Arabic-L:LING:New Dissertations

[Dilworth Parkinson]

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Arabic-L: Thu 23 Aug 2007
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:New Dissertation on Pharyngeal Coarticulation
2) Subject: New Dissertation on Conjunctions and grammatical  
agreement in Lebanese Arabic

-------------------------Messages-----------------------------------
1)
Date: 23 Aug 2007
From:reposted from LINGUIST
Subject:New Dissertation on Pharyngeal Coarticulation


Institution: Amsterdam Center for  Language and Communication,  
University of Amsterdam
Program: Phonetic Sciences
Dissertation Status: Completed
Degree Date: 2001

Author: Ahmed M Elgendy

Dissertation Title: Aspects of Pharyngeal Coarticulation

Linguistic Field(s): Phonetics

Subject Language(s): Arabic, Standard (arb)


Dissertation Director(s):
L Pols

Dissertation Abstract:

The aim of this study is to investigate the mechanism underlying the
production of various pharyngeal consonants in Arabic and to account for
the nature of coarticulation in the pharynx. The phonetic system of the
Arabic language makes extensive use of the pharynx both as primary and
secondary place of articulation. A series of experiments were  
designed to
examine the dynamics of various articulators and their acoustic
consequences associated with a set of speech sounds produced  
primarily in
the back cavity of the vocal tract.

Data obtained using fiberscopic monitoring of the top view of the  
pharynx
revealed that the production of the pharyngeal consonants is  
characterized
by a complex mechanism involving the control of coordinated  
activities of
the pharyngeal wall, the epiglottis and the larynx.

Data on jaw kinematics, obtained by means of electromagnetic coil
registrations of the lips and the mandible excursions, suggested that  
the
coarticulatory effects resulting from the complexity of the pharyngeal
segment cause the jaw and the tongue to undergo certain mechanical
constraints. Jaw displacement associated with pharyngeal consonant
production was found to be considerably larger, specially for the lower
pharyngeal consonants /¿, Ì/ compared to, for instance, oral  
consonants in
the same vowel context. The complexity has a delaying effect on the
anticipation of the production of the phonetic segment(s) following the
pharyngeal segment. That is, the synergy involved in controlling the
production of the pharyngeal consonant restricts the jaw and other
articulators to anticipate the articulation of the upcoming phonetic
segments until the associated motor commands for the pharyngeal  
consonant
are fully executed. Acoustic measurements revealed that this mechanical
effect is mainly realized as a temporal re-organization of the  
syllable(s)
within the word. These findings suggest that the compensatory effect  
on the
vowel duration required to preserve a unitary syllable length, a
characteristic prosodic feature in Arabic, is achieved by the jaw.
Accordingly, we suggest that the jaw as controller of temporal aspect of
syllable structure should be incorporated in any articulatory model.

Based on the data gathered from these experiments, components for  
building
up a model of pharyngeal consonant production are stated and a general
model of pharyngeal articulation is proposed. This model was tested by
examining its ability to predict the phonotactic patterns governing  
Arabic
word structure. Our general model could provide an explanation for most
restrictions found in the distribution patterns of pharyngeal  
consonants.
Moreover, the model could also account for the delay observed during the
process of acquisition of pharyngeal articulation in terms of the  
inherent
degree of jaw displacement for various pharyngeal consonants. The  
present
model's implications lend support to the views which consider
coarticulation as a pre-planed articulatory process and 'timing' to be
issued internally, i.e., at higher level of the cognitive planing in  
the brain.

------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
--
2)
Date: 23 Aug 2007
From:reposted from LINGUIST
Subject:New Dissertation on Conjunctions and grammatical agreement in  
Lebanese Arabic

Institution: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Program: Department of Linguistics
Dissertation Status: Completed
Degree Date: 2007

Author: Heidi Lorimor

Dissertation Title: Conjunctions and Grammatical Agreement

Linguistic Field(s): Psycholinguistics
                      Syntax

Subject Language(s): Arabic, North Levantine Spoken (apc)


Dissertation Director(s):
Elabbas Benmamoun
J Kathryn Bock

Dissertation Abstract:

This dissertation investigates the factors involved in producing  
agreement,
using evidence from conjoined subjects in English and Lebanese Arabic.
Specifically, the goal was to test psycholinguistic and syntactic  
theories
of agreement by examining the relative contributions of lexical number,
notional number, adjacency, and linear word order in agreement with
conjoined subjects, and contrasting English agreement patterns with
Lebanese Arabic, which allows closest conjunct agreement with postverbal
subjects.

Corpus data and sentence production experiments were used to test
hypotheses about the mechanisms involved in producing agreement. A  
search
of American English sentences from the World Wide Web revealed that
speakers often produce singular verbs with conjoined subjects (28%  
singular
verbs overall), but less often when the conjunctions involved animate or
plural nouns. To investigate these patterns experimentally,
English-speaking participants heard, repeated, and completed subject  
noun
phrases as full sentences, thus producing a verb. The experiment  
produced
results similar to the corpus search, with conjunctions involving  
singular,
abstract nouns eliciting more singular verbs than plural verbs.

In a second study involving both Lebanese Arabic and English speakers, a
picture description task manipulated the position of the subject  
relative
to the verb and revealed that singular verbs were much more frequent  
with
postverbal (versus preverbal) subjects and that lexically plural  
nouns were
stronger enforcers of plural agreement than conjoined singular  
subjects in
both Lebanese Arabic and English. Adjacency also played a role, as  
plural
nouns in furthest conjunct position did not enforce plural agreement  
in the
same way as plural nouns that were linearly adjacent to the verb. These
results indicate that notional information, lexical plurality,  
adjacency,
and linear (surface) word order play significant roles in the  
computation
and production of agreement. The results also shed light on the  
nature of
closest conjunct agreement and on the number of stages involved in
producing grammatical agreement.

------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
--
End of Arabic-L:  23 Aug 2007