Arabic-L:LING:Grammatical Judgement responses

[Dilworth Parkinson]

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Arabic-L: Fri 24 Feb 2006
Moderator: Dilworth Parkinson <dilworth_parkinson at byu.edu>
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1) Subject:Grammatical Judgement response
2) Subject:Grammatical Judgement response

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1)
Date: 24 Feb 2006
From:wasamy at umich.edu
Subject:Grammatical Judgement response

would appreciate your grammaticality judgment on these sentences with  
the
noun [riggaala] marked by both agreement features; do you find them all
acceptable?

a. irriggaala gum. good
b. irriggaala gat. good
"The men came"

c. irriggaala gid3aan. good
d. irriggaala gada3a. bad
"The men are brave" (bad translation)

e. irriggaala humma lgid3aan. good
f. irriggaala hiyya lgada3a. bad
"The men are the brave ones" (bad translation)

g. irriggaala dool mahummaash issabab. good
h. irriggaala di mahiyyaash issabab. good
"These men are not to blame (literally: not the reason)"

i. irriggaala illi 'ultilak 3aleehum xaragu. good
j. irriggaala illi 'ultilak 3aleeha xaragit. bad/marginal
"The men I told you about left"

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2)
Date: 24 Feb 2006
From:mustafa.mughazy at wmich.edu
Subject:Grammatical Judgement response

Dear Samira and interested list members,‎
‎
‎ I think there will be little agreement over the acceptability/ 
grammaticality of these ‎sentences, mostly because of contextual  
factors. Here are my judgments followed by a ‎comment based on some  
work in progress:‎
‎
a. irriggaala gum. (fine)
b. irriggaala gat. (fine)
‎"The men came"
‎
c. irriggaala gid3aan. (fine)
d. irriggaala gada3a. (really odd)
‎"The men are brave"‎
However, I would accept
il-la3iiba di ta3baana (those players are "not good")‎
ir-rigaala di sha`yaana (these men are overworked)
‎
e. irriggaala humma lgid3aan. (fine)
f. irriggaala hiyya lgada3a. (very odd)
‎"The men are the brave ones"

However, I would accept
irriggaala di hiyya illi ti3bet w-ishtaghalet
These men are the ones who toiled and worked.‎
‎
g. irriggaala dool mahummaash issabab. (fine)
h. irriggaala di mahiyyaash issabab. (fine)
‎"These men are not to blame (literally: not the reason)"
‎
i. irriggaala illi 'ultilak 3aleehum xaragu. (fine)
j. irriggaala illi 'ultilak 3aleeha xaragit. (fine)
‎"The men I told you about left"‎

For those of you who find my judgments strange, think of the broken  
plural (irriggaala) ‎as a word that refer to a specific group of  
men, then the sentences will become ‎acceptable.

My own view is that a broke plural is not really a plural, but rather  
a collective singular ‎noun that refers to a set, and it is that  
single set that can be treated as feminine (not the ‎members). To  
illustrate this point, take the sentence (irriggaala gom). This  
sentence is ‎ambiguous between a reading where they arrive together  
(single event) or over intervals ‎‎(multiple events). That is why  
you can say ‎

irriggaala gom sawa/waaHid waaHid
The men arrived together/one at the time.‎

This ambiguity is not available for ‎
irriggaala gat sawa/*waaHid waaHid

That is because of the contradiction between the single participant  
(the group of men) single event reading and the adverbial.

I hope this helps,‎

Mustafa Mughazy
Assistant Professor of Arabic and Linguistics
Arabic Program Director
Department of Foreign Languages‎
Western Michigan University‎
Kalamazoo, MI 49004‎

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End of Arabic-L:  24 Feb 2006