Arabic-L:LING:Grammaticality Judgements

[Dilworth Parkinson]

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Arabic-L: Wed 21 Jun 2006
Moderator: Dilworth Parkinson <dilworth_parkinson at byu.edu>
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1) Subject:Grammaticality Judgements

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1)
Date: 21 Jun 2006
From:mustafa.mughazy at wmich.edu
Subject:Grammaticality Judgements

Dear Aviad and interested list members

There was a discussion of indefinite topics in Egyptian Arabic during  
the Information Structure conference at the University of Maryland.

Here are some of the examples I discussed

A: `areet ek-kitaab?	      قريت الكتاب؟
  Did you read the book?
B: faSl waaHid `areet-oh, we-ma3agabniish       فصل واحد  
قريته ومعجبنيش.
     ‘One chapter I read (it), and it did not impress me.


Sha``a zay di Hatedfa3 fii-ha kitiir
An apartment like this, you will pay a lot for (it)

A: eT-Talaba bituu3 sana tanya 3amalo eeh?	        الطلبة  
بتوع سنة تانية عملوا إيه؟
      How did the second year student do?
B: shewayya bass elli sa``aTTohom w-el-baa`i negHu                
شوية بس اللي سَقَّطُهم والباقي  
نجحوا.     ‘Only a few I failed (them) and the rest passed.’

Your examples are acceptable if used in contrastive focus

Walad shoft-oh imbaareH, bass banaat la` (fine)
Itneen reggaala bass waSSalt-ohom w-el-baa`I HawaSSalhom ba3deen (fine)

Indefinite topics sound unacceptable in isolation of context, but if  
you look at a corpus, you will see many.

Mustafa Mughazy
Western Michigan University

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