<div dir="ltr">------------------------------------------------------------------------<br>Arabic-L: Sun 24 Feb 2013<br>Moderator: Dilworth Parkinson <<a href="mailto:dilworth_parkinson@byu.edu" target="_blank">dilworth_parkinson@byu.edu</a>><br>
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unsubscribe arabic-l ]<br><br>-------------------------Directory------------------------------------<br><br>1) Subject:wa- as a standalone character<br>2) Subject:wa- as a standalone character<br>
3) Subject:wa- as a standalone character<br>4) Subject:wa- as a standalone character<br>5) Subject:wa- as a standalone character<br>6) Subject:wa- as a standalone character<br><div><br></div><div>-------------------------Messages-----------------------------------<br>
1)<br>Date: 24 Feb 2013<br>From:<span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.727272033691406px"><a href="mailto:mcredi@cloud9.net" target="_blank">mcredi@cloud9.net</a></span><br>Subject:wa- as a standalone character<br>
<br><span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.727272033691406px">The general principle is that a letter cannot be a word in Arabic. This is true for the conjunctions of coordination "waw" and "fa'" as well as the prepositions "li-" and "bi-" and any one-letter "word". They are part of the following word. As far as I can tell, this new tendency of writing "waw" on its own originated in posters or advertisements influenced by the West advertisement techniques. We also see this phenomenon in the generic of movies. As evidence of that is the fact that none of the other examples I mentioned are treated as independent words.</span><br style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.727272033691406px">
<br style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.727272033691406px"><span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.727272033691406px">Medhat Credi</span><br style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.727272033691406px">
<br>--------------------------------------------------------------------------<br><div>2)<br>Date: 24 Feb 2013<br>From:<span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.727272033691406px">"Dr. Baudouin Joseph-Gabriel" <<a href="mailto:legrandbosra@yahoo.fr" target="_blank">legrandbosra@yahoo.fr</a>></span><br>
Subject:wa- as a standalone character<br></div><div><br></div><div><span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.727272033691406px">Salaam to all,</span><br style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.727272033691406px">
<span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.727272033691406px">It's true what you said about how the "waw" it's used; but in NLP it's easier if it's written alone otherwise it needs more processing to seperate it and this processing can produce new identification what can false the translation for example. So I advise to let an espace between the "waw" and the following word.</span><br style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.727272033691406px">
<span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.727272033691406px">Best</span><br style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.727272033691406px"><br style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.727272033691406px">
<span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.727272033691406px">Cordialement,</span><br style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.727272033691406px"><span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.727272033691406px">JGB.</span><br style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.727272033691406px">
<span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.727272033691406px">0380576337</span><br style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.727272033691406px"><span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.727272033691406px">0760342951</span><br style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.727272033691406px">
</div><div><span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.727272033691406px"><br></span></div><div>--------------------------------------------------------------------------<br><div>3)<br>Date: 24 Feb 2013<br>From:<span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.727272033691406px">"Hilmi, Sana N." <<a href="mailto:shilmi@nvcc.edu" target="_blank">shilmi@nvcc.edu</a>></span><br>
Subject:wa- as a standalone character<br></div></div><div><br></div><div><span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.727272033691406px">I was also taught to attach it to the word that follows it as if it is one word. I’ve never seen it in a different format.</span><br style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.727272033691406px">
<span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.727272033691406px">In fact, we can’t write it in at the end of a line, as</span><br style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.727272033691406px"><br style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.727272033691406px">
<span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.727272033691406px">رأيتُ طلابـاً كثيرين في الملعب و</span><br style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.727272033691406px"><span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.727272033691406px">طالِـبات كثيرات في الفصل.</span><br style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.727272033691406px">
<br style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.727272033691406px"><span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.727272033691406px">Take care,</span><br style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.727272033691406px">
<span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.727272033691406px">Sana</span><br style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.727272033691406px"></div><div><span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.727272033691406px"><br>
</span></div><div><div>--------------------------------------------------------------------------<br><div>4)<br>Date: 24 Feb 2013<br>From:<span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.727272033691406px">"Amin, Nesrin" <<a href="mailto:N.Amin@exeter.ac.uk" target="_blank">N.Amin@exeter.ac.uk</a>></span><br>
Subject:wa- as a standalone character<br></div></div></div><div><br></div><div><span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.727272033691406px">I believe that on the contrary, an independent waw is more commonly seen in older publications, before the days of word processing, when the position of the waw on the line could be controlled by the typist/typesetter. People are more aware nowadays of not leaving a space to avoid ending up with a waw at the end of a line - which as far as I know is the right thing to do because I believe there are no one-letter words in Arabic. bi-, li-, ka-, fa- all attach to the following words, as should wa (but it just so happens to be a letter which does not connect to the following letter).</span><br style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.727272033691406px">
<br style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.727272033691406px"><span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.727272033691406px">Regards,</span><br style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.727272033691406px">
<span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.727272033691406px">Nesrin</span><br style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.727272033691406px"><br style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.727272033691406px">
<span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.727272033691406px">-----</span><br style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.727272033691406px"><span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.727272033691406px">Nesrin Amin</span><br style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.727272033691406px">
<br style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.727272033691406px"><span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.727272033691406px">Lecturer</span><br style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.727272033691406px">
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<span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.727272033691406px">Stocker Road, Exeter EX4 4ND</span><br style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.727272033691406px"><span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.727272033691406px">Tel: (01392) 724093</span><br>
</div><div><span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.727272033691406px"><br></span></div><div><div>--------------------------------------------------------------------------<br><div>5)<br>Date: 24 Feb 2013<br>
From:<span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.727272033691406px">Mustafa Mughazy <<a href="mailto:mustafa.mughazy@wmich.edu" target="_blank">mustafa.mughazy@wmich.edu</a>></span><br>Subject:wa- as a standalone character<br>
</div></div></div><div><br></div><div><span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.727272033691406px">Hello Elley,</span><br style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.727272033691406px"><br style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.727272033691406px">
<span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.727272033691406px">The wa- is a prefix in MSA, so it has to be attached to the stem.</span><br style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.727272033691406px"><span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.727272033691406px">However, in some variations of MSA, especially in North Africa, it is becoming an independent word possibly as a result of close interaction with French.</span><br style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.727272033691406px">
<br style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.727272033691406px"><span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.727272033691406px">Thanks,</span><br style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.727272033691406px">
<span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.727272033691406px">Mustafa Mughazy</span><br style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.727272033691406px"></div><div><span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.727272033691406px"><br>
</span></div><div><div>--------------------------------------------------------------------------<br><div>6)<br>Date: 24 Feb 2013<br>From:<font face="arial, sans-serif">Dil Parkinson <<a href="mailto:dil@byu.edu" target="_blank">dil@byu.edu</a>></font><br>
Subject:wa- as a standalone character<br></div></div></div><div><br></div><div>This is one of those areas where actual practice and 'the rules' don't necessarily coincide, and where there is a kind of cline between patterns that appear simply to be typos all the way to very acceptable alternatives. I looked at the quantitative results for wa- standing alone in arabiCorpus and found, first, that it is quite common for wa- to have a space after it before numbers and punctuation (quotation marks and the like which are placed around a word without the wa-). When I ran a search just on standalone wa- before other Arabic letters (excluding the numbers and the punctuation), I got the following results for Al-Ghad (a Jordanian paper) and Al-Tajdid (a Moroccan paper):</div>
<div><br></div><div>
<p>Al-Ghad: 7.41 per 100,000</p>
<p>Tajdid: 271.12 per 100,000</p><p>Clearly, Mustafa's insight in the above message is accurate: the amount of standalone wa- in Jordan could be considered random errors, but the pattern for Morocco indicates that it is a common and valid choice. This is over 35 times more common in the Moroccan paper than in the Jordanian one, a major difference that implies entirely different attitudes toward the form.</p>
<p>I then decided to look at all the papers for standalone wa- (i.e. wa- followed by a space) where the next word starts with Alif lam (normally the definite article). I got the following surprising results:</p>
<p>
</p><p>Tajdid (Morocco): 79.18 per 100,000</p>
<p>Thawra (Syria): 65.36 per 100,000</p>
<p>Ahram (Egypt): 4.18 per 100,000</p>
<p>Shuruq (Egypt): 4.26 per 100,000</p>
<p>Watan (Kuwait): 2.34 per 100,000</p>
<p>AlGhad02 (Jordan): 2.38 per 100,000</p>
<p>Al-Ghad01 (Jordan): 2.18 per 100,000</p>
<p>Al-Masri Al-Yawm (Egypt): 0.76 per 100,000</p>
<p>Al-Hayat96 (London): 0.37 per 100,000</p>
<p>Al-Hayat97 (London): 0.32 per 100,000</p><p></p><p>Of note here:</p><p>1. Surprisingly, Syria is patterning much more closely with Morocco than with all the other countries for which I have evidence, which are much closer to it geographically than Morocco.</p>
<p>2. There is a very striking consistency in the other data. I have two separate years for al-Hayat, and two for Al-Ghad, and each has an almost identical pattern with the other. Two of the Egyptian papers also pattern very closely together.</p>
<p>3. Except for Syrian paper, the other papers are 20 times to over 200 times less likely to use the standalone wa-, compared to the Moroccan paper.</p></div><div>For those who would like to see some of this data themselves, you need to use regular expressions in the transliteration box of arabiCorpus. To look for examples of standalone wa- (i.e. followed by a space) where the following word starts with alif lam, choose 'string' as the part of speech, choose a particular paper to look at, and search for:</div>
<div><br></div><div>\bw Al</div><div><br></div><div>\b means a word break. Make sure to do the capitalization right.</div><div><br></div><div>If you want to search for standalone wa- no matter what is following it, again choose 'string', and search for:</div>
<div><br></div><div>\bw\b</div><div><br></div><div>If you want to search for standalone wa- followed by any alphabetic letter, but not numbers or punctuation, then choose 'string' and search for:</div>
<div><br></div><div>\bw [AbtVjHxdvrzspSDTZcgfqklmnhwyLEM]</div><div><br></div><div>You need to be fairly patient for these searches to go through. Of course, any of them can be varied in a large number of ways to tweak the results. Once the results come back, you can see the ratio per 100,000 on the first page (as well as the actual number of forms found), but you need to click on 'Citations' or 'Word Forms' to see the actual examples it found.</div>
<div><br></div><div>Since many of the papers have data for exactly one year, the actual numbers are fairly interpretable: if there are about 350 actual forms in a year, that means you are going to see a standalone wa- about once a day; if about 700 then about twice a day, etc. The Moroccan and Kuwaiti papers represent about a half of a year, so for them you would need to double the actual numbers found to get the same insight.</div>
<div><br></div><div>If you made it this far, I hope you enjoyed it.</div><div>dil</div><div><br></div><div>--------------------------------------------------------------------------<br>End of Arabic-L: 24 Feb 2013<br>
</div></div>
<div><br></div><div><span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.727272033691406px">"Amin, Nesrin" <<a href="mailto:N.Amin@exeter.ac.uk" target="_blank">N.Amin@exeter.ac.uk</a>></span><br></div>
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