Analytical phonetic study of three areas of Al-Farahidiy's legacy

It is the purpose of the present thesis to present an analytical phonetic study of three areas of alFarahidiy1s linguistic legacy in a general phonetic perspective in such a way as to preserve a proper balance between the analytical and historical sides of our subject, Phonetics. Only three areas have been decided upon due to the fact that a comprehensive, analytical study of al Farahidiy's linguistic legacy would be a lifetime-work. The thesis is presented in four major sections: an introduction and an analytical phonetic study of three areas. The introduction deals in general terms with alFarahidiy1s biography and his contributions to fields pertinent to Phonetics, though they are not primarily phonetic. The three areas deal respectively with his approach to verse structure, the time-substratum underlying his system, and his restoration of the principles which lie hid underneath what I have called (since no other term exists) the phoniconic symbols1 of the East Mediterranean scripts. Each analytical section includes either a theoretical, phonetic discuss¬ ion against which alFarahidiy's contribution is projected in terms of its relation to the general phonetic spectrum, or an empirical evidence in support of a hypothesis discovered in the construction of his prosodic system. Towards this end, the first area, following a more or less Stetsonian line, includes a theoretical view of the articulatory actualization of the respir¬ atory potential1 and rhythmicality in Arabic; the second section is focused on the empirical authentication of the time-units which underlie his prosodic system, whilst the third section starts with an analytico-phonetic approach to the East Mediterranean scripts. The thesis is concluded with a general bibliography of works that have been cited or consulted, with a special section allocated to works by or about alFarahidiy. The author is convinced that the soundest basis for an understanding of certain phonological phenomena (particularly, the superimposed stretches, quantity and rhythm) of a living language with a long history behind it, would be an illumination of the path of development it has pursued. Such a path, in normal conditions, is provided by phoneticians or writers on phonetics. It is also the conviction of the author that for an enlightened attitude towards the history of phonetics, especially in olden times when phonetics was a practice not a discipline, an analytical, phonetic approach to the pertinent writing system constitutes a proper springboard. For this reason, equal attention has been paid to the development of the 'pure' iconic and phoniconic writing systems in Mesopotamia and the East Mediterranean in the prelude to alFarahidiy's restoration of certain scriptological, phoniconic principles which lie in the background of the Ugaritic script in his prosodization of the Arabic script

The production and perception of peripheral geminate/singleton coronal stop contrasts in Arabic

Gemination is typologically common word-medially but is rare at the periphery of the word (word-initially and -finally). In line with this observation, prior research on production and perception of gemination has focused primarily on medial gemination. Much less is known about the production and perception of peripheral gemination. This PhD thesis reports on comprehensive articulatory, acoustic and perceptual investigations of geminate-singleton contrasts according to the position of the contrast in the word and in the utterance. The production component of the project investigated the articulatory and acoustic features of medial and peripheral gemination of voiced and voiceless coronal stops in Modern standard Arabic and regional Arabic vernacular dialects, as produced by speakers from two disparate and geographically distant countries, Morocco and Lebanon. The perceptual experiment investigated how standard and dialectal Arabic gemination contrasts in each word position were categorised and discriminated by three groups of non-native listeners, each differing in their native language experience with gemination at different word positions. The first experiment used ultrasound and acoustic recordings to address the extent to which word-initial gemination in Moroccan and Lebanese dialectal Arabic is maintained, as well as the articulatory and acoustic variability of the contrast according to the position of the gemination contrast in the utterance (initial vs. medial) and between the two dialects. The second experiment compared the production of word-medial and -final gemination in Modern Standard Arabic as produced by Moroccan and Lebanese speakers. The aim of the perceptual experiment was to disentangle the contribution of phonological and phonetic effects of the listeners’ native languages on the categorisation and discrimination of non-lexical Moroccan gemination by three groups of non-native listeners varying in their phonological (native Lebanese group and heritage Lebanese group, for whom Moroccan is unintelligible, i.e., non-native language) and phonetic-only (native English group) experience with gemination across the three word positions. The findings in this thesis constitute important contributions about positional and dialectal effects on the production and perception of gemination contrasts, going beyond medial gemination (which was mainly included as control) and illuminating in particular the typologically rare peripheral gemination

The Classification of Arabic Dialects: Traditional Approaches, New Proposals, and Methodological Problems

The question of how to classify the different varieties of spoken Arabic is a long-standing problem in the fields of Arabic and Semitic linguistics, and it has been addressed by several authors and from a number of different perspectives. This collection of articles represents a further contribution to the vast collective effort of attempting to more effectively assess, organize, and understand the varieties of spoken Arabic, applying a classification of Arabic dialects in the broadest possible sense. The authors who contribute to this volume tackle this issue by examining varieties spoken from the Maghreb to the Mashreq and employing various approaches and perspectives, e.g., diatopic and diachronic, syntactical, and typological

A comparative analisis of the effects of three prereading activity types on the reading comprensión of fourth-semester students of Spanish in an English-speaking environment

Reading texts with historical and socio-political content in a foreign language (FL) is usually a challenge for second language (L2) students. The obstacles encountered by the students should be of concern to language instructors and coordinators. Lack of background knowledge causes the reader to abandon the activity with a sense of disappointment and frustration. This quantitative semester long study examined and compared the effects of two different types of pre-reading activities on the reading comprehension of college students of Spanish fourth semester when reading texts about socio-political and historical issues. The pre-reading activities are guided cooperative versus textbook-based individual. On the one hand, multiple-choice test findings indicated that guided cooperative pre-reading activities significantly increased participants’ comprehension. On the other hand, holistic results from the written recall protocol showed no difference between either pre-reading treatments. Yet, the results confirmed that guided cooperative pre-reading activities prompted participants to remember significantly a high percentage of main ideas, but did not make an impact on the recall of supporting ideas and/or minor details.Desde el inicio de la historia de la enseñanza de lenguas las actividades de comprensión de lectura han sido consideradas prácticas comunes en clases de lengua extranjera (L2). Sin embargo, la comprensión de lectura en clases de español como lengua extranjera (ELE) sigue siendo un reto difícil para los estudiantes. Por ello, los expertos en enseñanza de L2 siguen buscando prácticas pedagógicas que reduzcan la dificultad del proceso de lectura, aunque éstas no sean siempre adecuadas. Es importante indicar que la falta de conocimiento previo que los estudiantes aportan al texto en L2 los conduce en ocasiones a un estado de frustración que suele concluir en abandono de la lectura. La presente tesis examina y compara los efectos en la comprensión lectora de tres tipos diferentes de actividades de pre-lectura en clases de ELE a un nivel intermedio-avanzado. Estas actividades son: cooperativas guiadas, actividades en grupos tradicionales y actividades individuales basadas en un libro de texto. Por un lado se comparan las actividades cooperativas guiadas con actividades individuales y por otro se comparan las actividades en grupos tradicional con individuales. La primera comparación revela que en los exámenes de opción múltiple las actividades de pre-lectura cooperativas guiadas aumentan notablemente la comprensión lectora de los participantes. Los resultados obtenidos de los recuerdos de protocolo inmediato demuestran que ambas actividades influyen de la misma forma en los resultados globales de la comprensión lectora. No obstante, se confirma que los participantes comprenden y recuerdan un mayor porcentaje de ideas principales del texto al utilizar actividades de pre-lectura cooperativas guiadas. En cuanto a la comprensión y recuerdo de las ideas de apoyo y los detalles del texto, ambas actividades tienen el mismo impacto. En cuanto a la segunda comparación, actividades de grupo tradicional versus individuales, los exámenes de opción múltiple indican que las actividades individuales ocasionan una mayor comprensión. Según los resultados de los protocolos de recuerdo inmediato, ambas actividades de pre-lectura logran el mismo porcentaje de comprensión global y de ideas principales del texto. Los resultados en cambio demostraron que las individuales benefician significativamente la comprensión de ideas de apoyo y detalles del texto

Religion and Aesthetic Experience

Religious aesthetics have gained increasing importance over the past few years in the fields of Religious studies and Islamic studies. This volume highlights the transcultural dimensions of the theoretical foundations of religious aesthetics. It explores aesthetic experience in the religious field through a series of case studies. These include Islamic sermons from the Middle East and South Asia, Islamic religious chanting, a chapter of the Qurʾān, a German performance artist, Indian rasa theory, and Arabic and Bengali literature. Together, the authors demonstrate that the analysis of the aesthetic forms of religious mediation across regions and genres is a fruitful approach to transcultural studies.Die Religionsästhetik hat in den vergangenen Jahren an Bedeutung innerhalb der Religions- und Islamwissenschaft gewonnen. Dieser Band betont die transkulturellen Dimensionen der theoretischen Grundlagen der Religionsästhetik und bietet Fallstudien über die Rolle ästhetischer Erfahrung in religiösen Kontexten. Diese umfassen islamische Predigten im Nahen Osten und Südasien, islamische religiöse Gesänge, ein Korankapitel, einen deutschen Performance-Künstler, indische rasa-Theorie und arabische wie bengalische Literatur. Zusammen zeigen die Autoren die Fruchtbarkeit der Analyse ästhetischer Formen von religiöser Vermittlung über verschiedene Regionen und Gattungen hinweg auf

Teaching pronunciation:a case for a pedagogy based upon intelligibility

This thesis examines the main aim of teaching pronunciation in second language acquisition in the Syrian context. In other words, it investigates the desirable end point, namely: whether it is native-like accent, or intelligible pronunciation. This thesis also investigates the factors that affect native-like pronunciation and intelligible accent. It also analyses English language teaching methods. The currently used English pronunciation course is examined in detail too. The aim is to find out the learners’ aim of pronunciation, the best teaching method for achieving that aim, and the most appropriate course book that fulfils the aim. In order to find out learners’ aim in pronunciation, a qualitative research is undertaken. The research takes advantage of some aspects of case study. It is also supported by a questionnaire to gather data. The result of this research can be regarded as an attempt to bring the Syrian context to the current trends in the teaching of English pronunciation. The results show that learners are satisfied with intelligible pronunciation. The currently used teaching method (grammar-translation method) may be better replaced by the (communicative approach) which is more appropriate than the currently used method. It is also more effective to change the currently used book to a new one that corresponds to that aim. The current theories and issues in teaching English pronunciation that support learners’ intelligibility will be taken into account in the newly proposed course book