Papers by Belal A.Rakhieh
The use and exploitation of parallel corpora in translation training have steadily increased in t... more The use and exploitation of parallel corpora in translation training have steadily increased in the last decade because of the advantages they entail. The aim of this paper is to demonstrate the usefulness of incorporating a corpus tool in the training of student translators. It further attempts to examinev@'¡ô…P�‚@}NNr t€f= � • f= ôRs on the improvement of the level of student translation competence. The study analyzes the translations of two student translations enrolled in the course of Translation II for lexical and grammatical errors, in which only one group is exposed to the corpus. The results reveal interesting differences in the performance of the two groups and indicate improvement in the translation sub-competencies of the group that utilized the corpus.
Accounting for the phonology of Ma’ani Arabic, a JA dialect that has never previously been studie... more Accounting for the phonology of Ma’ani Arabic, a JA dialect that has never previously been studied, and supporting the superiority of Stratal Optimality Theory over other parallel Optimality Theory models, i.e. classic, Sympathy and Correspondence, are the main purposes of this dissertation. This dissertation is dedicated to the investigation of the phonology of Ma’ani Arabic. Special attention is given on stress assignment, vowel epenthesis, syncope, geminates and the interaction of these processes. Authentic examples from Ma’ani Arabic and other Arabic dialects show that the interaction of phonology and morphology is inevitable. In chapter three, the transparent stress assignment rules is comprehensively investigated and accounted for. Segment epenthesis is investigated in chapter four, where two types are identified, i.e. lexical and postlexical. Prosthetic /�i/, which is inserted before the imperative form, and the epenthetic vowel /i/, which breaks sequences of four medial cons...
All praise is due to Allah almighty to whom I express my first and uppermost gratitude for the co... more All praise is due to Allah almighty to whom I express my first and uppermost gratitude for the completion of this dissertation. This thesis could not have been completed without the assistance, constant support and guidance of my supervisor, Wyn Johnson, whose feedback and encouragement are invaluable. I would like to express my deepest gratitude to you, Wyn. Special thanks go to the members of my research committee, David Britain and Rebecca Clift. This work has been improved greatly by your questions and comments. I am also indebted to Enam Al-Wer for all the great discussion we had and for all the useful references she provided me. I am also indebted to the members of the weekly Phonology Workshop, Wyn Johnson, Nancy Kula, Hana Daana, Moris Al-Omar, Jennifer Amos, Catharine Carfoot and Verónica Villafaña, with whom I have interacted during the course of my
Argumentum
This study investigates the phonological differences between Written Arabic (hereafter WA) and Ma... more This study investigates the phonological differences between Written Arabic (hereafter WA) and Madani Arabic (hereafter MA) as an aspect of diglossia. The differences identified in this study between WA and MA prove that there is a wide gulf between the two varieties. Many of the differences found are quite common in situations where other different spoken dialects are compared with WA (cf.
This study aims to shed light on the discourse grammar of Kam, a language spoken in Guizhou, Huna... more This study aims to shed light on the discourse grammar of Kam, a language spoken in Guizhou, Hunan and Guangxi Provinces in China. By so doing, an attempt has been made to delineate conversational sequences and techniques, and dialogue grammar used in a telephone conversation between a number of native speakers of Kam. Findings show that the interaction between discourse and syntax strongly presents in conversations, and is clearly manifested in the frequent use of what is called formal links such as ellipsis, repetition, substitution, verb form and referring expressions. Furthermore, findings have shown that conversation constraints are violable, but the incurred violations are usually tolerable and seldom lead to global misunderstanding between interlocutors.
The existence of empty categories is controversial, both in syntactic theory and theories of sent... more The existence of empty categories is controversial, both in syntactic theory and theories of sentence processing. Indeed, the structure of the infinitival complements of raising and control predicates differs between linguistic theories such as Principles and Parameters (PPT), Head-driven Phrase Structure Grammar (HPSG) and Lexical Functional Grammar (LFG). Although data from experimental psycholinguistic studies can potentially inform this linguistic debate, previous research on the processing of empty categories in raising and control structures has elicited contradictory results (e.g. Featherston, 2001; Walenski, 2003). This paper reports on the results of an exploratory study investigating the processing of (subject and object) control and raising structures and their purported empty categories (PRO and DP-trace respectively), conducted through an offline sentence complexity-rating task and an online self-paced reading experiment, using materials as illustrated below:
The existence of empty categories is controversial, both in syntactic theory and theories of sent... more The existence of empty categories is controversial, both in syntactic theory and theories of sentence processing. Indeed, the structure of the infinitival complements of raising and control predicates differs between linguistic theories such as Principles and Parameters (PPT), Head-driven Phrase Structure Grammar (HPSG) and Lexical Functional Grammar (LFG). Although data from experimental psycholinguistic studies can potentially inform this linguistic debate, previous research on the processing of empty categories in raising and control structures has elicited contradictory results (e.g. Featherston, 2001; Walenski, 2003). This paper reports on the results of an exploratory study investigating the processing of (subject and object) control and raising structures and their purported empty categories (PRO and DP-trace respectively), conducted through an offline sentence complexity-rating task and an online self-paced reading experiment, using materials as illustrated below:
This study investigates the phonological differences between Written Arabic (hereafter WA) and Ma... more This study investigates the phonological differences between Written Arabic (hereafter WA) and Madani Arabic (hereafter MA) as an aspect of diglossia. The differences identified in this study between WA and MA prove that there is a wide gulf between the two varieties. Many of the differences found are quite common in situations where other different spoken dialects are compared with WA (cf., and insertion of anaptyctic vowels lead to declusterization and initial cluster formation or some such phonological changes. The trend in Arabic diglossia in general proves to be that there are clear cut linguistic differences between WA and different spoken varieties, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the distinctive identities of the spoken dialects are also simultaneously maintained. The situation on the whole reflects the maintenance of cultural unity within linguistic diversity among different Arabic communities.
This study aims to shed light on the discourse grammar of Kam, a language spoken in Guizhou, Huna... more This study aims to shed light on the discourse grammar of Kam, a language spoken in Guizhou, Hunan and Guangxi Provinces in China. By so doing, an attempt has been made to delineate conversational sequences and techniques, and dialogue grammar used in a telephone conversation between a number of native speakers of Kam. Findings show that the interaction between discourse and syntax strongly presents in conversations, and is clearly manifested in the frequent use of what is called formal links such as ellipsis, repetition, substitution, verb form and referring expressions. Furthermore, findings have shown that conversation constraints are violable, but the incurred violations are usually tolerable and seldom lead to global misunderstanding between interlocutors.
The use and exploitation of parallel corpora in translation training have steadily increased in
t... more The use and exploitation of parallel corpora in translation training have steadily increased in
the last decade because of the advantages they entail.
The aim of this paper is to demonstrate the usefulness of incorporating a corpus tool in the
training of student translators. It further attempts to examine the influence the corpus tool has
on the improvement of the level of student translation competence. The study analyzes the
translations of two student translations enrolled in the course of Translation II for lexical and
grammatical errors, in which only one group is exposed to the corpus. The results reveal
interesting differences in the performance of the two groups and indicate improvement in the
translation sub-competencies of the group that utilized the corpus.
This study aims at investigating the translation of some
English cultural bound color idioms to A... more This study aims at investigating the translation of some
English cultural bound color idioms to Arabic by Jordanian
students of English. English cultural bound color idioms are
used to describe those expressions which are connected with
western culture and may not have equivalents in Jordanian
culture. To achieve the aim, the researchers selected a sample
of 40 undergraduate English Jordanian students enrolled in AHU. The researchers designed a culture-based translation
test (CBTT) that consists of 20 statements as test items; each
statement contained a culture-bound color term within its
contextual meaning. The results of the study revealed that
AHU English majors’ performance in translating English
cultural bound color idioms is very poor as reflected by their
scores on CBTT. In addition, the results show that this poor
performance in this particular context is due to the lack of the
knowledge of English cultural bound color idioms, the absence
of Jordanian Arabic equivalence, and the inappropriate
selection of translation methods by the participants.
Thesis Chapters by Belal A.Rakhieh
Accounting for the phonology of Ma‘ani Arabic, an untouched Jordanian Arabic dialect, and support... more Accounting for the phonology of Ma‘ani Arabic, an untouched Jordanian Arabic dialect, and supporting the superiority of Stratal Optimality Theory over other parallel Optimality Theory models, i.e. classic, Sympathy and Correspondence, are the main purposes of this dissertation. Authentic examples from Ma‘ani Arabic and other Arabic dialects show that the interaction of phonology and morphology is inevitable when considering the interaction of different phonological phenomena. One of the novel findings of this study is the fact that the hidden motive for lexical epenthesis in medial four consonant clusters is morphology rather than phonology. Closed syllable shortening, on the other hand, stems from phonology-morphology interactions. In addition, this dissertation denies the existence of true tautosyllabic geminates in Arabic. The data shows that the so called geminates are sequences of identical consonants resulted mainly from the ban on high short vowels between two identical consonants. Finally, Ma‘ani Arabic is compared to other Jordanian dialects and to other neighbouring dialects through out this dissertation. When certain phonological phenomena are active in Ma‘ani and other Arabic dialect, this dissertation tries to uncover the underlying reasons especially when these phenomena behave differently in one of the dialects. If, on the other hand, a phonological process is active in other Arabic dialects but not in Ma‘ani Arabic, this study highlights that phenomenon and shows the similarities and differences between them.
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Papers by Belal A.Rakhieh
the last decade because of the advantages they entail.
The aim of this paper is to demonstrate the usefulness of incorporating a corpus tool in the
training of student translators. It further attempts to examine the influence the corpus tool has
on the improvement of the level of student translation competence. The study analyzes the
translations of two student translations enrolled in the course of Translation II for lexical and
grammatical errors, in which only one group is exposed to the corpus. The results reveal
interesting differences in the performance of the two groups and indicate improvement in the
translation sub-competencies of the group that utilized the corpus.
English cultural bound color idioms to Arabic by Jordanian
students of English. English cultural bound color idioms are
used to describe those expressions which are connected with
western culture and may not have equivalents in Jordanian
culture. To achieve the aim, the researchers selected a sample
of 40 undergraduate English Jordanian students enrolled in AHU. The researchers designed a culture-based translation
test (CBTT) that consists of 20 statements as test items; each
statement contained a culture-bound color term within its
contextual meaning. The results of the study revealed that
AHU English majors’ performance in translating English
cultural bound color idioms is very poor as reflected by their
scores on CBTT. In addition, the results show that this poor
performance in this particular context is due to the lack of the
knowledge of English cultural bound color idioms, the absence
of Jordanian Arabic equivalence, and the inappropriate
selection of translation methods by the participants.
Thesis Chapters by Belal A.Rakhieh
the last decade because of the advantages they entail.
The aim of this paper is to demonstrate the usefulness of incorporating a corpus tool in the
training of student translators. It further attempts to examine the influence the corpus tool has
on the improvement of the level of student translation competence. The study analyzes the
translations of two student translations enrolled in the course of Translation II for lexical and
grammatical errors, in which only one group is exposed to the corpus. The results reveal
interesting differences in the performance of the two groups and indicate improvement in the
translation sub-competencies of the group that utilized the corpus.
English cultural bound color idioms to Arabic by Jordanian
students of English. English cultural bound color idioms are
used to describe those expressions which are connected with
western culture and may not have equivalents in Jordanian
culture. To achieve the aim, the researchers selected a sample
of 40 undergraduate English Jordanian students enrolled in AHU. The researchers designed a culture-based translation
test (CBTT) that consists of 20 statements as test items; each
statement contained a culture-bound color term within its
contextual meaning. The results of the study revealed that
AHU English majors’ performance in translating English
cultural bound color idioms is very poor as reflected by their
scores on CBTT. In addition, the results show that this poor
performance in this particular context is due to the lack of the
knowledge of English cultural bound color idioms, the absence
of Jordanian Arabic equivalence, and the inappropriate
selection of translation methods by the participants.