The present study aims at providing a descriptive account of the unaccusative verbs in Jordanian Arabic dialect (henceforth, JA) in terms of Transitivity. It also aims at presenting empirical evidence to prove that a split projection analysis is appropriate for unaccusative predicates in JA in light of the Minimalist Approach (Chomsky, 1995,…

Son and daughter metaphorical expressions are common in general as well as technical languages. This study explores the similarities and differences between English and Arabic ibn (son) and bint (daughter) expressions, and the difficulties that student-translators have with them. A corpus of English and Arabic general ibn (son) and bint (daughter)…

Interface properties have been found to exhibit protracted instability in advanced bilingualism and L2 learning (Sorace, 2000, 2005; Sorace & Filiaci, 2006). This study examines the role of learning context in modulating this instability in an interface property, namely the interpretation of definite plurals in L2 Arabic. Generic readings in…

This book comprises 20 chapters that have been divided into two distinct parts: language in educational contexts and language in cultural contexts. The contributions included in this book are the outcome of the conference Contacts and Contrasts that was held in Konin, Poland, in 2021 (C&C2021). The contributions featured in the first part of…

Examines the syntactic and semantic relationship between verb forms I and II in modern standard Arabic. The main function of form II verbs was causative/factitive, with the core elements of the causative including (1) agent-subject, (2) action-process verb, and (3) patient-object. (CB)

An error corpus of deviant SVO structure was collected from the translation projects of students majoring in translation. Syntactic, semantic, pragmatic and discoursal criteria were used to judge the deviations. Percentages of interlingual and intralingual errors, the syntactic contexts in which subjects were misplaced, the strategies used to…

Reviews literature pertaining to the subtle differences between the meanings of the particles "waw al-ma iyya" and "fa al-sababiyya," emphasizing their construction differences. (CB)

The following articles on syntax and semantics were researched at the Harvard Syntax Workshop: (1) "Clause Reduction in Spanish," by Judith Aissen and David Perlmutter; (2) "Reduced WH-Questions," by Robin Bechhofer; (3) "Reduction in Conjoined WH-Questions," by Robin Bechhofer; (4) "On Subject-to-Object Raising…

This study examined the sensitivity of adult second language learners to deviance in English sentences. The subjects were 18 Egyptian, Arabic-speaking students attending classes at the English Language Institute of the American University in Cairo. (Author/CFM)

Considers marked and unmarked structures in modern Arabic in terms of defending a basic unmarked structure which carries the least presuppositional background to which other surface orders can be related and a lexical treatment of number in Arabic. (CB)

The study examines one component of the system of complementation in Palestinian Arabic. It is argued that the complementizer in question has an inherent semantics capable of influencing the meaning of sentences in which it is embedded. Specifically, its presence in a complex sentence communicates modal meanings distinct from those communicated by…

Supports the claim that aspect in English and written Arabic is a function of a variety of sentential elements including verb form, verb class, and adverbials. The two languages are basically similar in regard to two universal aspectual distinctions: syntactic categories and semantic categories. (TR)

Presents an experiment supporting the thesis that visual languages are well-suited for computer programmers whose native languages are not English, analyzing the particular problems of Arabic speakers in comprehending Pascal program structures. A visual programming environment is presented in which all syntactic and nearly all semantic information…

The role of four cues in the assignment of actor role in Arabic was studied. Fifty-four sentences representing all possible permutations of the cues were presented to 100 native speakers of Arabic who were asked to identify the actor in each sentence. (Contains 41 references.) (JL)

Presentations by students at a colloquium on student research on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the University of Laval's Faculty of Letters, March 18-19, 1988, include: "Une enquete sur la qualite du francais ecrit au Quebec"; "Amenagement linguistique et neologie"; "Analyse syntaxique des 'arrets et retours' en…