Table Of ContentPerspectives on
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John Benjamins Publishing Company
Perspectives on Arabic Linguistics XXX
Studies in Arabic Linguistics
This book series aims to publish original research in all fields of Arabic linguistics,
including – but not limited to – theoretical linguistics, historical linguistics, sociolinguistics,
pragmatics, typology, and language acquisition. Submissions from all current theoretical
frameworks are welcome. Studies may deal with one or more varieties of Arabic, or Arabic
in relation to or compared with other languages. Both monographs and thematic collections
of research papers will be considered.
The series includes monographs and thematically coherent collective volumes, in English.
For an overview of all books published in this series, please see
http://benjamins.com/catalog/sal
Editors
Elabbas Benmamoun Enam Al-Wer
Duke University University of Essex
Editorial Board
Mahasen Hasan Abu-Mansour Mustafa A. Mughazy
Umm Al-Qura University Western Michigan University
Sami Boudelaa Jamal Ouhalla
United Arab Emirates University University College Dublin
Stuart Davis Jonathan Owens
Indiana University University of Bayreuth
Mushira Eid Janet C.E. Watson
University of Utah University of Leeds
Clive Holes Manfred Woidich
The Oriental Institute, Oxford University of Amsterdam
Jean Lowenstamm
CNRS-Université Paris 7
Volume 7
Perspectives on Arabic Linguistics XXX. Papers from the annual symposia on
Arabic Linguistics, Stony Brook, New York, 2016 and Norman, Oklahoma, 2017
Edited by Amel Khalfaoui and Matthew A. Tucker
Perspectives on
Arabic Linguistics XXX
Papers from the annual symposia on Arabic Linguistics,
Stony Brook, New York, 2016 and Norman, Oklahoma, 2017
Edited by
Amel Khalfaoui
University of Oklahoma
Matthew A. Tucker
Oakland University
John Benjamins Publishing Company
Amsterdam / Philadelphia
TM The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of
8
the American National Standard for Information Sciences – Permanence
of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ansi z39.48-1984.
doi 10.1075/sal.7
Cataloging-in-Publication Data available from Library of Congress:
lccn 2014023415
isbn 978 90 272 6232 5 (Hb)
isbn 978 90 272 6248 6 (e-book)
© 2019 – John Benjamins B.V.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any
other means, without written permission from the publisher.
John Benjamins Publishing Company · https://benjamins.com
Table of contents
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction 1
Amel Khalfaoui and Matthew A. Tucker
Part I. Phonetics and phonology
How to delete 7
John J. McCarthy
Are there transfer effects in the Arabic comparative? 33
Stuart Davis
Gemination in Rural Jordanian Arabic 53
Mutasim Al-Deaibes and Nicole Rosen
Part II. Syntax
On complex adjectival phrases in Standard Arabic 79
Yahya Aldholmi, Hamid Ouali and Tue Trinh
The syntax of negative coordination in Jordanian Arabic 93
Ahmad Alqassas
Huwwa: A focus operator in Iraqi Arabic 113
Murtadha J. Bakir
Syntactic parallels between verbal and nominal φ-morphology in
Classical Arabic 133
Martin Walkow
vi Perspectives on Arabic Linguistics XXX
Part III. Experimental and computational linguistics
Resumption ameliorates different islands differentially: Acceptability
data from Modern Standard Arabic 159
Matthew A. Tucker, Ali Idrissi, Jon Sprouse and Diogo Almeida
A probabilistic approach to stress assignment in Arabic 195
Cheng-Wei Lin
Subject index 219
Acknowledgments
This volume contains nine chapters based upon contributed papers and two key-
note addresses that were presented at the Thirtieth Annual Symposium on Arabic
Linguistics held at Stony Brook University in 2016 and the Thirty-First Annual
Symposium on Arabic Linguistics held at the University of Oklahoma in 2017. All
contributed papers presented at the symposia were accepted after abstract submis-
sion and anonymous peer review. After the symposia, a call for manuscript sub-
missions was made to all participants and all manuscripts, including those based
upon invited keynote talks, were subject to anonymous peer review, revision, and
resubmission. Only a subset of the initially submitted papers were selected for
publication in this volume.
We are thankful to all of our anonymous reviewers for their hard work on
evaluating – and in many cases greatly improving – the papers in this volume. In
addition, the Thirtieth Annual Symposium on Arabic Linguistics was held in con-
junction with the Forty-Sixth Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages, and
we thank the Arabic Linguistics Society board and program board of the Linguistic
Symposium on Romance Languages for facilitating the conference and review pro-
cess. We are also especially grateful to the Stony Brook University Department of
Linguistics, the Stony Brook University Center of Italian Studies, the Stony Brook
University Office of the Provost, the Stony Brook University College of Arts &
Sciences, and the Arabic Linguistics Society, all of whom generously supported the
30th Symposium. Finally, we are grateful to the Office of the Senior Vice President
and Provost of the University of Oklahoma, the College of International and Area
Studies, the College of Arts and Sciences, the Department of International and Area
Studies, and the Department of Modern Languages, Literatures and Linguistics at
the University of Oklahoma, all of whom supported the 31st Symposium.
Introduction
Amel Khalfaoui and Matthew A. Tucker
University of Oklahoma / Oakland University
This volume contains nine anonymously peer-reviewed papers. Seven chapters
of this volume are based on selected papers originally presented at the Thirtieth
Annual Symposium on Arabic Linguistics that was held at Stony Brook University
in 2016, and two chapters are based on papers presented at the Thirty-First Annual
Symposium on Arabic Linguistics that was held at the University of Oklahoma
in 2017. The chapters are theoretical and experimental explorations of a variety
of linguistic topics and engage ideas ranging over three broad areas of research:
phonetics and phonology, syntax, and experimental and computational linguis-
tics. They deal with Classical and Modern Standard Arabic as well as a variety of
dialects, including Iraqi, Egyptian, Moroccan, and Syrian Arabic.
Part I, Phonetics and Phonology, consists of two chapters. The first chapter
by John McCarthy is entitled “How to delete”. In this paper, McCarthy’s paper
provides several case studies which are used to argue for a particular conception
of the grammatical process of deletion in the framework of Harmonic Serialism
(HS), a theoretical successor to classical Optimality Theory. McCarthy shows that
HS is well-suited to analyzing deletion of phonological material as gradual attri-
tion or weakening instead of wholesale deletion in one fell swoop. As empirical
confirmation of this analysis, McCarthy notes that Arabic dialects are shown to
differ in the susceptibility of vowels to deletion: in some dialects, /i/ and /u/ delete,
whereas /a/ does not, but in others, all three vowels are susceptible to deletion.
McCarthy provides a theory of markedness which provides low vowels with more
structure than high vowels and demonstrates that this differential susceptibility
to deletion in certain dialects results from derivations which delete the vowels
with less structure. McCarthy also shows that this conceptualization of deletion
predicts that deletion and weakening contexts will be coextensive, a claim which
is supported by patterns of vowel reduction and antigemination effects in Syrian
Arabic, where vowel deletion for prosodic concerns cannot create a geminate by
deleting a vowel between two identical consonants.
https://doi.org/10.1075/sal.7.01kha
© 2019 John Benjamins Publishing Company
