev, Louis. 1943. Prolegomena to a Theory of Language. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Holmes, James. 1994. Translated Papers on Literary Translation and Translation Studies. 2nd edition. (=Approaches to Translation Studies 7). Amsterdam: Rodopi. Horton, D. 1999. “Social Deixis in the Translation of Dramatic Discourse”. Babel 45:1.53-73. House, J. 1981. A Model for Translation Quality Assessment 2nd edition. Tübingen: Narr. Idris, Youssef. 1991. Three Egyptian Short Stories. Fredricton, N.B.: York Press. Kruger, Helena. 2001. “The Creation of Interlingual Subtitles: Semiotics, equivalence and condensation”. Perspectives: Studies in Translatology 9:3.177-196. Larson, M. 1984. Meaning-Based Translation: A guide to cross-language equivalence. Lanham, MD: University Press of America. Levinson, S. 1983. Pragmatics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Loveday, L. 1982. The Sociolinguistics of Learning and Using a Non-native Language. Oxford: Pergamon Press. Malmkjær, K., ed. 1991. The Linguistics Encyclopedia. London: Routledge. Mason, Ian. 1998. “Discourse Connectives, Ellipsis and Markedness”. The Pragmatics of Translation ed. by Leo Hickey, 170-184. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Matthews, P. 1997. The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Linguistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Miall, David & Don Kuiken. 1994. “Foregrounding, Defamiliarization, and Effect Response to Literary Stories”. Poetics 22.389-407. Neubert, A. 1967. “Elemente einer Allgemeinen Theorie der Translation”. Actes du Xe Congrés International des Linguistes, 451-58. Neubert, A. & G. Shreve. 1992. Translation as Text. Kent, OH: Kent State University Press. Newmark, Peter. 1991. About Translation. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Nida, E. A. 1964. Toward a Science of Translating. Leiden: E.J. Brill. Nida, E. & C. Taber. 1969/1974. The Theory and Practice of Translation. Help for Translators 8. Leiden: E.J. Brill. Nord, Christian. 1991. Text Analysis in Translation: Theory, methodology and didactic application of a model for translation-oriented text analysis. (=Amsterdamer Publicationen zur Sprache and Literature 94). Amsterdam: Rodopi. Pedersen, Viggo H. 1988. Essays on Translation Studies in Business Language 16. Copenhagen: Erhverus økonon. SIC Forlag.

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Peirce, Charles Sanders. 1905-1906. Unpublished Manuscripts. Peirce Edition Project. Indiana University-Purdue University at Indianapolis. [Text references are MS, followed by manuscript number and page number]. Peirce, Charles Sanders. 1931-1966. Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce. Charles Hartshorne, Paul Weiss & Arthur W. Burks, eds. 8 vols. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, Harvard University Press. [Text references are to CP, followed by volume and paragraph numbers]. Réthoré, Joëller. 1993. “A Few Linguistic Concepts Revisited in the Light of Peirce’s Semiotics”. Semiotica 97:3/4.387-400. Richardson, Bill. 1998. “Deictic Features and the Translator”. The Pragmatics of Translation ed. by Leo Hickey, 1124-142. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Sa’adeddin, Mohammed. 1989. “Text Development and Arabic-English Negative Interference”. Applied Linguistics 10.36-51. Samaniego, Eva. 2001. “Pragmatics and Semantics: The relevance of addressee expectations in the translation of newspaper texts”. Revista Alicantina de Estudios Ingleses 14.249-279. Short, T. L. 2003. “Peirce on Meaning and Translation,” Translation Translation: Approaches to Translation Studies, 21 ed. by Susan Petrilli, 217-231. Amsterdam: Rodopi. Sweetser, Eve. 1995. “Metaphor, Mythology, and Everyday Language”. Journal of Pragmatics 24.585-593. Toury, Gideon. 1985. “A Rationale for Descriptive Translation Studies”. The Manipulation of Literature ed. by Theo Hermans, 16-41. New York: St. Martins Press. Toury, Gideon. 1986. “Translation: A cultural semiotic perspective”. Encyclopedic Dictionary of Semiotics ed. by Roman Sebeok, 3 vols. Approaches to Semiotics 73. Berlin, New York: De Gruyter. Toury, Gideon. 1995. Descriptive Translation Studies and Beyond. Benjamins Translation Library 4. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. van den Broeck, R. 1976. “The Concept of Equivalence in Translation Theory: Some critical reflections”. In Holmes 1994:29-45. Waugh, Linda. 1982. “Marked and Unmarked: A choice between equals in semiotic structure”. Semiotica 38.299-318. Wurzel, Wolfgang. 1998. “On Markedness”. Theoretical Linguistics 24:1.53-71.

Index of Subjects

accent, 149 Afghanistan, 1 agreement, 13-38, deflected, 16, 18 mismatches, 21-22, 23, 29, 32-36, 37 strict, 16-18 Algeria, 141 Amharic, 139 anaphoric references, 58-59 Armenian, 135-136

Iraq, 144 Israel, 138-10, 145

Berber, 141, 143-146 Bulgaria, 137

Khaliji dialect, 44, 66, 87 Kurdish, 3, 137, 138, 144, 145 Kuwait, 87

case ,16, 18 Catholic, 135 citation, 116 cohesive elements, 58-62 CONCORD, 25-29, 32-36, 37 corpus, 8-11, 15, 86-87, 109, 178

Jeddah, 87 Jesuits, 135 junctive expressions, 59-61 conjunction, 59, 60 contrajunction, 61 disjunction, 60 subordination, 59

definiteness, 16, 18 demonstrative pronouns, 31, 34-35, 36, 58 discourse marker, 83, 84-86, 87, 96-97, 100, 104-106, 110-111, 184-185

L2 learners, 150 language policy, 133 Lebanese dialect, 135, 136, 144, 145 Lebanon, 135-136, 145 lexical cohesive devices, 62-65 parallelism, 62, 64 paraphrase, 62, 64-65, 181 pro-forms, 62, 65 recurrence, 62-63, 64 lexical functional grammar, 14-15, 37-38

Egyptian dialect, 69 Emirates dialect, 87 English, 135, 136, 140, 144 equivalence, 174-175, 180

markedness theory, 177-178, 197-199 Maronites, 135, 136, 145 Moroccan dialect 141, 142, 144 Morocco, 141-145

Farsi, 1, 3, 10 fatwa, 115 France, 135-136 French, 135-136, 142-143, 144, 176

negation, 69 metalinguistic, 72, 73, 80 news sources, AFP, 4 Al-Ahram, 5 Al-Jazeera, 5, 8, 9, 11 Al-Nahar, 4, 5, 8, 9, 11 Al-Quds-Al-Arabi, 6, 9, 10, 11 Al-Rai, 5 Arabic-CNN, 6 Djazair-News, 5 Mehr-News, 6, 9, 10, 11 Taqrir-Washington, 6, 9, 10, 11 Ummah, 4 Nigerian dialect, 109

gender, 16, 18 glyphs, 134, 135 Gulf/Khaliji dialect, 44, 66, 87 Hebrew, 138-140, 145 implicature, 73 INDEX, 25-29, 32-36, 37 Iran, 19, 20, 22

206

SUBJECT INDEX

number, 16, 18 numerals, 16-18, 19-25, 27-32, 34, 36, 37, 38, 39 Palestine, 138 pan-Arab nationalism, 135 presupposition, 61-62, 64, 69

tense, 126-127 textual mechanisms, 65-67 translation, 173 truth-conditional, 100-101 Tunisia, 141 Turkey, 136-138, 144, 146 Turkish, 135, 137-138, 139, 146

relative clause, 75-76 Russian, 140

Unicode, 1 Urdu, 3

Senegal, 142 Sindhi, 3 Spanish, 142-143, 144 Standard Arabic, 13, 44, 135, 142, 143, 144, 145

CURRENT ISSUES IN LINGUISTIC THEORY

E. F. K. Koerner, Editor

Zentrum für Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft, Typologie und Universalienforschung, Berlin [email protected] Current Issues in Linguistic Theory (CILT) is a theory-oriented series which welcomes contributions from scholars who have significant proposals to make towards the advancement of our understanding of language, its structure, functioning and development. CILT has been established in order to provide a forum for the presentation and discussion of linguistic opinions of scholars who do not necessarily accept the prevailing mode of thought in linguistic science. It offers an outlet for meaningful contributions to the current linguistic debate, and furnishes the diversity of opinion which a healthy discipline must have. A complete list of titles in this series can be found on the publishers’ website, www.benjamins.com 303 Torck, Danièle and W. Leo Wetzels (eds.): Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 2006. Selected papers from ‘Going Romance’, Amsterdam, 7–9 December 2006. ca. 300 pp. Forthcoming 302 Ferraresi, Gisella and Maria Goldbach (eds.): Principles of Syntactic Reconstruction. xvii, 216 pp. + index. Expected November 2008 301 Parkinson, Dilworth B. (ed.): Perspectives on Arabic Linguistics XXI. Papers from the twenty-first annual symposium on Arabic linguistics, Provo, Utah, March 2007. 2008. x, 206 pp. 300 Vajda, Edward J. (ed.): Subordination and Coordination Strategies in North Asian Languages. xi, 213 pp. Expected October 2008 299 González-Díaz, Victorina: English Adjective Comparison. A historical perspective. 2008. xix, 252 pp. 298 Bowern, Claire, Bethwyn Evans and Luisa Miceli (eds.): Morphology and Language History. In honour of Harold Koch. 2008. x, 364 pp. 297 Dossena, Marina, Richard Dury and Maurizio Gotti (eds.): English Historical Linguistics 2006. Volume III: Geo-Historical Variation in English. Selected papers from the fourteenth International Conference on English Historical Linguistics (ICEHL 14), Bergamo, 21–25 August 2006. 2008. xiii, 197 pp. 296 Dury, Richard, Maurizio Gotti and Marina Dossena (eds.): English Historical Linguistics 2006. Volume II: Lexical and Semantic Change. Selected papers from the fourteenth International Conference on English Historical Linguistics (ICEHL 14), Bergamo, 21–25 August 2006. 2008. xiii, 264 pp. 295 Gotti, Maurizio, Marina Dossena and Richard Dury (eds.): English Historical Linguistics 2006. Volume I: Syntax and Morphology. Selected papers from the fourteenth International Conference on English Historical Linguistics (ICEHL 14), Bergamo, 21–25 August 2006. 2008. xiv, 259 pp. 294 Frellesvig, Bjarke and John Whitman (eds.): Proto-Japanese. Issues and Prospects. 2008. vii, 229 pp. 293 Detges, Ulrich and Richard Waltereit (eds.): The Paradox of Grammatical Change. Perspectives from Romance. 2008. vi, 252 pp. 292 Nicolov, Nicolas, Kalina Bontcheva, Galia Angelova and Ruslan Mitkov (eds.): Recent Advances in Natural Language Processing IV. Selected papers from RANLP 2005. 2007. xii, 307 pp. 291 Baauw, Sergio, Frank Drijkoningen and Manuela Pinto (eds.): Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 2005. Selected papers from ‘Going Romance’, Utrecht, 8–10 December 2005. 2007. viii, 338 pp. 290 Mughazy, Mustafa A. (ed.): Perspectives on Arabic Linguistics XX. Papers from the twentieth annual symposium on Arabic linguistics, Kalamazoo, Michigan, March 2006. 2007. xii, 247 pp. 289 Benmamoun, Elabbas (ed.): Perspectives on Arabic Linguistics XIX. Papers from the nineteenth annual symposium on Arabic Linguistics, Urbana, Illinois, April 2005. 2007. xiv, 304 pp. 288 Toivonen, Ida and Diane Nelson (eds.): Saami Linguistics. 2007. viii, 321 pp. 287 Camacho, José, Nydia Flores-Ferrán, Liliana Sánchez, Viviane Déprez and María José Cabrera (eds.): Romance Linguistics 2006. Selected papers from the 36th Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages (LSRL), New Brunswick, March-April 2006. 2007. viii, 340 pp. 286 Weijer, Jeroen van de and Erik Jan van der Torre (eds.): Voicing in Dutch. (De)voicing – phonology, phonetics, and psycholinguistics. 2007. x, 186 pp. 285 Sackmann, Robin (ed.): Explorations in Integrational Linguistics. Four essays on German, French, and Guaraní. 2008. ix, 239 pp. 284 Salmons, Joseph C. and Shannon Dubenion-Smith (eds.): Historical Linguistics 2005. Selected papers from the 17th International Conference on Historical Linguistics, Madison, Wisconsin, 31 July - 5 August 2005. 2007. viii, 413 pp. 283 Lenker, Ursula and Anneli Meurman-Solin (eds.): Connectives in the History of English. 2007. viii, 318 pp.

282 Prieto, Pilar, Joan Mascaró and Maria-Josep Solé (eds.): Segmental and prosodic issues in Romance phonology. 2007. xvi, 262 pp. 281 Vermeerbergen, Myriam, Lorraine Leeson and Onno Crasborn (eds.): Simultaneity in Signed Languages. Form and function. 2007. viii, 360 pp. (incl. CD-Rom). 280 Hewson, John and Vit Bubenik: From Case to Adposition. The development of configurational syntax in Indo-European languages. 2006. xxx, 420 pp. 279 Nedergaard Thomsen, Ole (ed.): Competing Models of Linguistic Change. Evolution and beyond. 2006. vi, 344 pp. 278 Doetjes, Jenny and Paz González (eds.): Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 2004. Selected papers from ‘Going Romance’, Leiden, 9–11 December 2004. 2006. viii, 320 pp. 277 Helasvuo, Marja-Liisa and Lyle Campbell (eds.): Grammar from the Human Perspective. Case, space and person in Finnish. 2006. x, 280 pp. 276 Montreuil, Jean-Pierre Y. (ed.): New Perspectives on Romance Linguistics. Vol. II: Phonetics, Phonology and Dialectology. Selected papers from the 35th Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages (LSRL), Austin, Texas, February 2005. 2006. x, 213 pp. 275 Nishida, Chiyo and Jean-Pierre Y. Montreuil (eds.): New Perspectives on Romance Linguistics. Vol. I: Morphology, Syntax, Semantics, and Pragmatics. Selected papers from the 35th Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages (LSRL), Austin, Texas, February 2005. 2006. xiv, 288 pp. 274 Gess, Randall S. and Deborah Arteaga (eds.): Historical Romance Linguistics. Retrospective and perspectives. 2006. viii, 393 pp. 273 Filppula, Markku, Juhani Klemola, Marjatta Palander and Esa Penttilä (eds.): Dialects Across Borders. Selected papers from the 11th International Conference on Methods in Dialectology (Methods XI), Joensuu, August 2002. 2005. xii, 291 pp. 272 Gess, Randall S. and Edward J. Rubin (eds.): Theoretical and Experimental Approaches to Romance Linguistics. Selected papers from the 34th Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages (LSRL), Salt Lake City, March 2004. 2005. viii, 367 pp. 271 Branner, David Prager (ed.): The Chinese Rime Tables. Linguistic philosophy and historicalcomparative phonology. 2006. viii, 358 pp. 270 Geerts, Twan, Ivo van Ginneken and Haike Jacobs (eds.): Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 2003. Selected papers from ‘Going Romance’ 2003, Nijmegen, 20–22 November. 2005. viii, 369 pp. 269 Hargus, Sharon and Keren Rice (eds.): Athabaskan Prosody. 2005. xii, 432 pp. 268 Cravens, Thomas D. (ed.): Variation and Reconstruction. 2006. viii, 223 pp. 267 Alhawary, Mohammad T. and Elabbas Benmamoun (eds.): Perspectives on Arabic Linguistics XVII–XVIII. Papers from the seventeenth and eighteenth annual symposia on Arabic linguistics. Volume XVII–XVIII: Alexandria, 2003 and Norman, Oklahoma 2004. 2005. xvi, 315 pp. 266 Boudelaa, Sami (ed.): Perspectives on Arabic Linguistics XVI. Papers from the sixteenth annual symposium on Arabic linguistics, Cambridge, March 2002. 2006. xii, 181 pp. 265 Cornips, Leonie and Karen P. Corrigan (eds.): Syntax and Variation. Reconciling the Biological and the Social. 2005. vi, 312 pp. 264 Dressler, Wolfgang U., Dieter Kastovsky, Oskar E. Pfeiffer and Franz Rainer (eds.): Morphology and its demarcations. Selected papers from the 11th Morphology meeting, Vienna, February 2004. With the assistance of Francesco Gardani and Markus A. Pöchtrager. 2005. xiv, 320 pp. 263 Branco, António, Tony McEnery and Ruslan Mitkov (eds.): Anaphora Processing. Linguistic, cognitive and computational modelling. 2005. x, 449 pp. 262 Vajda, Edward J. (ed.): Languages and Prehistory of Central Siberia. 2004. x, 275 pp. 261 Kay, Christian J. and Jeremy J. Smith (eds.): Categorization in the History of English. 2004. viii, 268 pp. 260 Nicolov, Nicolas, Kalina Bontcheva, Galia Angelova and Ruslan Mitkov (eds.): Recent Advances in Natural Language Processing III. Selected papers from RANLP 2003. 2004. xii, 402 pp. 259 Carr, Philip, Jacques Durand and Colin J. Ewen (eds.): Headhood, Elements, Specification and Contrastivity. Phonological papers in honour of John Anderson. 2005. xxviii, 405 pp. 258 Auger, Julie, J. Clancy Clements and Barbara Vance (eds.): Contemporary Approaches to Romance Linguistics. Selected Papers from the 33rd Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages (LSRL), Bloomington, Indiana, April 2003. With the assistance of Rachel T. Anderson. 2004. viii, 404 pp. 257 Fortescue, Michael, Eva Skafte Jensen, Jens Erik Mogensen and Lene Schøsler (eds.): Historical Linguistics 2003. Selected papers from the 16th International Conference on Historical Linguistics, Copenhagen, 11–15 August 2003. 2005. x, 312 pp. 256 Bok-Bennema, Reineke, Bart Hollebrandse, Brigitte Kampers-Manhe and Petra Sleeman (eds.): Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 2002. Selected papers from ‘Going Romance’, Groningen, 28–30 November 2002. 2004. viii, 273 pp.

255 Meulen, Alice ter and Werner Abraham (eds.): The Composition of Meaning. From lexeme to discourse. 2004. vi, 232 pp. 254 Baldi, Philip and Pietro U. Dini (eds.): Studies in Baltic and Indo-European Linguistics. In honor of William R. Schmalstieg. 2004. xlvi, 302 pp. 253 Caffarel, Alice, J.R. Martin and Christian M.I.M. Matthiessen (eds.): Language Typology. A functional perspective. 2004. xiv, 702 pp. 252 Kay, Christian J., Carole Hough and Irené Wotherspoon (eds.): New Perspectives on English Historical Linguistics. Selected papers from 12 ICEHL, Glasgow, 21–26 August 2002. Volume II: Lexis and Transmission. 2004. xii, 273 pp. 251 Kay, Christian J., Simon Horobin and Jeremy J. Smith (eds.): New Perspectives on English Historical Linguistics. Selected papers from 12 ICEHL, Glasgow, 21–26 August 2002. Volume I: Syntax and Morphology. 2004. x, 264 pp. 250 Jensen, John T.: Principles of Generative Phonology. An introduction. 2004. xii, 324 pp. 249 Bowern, Claire and Harold Koch (eds.): Australian Languages. Classification and the comparative method. 2004. xii, 377 pp. (incl. CD-Rom). 248 Weigand, Edda (ed.): Emotion in Dialogic Interaction. Advances in the complex. 2004. xii, 284 pp. 247 Parkinson, Dilworth B. and Samira Farwaneh (eds.): Perspectives on Arabic Linguistics XV. Papers from the Fifteenth Annual Symposium on Arabic Linguistics, Salt Lake City 2001. 2003. x, 214 pp. 246 Holisky, Dee Ann and Kevin Tuite (eds.): Current Trends in Caucasian, East European and Inner Asian Linguistics. Papers in honor of Howard I. Aronson. 2003. xxviii, 426 pp. 245 Quer, Josep, Jan Schroten, Mauro Scorretti, Petra Sleeman and Els Verheugd (eds.): Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 2001. Selected papers from 'Going Romance', Amsterdam, 6–8 December 2001. 2003. viii, 355 pp. 244 Pérez-Leroux, Ana Teresa and Yves Roberge (eds.): Romance Linguistics. Theory and Acquisition. Selected papers from the 32nd Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages (LSRL), Toronto, April 2002. 2003. viii, 388 pp. 243 Cuyckens, Hubert, Thomas Berg, René Dirven and Klaus-Uwe Panther (eds.): Motivation in Language. Studies in honor of Günter Radden. 2003. xxvi, 403 pp. 242 Seuren, Pieter A.M. and Gerard Kempen (eds.): Verb Constructions in German and Dutch. 2003. vi, 316 pp. 241 Lecarme, Jacqueline (ed.): Research in Afroasiatic Grammar II. Selected papers from the Fifth Conference on Afroasiatic Languages, Paris, 2000. 2003. viii, 550 pp. 240 Janse, Mark and Sijmen Tol (eds.): Language Death and Language Maintenance. Theoretical, practical and descriptive approaches. With the assistance of Vincent Hendriks. 2003. xviii, 244 pp. 239 Andersen, Henning (ed.): Language Contacts in Prehistory. Studies in Stratigraphy. Papers from the Workshop on Linguistic Stratigraphy and Prehistory at the Fifteenth International Conference on Historical Linguistics, Melbourne, 17 August 2001. 2003. viii, 292 pp. 238 Núñez-Cedeño, Rafael, Luis López and Richard Cameron (eds.): A Romance Perspective on Language Knowledge and Use. Selected papers from the 31st Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages (LSRL), Chicago, 19–22 April 2001. 2003. xvi, 386 pp. 237 Blake, Barry J. and Kate Burridge (eds.): Historical Linguistics 2001. Selected papers from the 15th International Conference on Historical Linguistics, Melbourne, 13–17 August 2001. Editorial assistance Jo Taylor. 2003. x, 444 pp. 236 Simon-Vandenbergen, Anne-Marie, Miriam Taverniers and Louise J. Ravelli (eds.): Grammatical Metaphor. Views from systemic functional linguistics. 2003. vi, 453 pp. 235 Linn, Andrew R. and Nicola McLelland (eds.): Standardization. Studies from the Germanic languages. 2002. xii, 258 pp. 234 Weijer, Jeroen van de, Vincent J. van Heuven and Harry van der Hulst (eds.): The Phonological Spectrum. Volume II: Suprasegmental structure. 2003. x, 264 pp. 233 Weijer, Jeroen van de, Vincent J. van Heuven and Harry van der Hulst (eds.): The Phonological Spectrum. Volume I: Segmental structure. 2003. x, 308 pp. 232 Beyssade, Claire, Reineke Bok-Bennema, Frank Drijkoningen and Paola Monachesi (eds.): Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 2000. Selected papers from ‘Going Romance’ 2000, Utrecht, 30 November–2 December. 2002. viii, 354 pp. 231 Cravens, Thomas D.: Comparative Historical Dialectology. Italo-Romance clues to Ibero-Romance sound change. 2002. xii, 163 pp. 230 Parkinson, Dilworth B. and Elabbas Benmamoun (eds.): Perspectives on Arabic Linguistics. Papers from the Annual Symposium on Arabic Linguistics. Volume XIII-XIV: Stanford, 1999 and Berkeley, California 2000. 2002. xiv, 250 pp.

229 Nevin, Bruce E. and Stephen B. Johnson (eds.): The Legacy of Zellig Harris. Language and information into the 21st century. Volume 2: Mathematics and computability of language. 2002. xx, 312 pp. 228 Nevin, Bruce E. (ed.): The Legacy of Zellig Harris. Language and information into the 21st century. Volume 1: Philosophy of science, syntax and semantics. 2002. xxxvi, 323 pp. 227 Fava, Elisabetta (ed.): Clinical Linguistics. Theory and applications in speech pathology and therapy. 2002. xxiv, 353 pp. 226 Levin, Saul: Semitic and Indo-European. Volume II: Comparative morphology, syntax and phonetics. 2002. xviii, 592 pp. 225 Shahin, Kimary N.: Postvelar Harmony. 2003. viii, 344 pp. 224 Fanego, Teresa, Belén Méndez-Naya and Elena Seoane (eds.): Sounds, Words, Texts and Change. Selected papers from 11 ICEHL, Santiago de Compostela, 7–11 September 2000. Volume 2. 2002. x, 310 pp. 223 Fanego, Teresa, Javier Pérez-Guerra and María José López-Couso (eds.): English Historical Syntax and Morphology. Selected papers from 11 ICEHL, Santiago de Compostela, 7–11 September 2000. Volume 1. 2002. x, 306 pp. 222 Herschensohn, Julia, Enrique Mallén and Karen Zagona (eds.): Features and Interfaces in Romance. Essays in honor of Heles Contreras. 2001. xiv, 302 pp. 221 D’hulst, Yves, Johan Rooryck and Jan Schroten (eds.): Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 1999. Selected papers from ‘Going Romance’ 1999, Leiden, 9–11 December 1999. 2001. viii, 406 pp. 220 Satterfield, Teresa, Christina Tortora and Diana Cresti (eds.): Current Issues in Romance Languages. Selected papers from the 29th Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages (LSRL), Ann Arbor, 8–11 April 1999. 2002. viii, 412  pp. 219 Andersen, Henning (ed.): Actualization. Linguistic Change in Progress. Papers from a workshop held at the 14th International Conference on Historical Linguistics, Vancouver, B.C., 14 August 1999. 2001. vii, 250 pp. 218 Bendjaballah, Sabrina, Wolfgang U. Dressler, Oskar E. Pfeiffer and Maria D. Voeikova (eds.): Morphology 2000. Selected papers from the 9th Morphology Meeting, Vienna, 24–28 February 2000. 2002. viii, 317 pp. 217 Wiltshire, Caroline R. and Joaquim Camps (eds.): Romance Phonology and Variation. Selected papers from the 30th Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages, Gainesville, Florida, February 2000. 2002. xii, 238 pp. 216 Camps, Joaquim and Caroline R. Wiltshire (eds.): Romance Syntax, Semantics and L2 Acquisition. Selected papers from the 30th Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages, Gainesville, Florida, February 2000. 2001. xii, 246 pp. 215 Brinton, Laurel J. (ed.): Historical Linguistics 1999. Selected papers from the 14th International Conference on Historical Linguistics, Vancouver, 9–13 August 1999. 2001. xii, 398 pp. 214 Weigand, Edda and Marcelo Dascal (eds.): Negotiation and Power in Dialogic Interaction. 2001. viii, 303 pp. 213 Sornicola, Rosanna, Erich Poppe and Ariel Shisha-Halevy (eds.): Stability, Variation and Change of Word-Order Patterns over Time. With the assistance of Paola Como. 2000. xxxii, 323 pp. 212 Repetti, Lori (ed.): Phonological Theory and the Dialects of Italy. 2000. x, 301 pp. 211 Elšík, Viktor and Yaron Matras (eds.): Grammatical Relations in Romani. The Noun Phrase. with a Foreword by Frans Plank (Universität Konstanz). 2000. x, 244 pp. 210 Dworkin, Steven N. and Dieter Wanner (eds.): New Approaches to Old Problems. Issues in Romance historical linguistics. 2000. xiv, 235 pp. 209 King, Ruth: The Lexical Basis of Grammatical Borrowing. A Prince Edward Island French case study. 2000. xvi, 241 pp. 208 Robinson, Orrin W.: Whose German? The ach/ich alternation and related phenomena in ‘standard’ and ‘colloquial’. 2001. xii, 178 pp. 207 Sanz, Montserrat: Events and Predication. A new approach to syntactic processing in English and Spanish. 2000. xiv, 219 pp. 206 Fawcett, Robin P.: A Theory of Syntax for Systemic Functional Linguistics. 2000. xxiv, 360 pp. 205 Dirven, René, Roslyn M. Frank and Cornelia Ilie (eds.): Language and Ideology. Volume 2: descriptive cognitive approaches. 2001. vi, 264 pp. 204 Dirven, René, Bruce Hawkins and Esra Sandikcioglu (eds.): Language and Ideology. Volume 1: theoretical cognitive approaches. 2001. vi, 301 pp. 203 Norrick, Neal R.: Conversational Narrative. Storytelling in everyday talk. 2000. xiv, 233 pp. 202 Lecarme, Jacqueline, Jean Lowenstamm and Ur Shlonsky (eds.): Research in Afroasiatic Grammar. Papers from the Third conference on Afroasiatic Languages, Sophia Antipolis, 1996. 2000. vi, 386 pp.