Arabic-L:LING:6th Moroccan Linguistic Meeting

[Dilworth Parkinson]

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Arabic-L: Mon 03 Mar 2003
Moderator: Dilworth Parkinson <dilworth_parkinson at byu.edu>
[To post messages to the list, send them to arabic-l at byu.edu]
[To unsubscribe, send message from same address you subscribed from to 
listserv at byu.edu with first line reading:
           unsubscribe arabic-l                                      ]

-------------------------Directory-------------------------------------

1) Subject:6th Moroccan Linguistic Meeting

-------------------------Messages--------------------------------------
1)
Date: 03 Mar 2003
From:abderrezzak tourabi <atourabi at hotmail.com>
Subject:6th Moroccan Linguistic Meeting

The Sixth Moroccan Linguistic Meeting 

The Institute for the Study and Research on Arabization and the 
Linguistic Society of Morocco are organizing, from May 26 to 28, 2003, 
The Sixth Moroccan Linguistic Meeting. The main session will be devoted 
to the theme: ìBare Structures and Functional Projectionsî. The 
parasesssion will deal with ìWriting with Arabic Script: stakes and 
challengesî. The Meeting will be followed by a Linguistic Institute 
from May 29 to 30. The invited speakers and lecturers will be announced 
in the programme.

Bare Structures and Functional Projections

The issue of bare structures occupies an important place in the ongoing 
debate on phrase structure theory and the design of grammar. In 
syntactic theory, bare structures raise the problem of determining the 
ingredients of phrase structures, their nature and their internal 
structure. Within the Minimalist Program, the issue is addressed under 
more natural assumptions, such as the inclusiveness condition. In this 
connection, the computational system accesses only the elements already 
present in the lexical items, and hence phrase structures are formed 
with no recourse to labels or bar-levels defined by Xí-Theory.

Concerning the issue of functional projections, many comparative 
studies have shown that while some languages project functional 
categories, which are specified for certain morphological features, 
others lacking these features donít project the corresponding 
functional category. For example, Tense, in some languages, may be 
morphologically realized, but in others may not, though the structure 
has a temporal interpretation. Noun phrases appear with an (in)definite 
article, and then project D∞, or may appear as bare NPs deprived of the 
article and D∞. The distribution of such structures and categories 
poses the problem of their (universal) representation, computation and 
interpretation, within the same language, or across languages.

Semantic aspects concern in particular meaning specifications of NPs, 
VPs and IPs, the absence or occurrence of functional projections and 
operators, such as Tense, Aspect, Determiners, etc.

At the morpho-phonological level, bare structures also raise many 
questions of great importance, such as: what is the mechanism of 
representing underspecified phonological elements? Are bare positions 
or empty morphemes legitimate in the representation of words? In 
connection with the representational question, some phonological 
approaches use prosodic templates with empty positions, but others 
allow only bare prosodic templates.         

At the lexical level, one important question which calls for a 
principled explanation is the following: what kind of lexical objects 
enter the computational system? Are they roots, or underspecified 
stems, or fully inflected words? Does the lexicon license empty 
categories, which are interpreted or canceled in the course of 
computation?

These questions and others are not purely theoretical. They equally 
raise the problem of empirical adequacy and parameterization across 
languages, on the basis of features endowed with morpho-phonological 
content, or with just an abstract content. The progress in addressing 
these issues has to go along with the progress in achieving the 
computational reality of grammatical systems.

Writing with Arabic Script: stakes and challenges 

Alphabetic systems are restricted in number, genealogy and 
representative adequacy. However, these systems have developed upon 
time and generated new characteristics so as to be appropriate to the 
written language. Also, specific alphabets have been varied and 
enriched since they have been used to write other languages from 
different families. This choice is rarely due to technical reasons; it 
has essentially cultural, political and economic considerations.

 The Arabic alphabet, with its orthographic, symbolic, and esthetic 
properties has a phonetic content that makes it highly readable. It has 
been used to write a wide range of languages, and there are plans to 
expand it to write others, and even all languages. This matter requires 
a new composition of its diacritics, and an evolution of the bases of 
its forms and functions. 

The progress of Arabic scripts through history, civilization and 
geography has not been devoid of obstacles and challenges in different 
forms. Today, the Arabic alphabet is present in international 
information nets. It spreads and transmits information across countries 
and continents. This requires an examination of its esthetic 
characteristics, its adequacy, and its enrichment or flexibility to 
ensure more efficiency. 

Among the questions that can be addressed in this parasession are the 
following:

- Systematic properties of the Arabic scripts, and their calligraphic, 
esthetic and pedagogic features, in comparison with other writing 
systems;

- Evaluation of the Arabic alphabetís experiences during its historical 
development, and the discussion of the problems concerning its 
international diffusion;

- Technical, cultural, political, and economic challenges for the 
Arabic alphabet;

- Elaboration of an International Phonetic Alphabet using Arabic 
scripts;

- Computation of new Arabic writing systems and their spreading in 
modern information nets. 

Participation requests, together with an abstract (in three copies and 
a disc), can be sent, within three weeks, to one of the following 
postal or electronic addresses: 

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image.tiff
Type: image/tiff
Size: 16394 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/arabic-l/attachments/20030303/b79f8ff4/attachment-0001.tiff>
-------------- next part --------------


Best regards
Abderrezzak Tourabi
Institute for Studies and Research on Arabization
B.P. 6216 Rabat -Institutes  Agdal  Morocco

------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
--
End of Arabic-L:  03 Mar 2003