33.2466, Review: Arabic, Standard; General Linguistics: Ntelitheos, Leung (2021)
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LINGUIST List: Vol-33-2466. Thu Aug 11 2022. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.
Subject: 33.2466, Review: Arabic, Standard; General Linguistics: Ntelitheos, Leung (2021)
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Date: Thu, 11 Aug 2022 14:14:02
From: Asmaa Shehata [asm.shehata at gmail.com]
Subject: Experimental Arabic Linguistics
Discuss this message:
http://linguistlist.org/pubs/reviews/get-review.cfm?subid=36809337
Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/32/32-2766.html
EDITOR: Dimitrios Ntelitheos
EDITOR: Tommi Tsz-Cheung Leung
TITLE: Experimental Arabic Linguistics
SERIES TITLE: Studies in Arabic Linguistics 10
PUBLISHER: John Benjamins
YEAR: 2021
REVIEWER: Asmaa Shehata, University of Mississippi
SUMMARY
“Experimental Arabic Linguistics” is an edited volume compiled by Dimitrios
Ntelitheos and Tommi Tsz-Cheung Leung that explores a number of significant
topics related to Arabic linguistics. The volume mainly includes papers from
the third Meeting of the Experimental Arabic Linguistics Conference (EXAL 18)
that took place at the United Arab Emirates University in 2018. In addition to
the introduction, the book includes eight chapters grouped into three main
themes: experimental phonetics, eye-tracking, and typical and atypical
language development.
In the introductory chapter, “Experimental Approaches to Arabic Linguistics”,
the two editors provide background information about the field of Arabic
linguistics. This is followed by a summary of experimental research in Arabic
linguistics, including certain themes such as phonetics, psycholinguistics,
eye-tracking, and neurophysiology. Then the chapter displays an overview of
the central themes in the volume’s three main parts and provides a brief
outline of each chapter. According to the editors, the included papers
represent a small number of areas in the field of Experimental Arabic
linguistics.
Part 1, “Experimental Phonetics”, opens with a paper by Hermes and colleagues,
“Articulatory and acoustic correlates of pharyngealization and
pharyngealization spread in Cairene Arabic: A real-time magnetic resonance
imaging study”. It addresses the articulatory configuration of pharyngealized
consonants of Cairene Arabic and also examines pharyngealization spread among
vowels of different lengths (short and long). To that end, the authors use
both real-time Magnetic Resonance Imaging (rtMRI) and acoustic measurements of
the first and second formant frequency measures. The results indicate the wide
variability of pharyngealization spread across vowels of different lengths.
Moreover, pharyngealization is reported to have a stronger effect on longer
vowels than on short vowels in Cairene Arabic, where anticipatory (leftward)
spread is found to be stronger than the preservatory (rightward) effect.
In a similar vein, Chapter 2, “Affricate variation in Emirati Arabic: An
exploratory study”, uses corpus analysis to describe the phonological
distribution of affricate variants in Emirati Arabic (EA), highlighting the
role of lexical, phonological, and socio-phonetic factors. That is, the study
examines the use of affricates in Emirati Arabic, highlighting two main
processes: deaffrication of [dʒ] to [j] and affrication of [k] to [ʧ]. Data
are collected from nine native speakers of EA residing in different cities in
the United Arab Emirates, including Ras Al Khaimah, Fujairah, and Abu Dhabi.
The results indicate that the distribution of affricates as produced by
Emirati speakers is phonetically conditioned by lexical and soci-phonetic
factors. While the presence of front vowels and consonants affects both the
processes of k-affrication and dʒ-affrication in EA, the former process seems
to be more stable than the latter. The chapter concludes with a call for
further research to explore the phonological constraints of EA affricates and
how they developed over time.
Part II, “Eye-tracking”, contains two papers with a focus on eye movement
research. Chapter 3, “Eye movements in Arabic reading: A Review of the current
literature”, addresses eye movement research on reading in Indo-European
languages (e.g., English and German) in general and in Arabic in particular.
Moreover, it presents the Arabic language system, clarifying its major
characteristics that draw the attention of eye movement researchers and the
main relevant research questions. Unlike reading in languages that use Roman
orthography, reading in Arabic entails longer time for reading, lower skipping
rates (less than 10%) for words, and limited parafoveal processing. Finally,
Al Jassmi and colleagues conclude with directions for future research,
including examining the characteristics of the Arabic writing system with
different groups of readers such as children, adults, and participants with
reading and visual impairments.
Chapter 4, “An eye-tracking study of phonological awareness in Emirati
Arabic”, by Alexandra Marquis, Meera Al Kaabi, Tommi Leung, and Fatima Boush,
explores the use of eye tracking in assessing Arabic speakers’ phonological
awareness using the visual world paradigm (VWP). To that end, 38 female
university EA speakers are recruited and assigned to one of the two main
groups: a feedback group which receives feedback during practice trials and a
no feedback group. The results indicate that feedback facilitates
participants’ performance, which is more accurate in the two consonant
conditions than in the rhyme condition. That is, the phonological awareness of
Emirati speakers of rhymes (vowels) is lower than that of onset consonants,
which is inconsistent with previous research findings.
Part III, “Typical and atypical language development”, is composed of four
chapters. In Chapter 5, “LATFA: An assessment tool for Emirati Arabic-speaking
children”, Alexandra Marquis assesses the oral and literacy skills of 43
Emirati children using a language acquisition test for Arabic (LATFA). More
specifically, the study tests the children’s phonological awareness and speech
perception, on the one hand, and their morphological awareness and
phonological production, on the other. Findings demonstrate the effectiveness
of the LATFA test in detecting Emirati children’s literacy difficulties.
In Chapter 6, “Sentence repetition in children with autism spectrum disorder
in Saudi Arabia”, Mada Abdullah Al Hassan and Theodoros Marinis use a Saudi
Arabic sentence repetition task (Saudi-SRT) to examine the morphosyntactic
abilities of Saudi children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Adopting two
scoring schemes (i.e., repeating sentences verbatim and using the target
structures correctly), the authors recruit three groups of participants: 10
Saudi children with autism and normal language (ALN), 10 Saudi children with
autism and language impairment (ALI), and 42 typically developing (TD)
children as a control group. The results reveal that the performance of the TD
children is higher than that of the ALI and ALN children. Moreover, although
the scores of the ALN children are relatively similar to those of TD children
and better than those of the ALI children in the more sensitive structural
scheme, ALI children perform the lowest on verbatim and structural schemes.
Chapter 7, “The relationship between word and nonword repetition and receptive
and expressive vocabulary skills in Gulf Arabic speaking children”, by Mariam
Khater, explores the use of a word and nonword repetition test (WNRep) as a
diagnostic tool to assess learners’ speech and language impairment. More
specifically, the author mainly focuses on children in the Gulf countries,
including two groups: a typical developing (TD) group (N=44) and a language
impairment or clinical (CL) group (N=15). The results show that the CL group
performs significantly better than the TD group under all test conditions.
Also, a significant correlation is found between learners’ overall
performances and their Arabic receptive and expressive vocabulary.
In Chapter 8, “An example longitudinal study of vocabulary development in
bilingually exposed children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in the United
Arab Emirates”, Saleh Shaalan and colleagues examine the role of bilingual
instruction in the development of impaired children’s vocabulary skills. The
study investigates the development of bilingual vocabulary in the speech of
Emirati children with autism who are enrolled in a bilingual intensive
behavioral program. Towards that aim, the researchers use receptive and
expressive vocabulary tests in Arabic and English to assess 29 ASD Emirati
children at different time periods: at entry, six months, 12 months, 18
months, and 30 months. The results not only show any negative effects of the
bilingual intervention found in previous research, but also an increase in
English and Arabic vocabulary skills over time.
EVALUATION
This is a well-written volume that covers a small range of issues within the
broader field of Experimental Arabic Linguistics. It is also a very
stimulating read, as, while analyzing data from different Arabic varieties
such as Cairene and Saudi and Emirati Arabic, the authors clearly show the
gaps in the field. Moreover, a useful index is available at the end of the
book and some chapters raise interesting issues. For example, Chapter 3
presents all research studies related to eye movement in Arabic reading,
highlighting the differences between the Arabic and English languages
regarding the impact of writing systems on eye movement measures. Another
example is Chapter 8, which summarizes the studies that have explored the
language skills of learners with ASD and multilingual backgrounds. The result
will be of great interest not only to scholars in addressing research in
Arabic linguistics, but also to scholars of applied linguistics and second
language acquisition.
Overall, the volume succeeds in fulfilling readers’ expectations of gaining a
fundamental understanding of experimental Arabic linguistics, in addition to
inspiring them to learn more about this field in general. The book is easily
readable by both undergraduates and graduate students, who would find it
approachable compared to the dry, theoretically focused manuscripts common in
the field.
REFERENCES
Alhawary, M. T. (2006). Language impairment. In K. Versteegh (Ed.)
encyclopedia of Arabic language and linguistics (pp. 674-681). Leiden: Brill.
Watson, J. C. E. (2002). The phonology and morphology of Arabic. New York:
Oxford University Press.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER
Asmaa Shehata is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Modern Languages
at the University of Mississippi. Her research interests include second
language phonology with a particular focus on cross-language speech perception
and production.
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