Papers by Mujdey (a.k.a. Majdi) Abudalbuh
Jordan Journal of Modern Languages and Literatures, 2020
This study investigates variation and change in the quotative system in Ottawa English and provid... more This study investigates variation and change in the quotative system in Ottawa English and provides a comparative sociolinguistic analysis of its development. A corpus of spontaneous speech of 30 speakers of Ottawa English stratified according to age and sex is compiled to provide a quantitative analysis of the effects of some social and linguistic factors on the distribution of quotative variants in this variety. The results show that the choice of quotative variants is socially and linguistically constrained. The results also show that the distribution of the quotative variants in Ottawa English has changed due to the incorporation of the incoming variant be like. The results also confirm that younger speakers use this variant more than their older counterparts with younger female speakers leading the change. Moreover, the results provide a further piece of evidence in favor of the advanced stage of grammaticalization that be like has undergone. Furthermore, the results demonstrat...
Journal of Educational and Social Research, 2021
The paper is a critique of the existence of protolanguage based on some personal reasoning given ... more The paper is a critique of the existence of protolanguage based on some personal reasoning given the findings of previous research. This paper focuses on the nature of semantic compositionality and its existence (and therefore manifestations) in animal communication systems as evidence of the existence of protolanguage. This compositional state that started to color human language has paved the way to hierarchical syntax and thus has helped in the emergence of a recursive, fully complex language. On the other hand, non-human animal communication systems, including those examined in this paper, have not managed to progress beyond the holophrastic state, and thus remained highly confined and unproductive. This is explicated by the observation that these systems do not employ discrete meaningful units that can be used recursively in different linguistic contexts, a necessary condition for a system of communication to be compositional. This is interesting in the study of language evolut...
دراسات - العلوم الإنسانية والاجتماعية, 2018
Conversations of eight USA-based native speakers of Arabic, four Jordanians and four Egyptians, w... more Conversations of eight USA-based native speakers of Arabic, four Jordanians and four Egyptians, were recorded during several casual conversations. Contrary to the prevailing assumption about Arabic interdialectal communication, the participants maintained their speech and rarely switched to their interlocutors' dialect of Arabic. Moreover, while only few instances of switching to Educated Spoken Arabic (ESA) were observed, several instances of switching to English were documented. In this regard, this study invalidates the once-prevailing assumption about the role of ESA as an extensive accommodation strategy for Arabic inter-dialectal interactions and reveals the role of English as a converging strategy in these interactions.
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2016
The purpose of this study is to examine the acquisition of English articles by Arabic second lang... more The purpose of this study is to examine the acquisition of English articles by Arabic second language (L2) learners of English as a function of different linguistic contexts contrasted based upon two semantic notions: definiteness and specificity. The participants in this study are 30 adult learners of L2 English whose first language (L1) is Arabic. The data for this study consist of the participants' responses to a forced-choice elicitation task targeting the use of articles in English. The results show that the learners were more accurate in terms of their article usage in definite contexts than in indefinite contexts regardless of specificity. While advanced learners performed native-like and converged to the target system of articles in English in all of the semantic contexts, low proficiency learners and intermediate learners made several errors, the most common of which was article omission in obligatory contexts. Moreover, the results show that the low proficiency learners fluctuated between definiteness and specificity in the two crucial mismatching semantic contexts: [+definite,-specific] and [-definite, +specific], overusing the indefinite article in the former context and overusing the definite article in the latter context. Unlike the low proficiency learners, the intermediate learners did not fluctuate between definiteness and specificity. The study proposes a development model for the acquisition of the English article system by Arabic learners of L2 English incorporating the Fluctuation Hypothesis (FH) and drawing on the available sources of linguistic knowledge in second language acquisition (SLA).
This study is a sociolinguistic investigation of the use of four English generic pronouns (he, sh... more This study is a sociolinguistic investigation of the use of four English generic pronouns (he, she, he or she, singular they) by Arabic-speaking second language learners of English. This study takes a different approach to the investigation of second language (L2) acquisition and use by examining the use of L2 as a function of two social constructs: gender roles and linguistic gender ideology. In this study, 150 participants (50 English NSs and 100 Arabic-speaking L2 learners of English) completed two tasks: a gender role assignment questionnaire and a written sentence completion task. The goal of the first task was to examine what gender roles (i.e., typically female, typically male, or gender neutral) the participants assign to a list of personal nouns (e.g., nurse, mechanic, and person). The goal of the second task was to examine what generic pronouns the participants use to index these personal nouns, whether rated as typically female (e.g., nurse), typically male (e.g., mechanic), or gender neutral (e.g., person). In doing so, this study aimed at examining the effect of Arab/Arabic androcentricity (i.e., male bias) on both gender role assignment and generic pronoun usage. The results of this study showed that singular they was, overall, the most commonly used pronoun by English NSs. In terms of gender roles, English NSs provided singular they for the majority of gender neutral antecedents and for almost one third of both typically male antecedents and typically female antecedents. The masculine pronoun and the feminine pronoun were used for almost half of their corresponding gender roles (i.e., typically malehe, typically femaleshe). The pronominal he or she was rarely, but consistently, used across all gender categories by English NSs. vi Acknowledgements I would like to begin by expressing my deepest appreciation and gratitude to the two cochairs of my dissertation committee: Dr. Naima Boussofara and Dr. Allard Jongman. First, I am indebted to Dr. Boussofara, whose wisdom guided me from the very early stages of my dissertation to the end of it: from planting seeds to harvesting outcomes. Her support, encouragement, enthusiasm, friendliness, and involvement were exemplary. Through her written feedback and my numerous conversations with her, I learned how to think sociolinguistically, how to articulate my research questions well, how to frame my research, and how to be a good researcher. She has always encouraged me to consider how my work fits into the larger picture of people and language. Dr. Boussofara has always been available to listen to my personal and academic concerns and to help me address them, and has always been there to help me when I struggled with stress and uncertainty. Second, I would like to thank Dr. Jongman for his guidance, follow up, and help especially with the experimental part of my dissertation. His understanding, patience, attention to details, and professionalism were exemplary and have helped me a lot, not only in my dissertation, but also throughout my study at KU.
The purpose of this study is to examine the acquisition of English articles by Arabic second lang... more The purpose of this study is to examine the acquisition of English articles by Arabic second language (L2) learners of English as a function of different linguistic contexts contrasted based upon two semantic notions: definiteness and specificity. The participants in this study are 30 adult learners of L2 English whose first language (L1) is Arabic. The data for this study consist of the participants' responses to a forced-choice elicitation task targeting the use of articles in English. The results show that the learners were more accurate in terms of their article usage in definite contexts than in indefinite contexts regardless of specificity. While advanced learners performed native-like and converged to the target system of articles in English in all of the semantic contexts, low proficiency learners and intermediate learners made several errors, the most common of which was article omission in obligatory contexts. Moreover, the results show that the low proficiency learners fluctuated between definiteness and specificity in the two crucial mismatching semantic contexts: [+definite,-specific] and [-definite, +specific], overusing the indefinite article in the former context and overusing the definite article in the latter context. Unlike the low proficiency learners, the intermediate learners did not fluctuate between definiteness and specificity. The study proposes a development model for the acquisition of the English article system by Arabic learners of L2 English incorporating the Fluctuation Hypothesis (FH) and drawing on the available sources of linguistic knowledge in second language acquisition (SLA).
Conversations of eight USA-based native speakers of Arabic, four Jordanians and four Egyptians, w... more Conversations of eight USA-based native speakers of Arabic, four Jordanians and four Egyptians, were recorded during several casual conversations. Contrary to the prevailing assumption about Arabic inter-dialectal communication, the participants maintained their speech and rarely switched to their interlocutors’ dialect of Arabic. Moreover, while only few instances of switching to Educated Spoken Arabic (ESA) were observed, several instances of switching to English were documented. In this regard, this study invalidates the once-prevailing assumption about the role of ESA as an extensive accommodation strategy for Arabic inter-dialectal interactions and reveals the role of English as a converging strategy in these interactions.
The purpose of this study is to examine the acquisition of English articles by Arabic second lang... more The purpose of this study is to examine the acquisition of English articles by Arabic second language (L2) learners of English as a function of different linguistic contexts contrasted based upon two semantic notions: definiteness and specificity. The participants in this study are 30 adult learners of L2 English whose first language (L1) is Arabic. The data for this study consist of the participants’ responses to a forced-choice elicitation task targeting the use of articles in English. The results show that the learners were more accurate in terms of their article usage in definite contexts than in indefinite contexts regardless of specificity. While advanced learners performed native-like and converged to the target system of articles in English in all of the semantic contexts, low proficiency learners and intermediate learners made several errors, the most common of which was article omission in obligatory contexts. Moreover, the results show that the low proficiency learners fluctuated between definiteness and specificity in the two crucial mismatching semantic contexts: [+definite, -specific] and [-definite, +specific], overusing the indefinite article in the former context and overusing the definite article in the latter context. Unlike the low proficiency learners, the intermediate learners did not fluctuate between definiteness and specificity. The study proposes a development model for the acquisition of the English article system by Arabic learners of L2 English incorporating the Fluctuation Hypothesis (FH) and drawing on the available sources of linguistic knowledge in second language acquisition (SLA).
Talks by Mujdey (a.k.a. Majdi) Abudalbuh
Previous research has provided evidence for an asymmetrical directionality in the spread of empha... more Previous research has provided evidence for an asymmetrical directionality in the spread of emphasis as well as blocking effects that are process-specific in some dialects of Arabic. However, the interaction between morphology and phonology in terms of the spread of emphasis has been neglected in the literature. Instead, previous studies have claimed that [RTR] harmony spreads to the whole phonological word. In this study, I show that the spread of emphasis is sensitive to morphemic boundaries, and that the spread of emphasis to affixal segments poses problems for previous analyses. To this end, further treatment is proposed within the theory of constraint ranking.
EFFECTS OF GENDER ON THE PRODUCTION OF EMPHASIS IN JORDANIAN ARABIC: A SOCIOPHONETIC STUDY
Muj... more EFFECTS OF GENDER ON THE PRODUCTION OF EMPHASIS IN JORDANIAN ARABIC: A SOCIOPHONETIC STUDY
Mujdey Abudalbuh
ABSTRACT
Emphasis, or pharyngealization, is a distinctive phonetic phenomenon and a phonemic feature of Semitic languages such as Arabic and Hebrew. The goal of this study is to investigate the effect of gender on the production of emphasis in Jordanian Arabic as manifested on the consonants themselves as well as on the adjacent vowels. To this end, 22 speakers of Jordanian Arabic, 12 males and 10 females, participated in a production experiment where they produced monosyllabic minimal CVC pairs contrasted on the basis of the presence of a word-initial plain or emphatic consonant. Several acoustic parameters were measured including Voice Onset Time (VOT), friction duration, the spectral mean of the friction noise, vowel duration and the formant frequencies (F1-F3) of the target vowels. The results of this study indicated that VOT is a reliable acoustic correlate of emphasis in Jordanian Arabic only for voiceless stops whose emphatic VOT was significantly shorter than their plain VOT. Also, emphatic fricatives were shorter than plain fricatives. Emphatic vowels were found to be longer than plain vowels. Overall, the results showed that emphatic vowels were characterized by a raised F1 at the onset and midpoint of the vowel, lowered F2 throughout the vowel, and raised F3 at the onset and offset of the vowel relative to the corresponding values of the plain vowels. Finally, results using Nearey’s (1978) normalization algorithm indicated that emphasis was more acoustically evident in the speech of males than in the speech of females in terms of the F-pattern. The results are discussed from a sociolinguistic perspective in light of the previous literature and the notion of linguistic feminism.
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Papers by Mujdey (a.k.a. Majdi) Abudalbuh
Talks by Mujdey (a.k.a. Majdi) Abudalbuh
Mujdey Abudalbuh
ABSTRACT
Emphasis, or pharyngealization, is a distinctive phonetic phenomenon and a phonemic feature of Semitic languages such as Arabic and Hebrew. The goal of this study is to investigate the effect of gender on the production of emphasis in Jordanian Arabic as manifested on the consonants themselves as well as on the adjacent vowels. To this end, 22 speakers of Jordanian Arabic, 12 males and 10 females, participated in a production experiment where they produced monosyllabic minimal CVC pairs contrasted on the basis of the presence of a word-initial plain or emphatic consonant. Several acoustic parameters were measured including Voice Onset Time (VOT), friction duration, the spectral mean of the friction noise, vowel duration and the formant frequencies (F1-F3) of the target vowels. The results of this study indicated that VOT is a reliable acoustic correlate of emphasis in Jordanian Arabic only for voiceless stops whose emphatic VOT was significantly shorter than their plain VOT. Also, emphatic fricatives were shorter than plain fricatives. Emphatic vowels were found to be longer than plain vowels. Overall, the results showed that emphatic vowels were characterized by a raised F1 at the onset and midpoint of the vowel, lowered F2 throughout the vowel, and raised F3 at the onset and offset of the vowel relative to the corresponding values of the plain vowels. Finally, results using Nearey’s (1978) normalization algorithm indicated that emphasis was more acoustically evident in the speech of males than in the speech of females in terms of the F-pattern. The results are discussed from a sociolinguistic perspective in light of the previous literature and the notion of linguistic feminism.
Mujdey Abudalbuh
ABSTRACT
Emphasis, or pharyngealization, is a distinctive phonetic phenomenon and a phonemic feature of Semitic languages such as Arabic and Hebrew. The goal of this study is to investigate the effect of gender on the production of emphasis in Jordanian Arabic as manifested on the consonants themselves as well as on the adjacent vowels. To this end, 22 speakers of Jordanian Arabic, 12 males and 10 females, participated in a production experiment where they produced monosyllabic minimal CVC pairs contrasted on the basis of the presence of a word-initial plain or emphatic consonant. Several acoustic parameters were measured including Voice Onset Time (VOT), friction duration, the spectral mean of the friction noise, vowel duration and the formant frequencies (F1-F3) of the target vowels. The results of this study indicated that VOT is a reliable acoustic correlate of emphasis in Jordanian Arabic only for voiceless stops whose emphatic VOT was significantly shorter than their plain VOT. Also, emphatic fricatives were shorter than plain fricatives. Emphatic vowels were found to be longer than plain vowels. Overall, the results showed that emphatic vowels were characterized by a raised F1 at the onset and midpoint of the vowel, lowered F2 throughout the vowel, and raised F3 at the onset and offset of the vowel relative to the corresponding values of the plain vowels. Finally, results using Nearey’s (1978) normalization algorithm indicated that emphasis was more acoustically evident in the speech of males than in the speech of females in terms of the F-pattern. The results are discussed from a sociolinguistic perspective in light of the previous literature and the notion of linguistic feminism.