Baseline data for Arabic acquisition with clinical applications: Some phonological processes in Qatari children’s speech

This paper has two aims. The first is to inform our language acquisition colleagues about the “Baseline Data for Arabic Acquisition with Clinical Applications” project, which is a multi-institutional and international three-year interdisciplinary project in Linguistics and Children’s Health. It is a crosssectional study of children’s speech that involves research on normal conversational interactions by native Arabic-speaking children between the ages of 1 year and 4 months and 3 years and 7 months. The goal is to collect extensive new material on four colloquial Arabic dialects: Qatari, Jordanian, Palestinian, and Lebanese. The second aim is the presentation of some results about phonological processes observed in the speech of young Qatari children, based on the databases. The paper gives a small taste of the kind of data the Qatar team is encountering including a discussion of practical difficulties in doing the work. We hope this will be helpful for fellow researchers who do child language research in the Arab Gulf region

Effect of emphasis spread on coronal stop articulation in Qatari Arabic

Emphasis (contrastive uvularisation) in Arabic spreads from an emphatic consonant to neighboring segments (Davis1995). The effect of emphasis spread on a consonant is manifested as lowering of its spectral mean (Jongman et al.2011). Although stop consonants reveal a strong effect of emphasis, it is not known how emphasis spread affects other acoustic properties of stops, e.g. voice onset time (VOT). Previous studies(Kulikov2018)showed that VOT and emphasis are linked in speech production: plain /t/in Gulf Arabic is aspirated; emphatic /ṭ/has short-lag VOT. Phonological theory predicts that plain /t/should become more emphatic in emphatic context, which might reduce stopVOTas well.The current study investigates the effect of emphasisspread on VOT in word-initial coronal stops in Qatari Arabic. The stimuli, produced bysixteen native speakers of Qatari Arabic,contained target plain and emphatic stops /t/, /ṭ/followed by short or long low vowel, and plain coronal obstruents /t, s, ð/or their emphatic counterparts /ṭ, ṣ, ð/. The acoustic analysis included measurements of VOT and spectral mean of burst in the stop, and F1, F2, F3 frequencies at the vowel beginning, middle and end. The results showed that final emphatic obstruent triggered emphasis spread across the syllable. The effect of emphasis on the vowel was stronger next to the emphatic obstruent (p < .01). Spectral mean of burst in plain /t/was lower in the emphatic context (D = 276 Hz, p = .05). VOT, however, was not affected by emphasis spread. Plain /t/had long-lag VOT averaging 52 ms; emphatic /ṭ/had short-lag VOT averaging 17 ms. These values were not different in emphatic context (p = .743).The findings demonstrate that emphasis spread within a syllableaffects only spectral characteristics of a coronal stop. Emphaticness of plain /t/did not affect its VOT and did not result in complete transformation of the stop category

Slips of the tongue: Examples from Qatari Dialect

There are various abstract units of linguistic performance that linguists hypothesized in order to be able to describe the grammars of languages. These are segments, features, morphemes, words or syntactic categories. Yet, actual speech is not only characterized by these grammatical utterances but there are also ungrammatical utterances, incomplete sentences, restarts, stutterings, hesitations and errors (Boomer and Laver 1968). Therefore, human daily speech is far from being perfect; rather it is intermixed with irregularities and errors of various types. On the top of all the idiosyncrasies, utterances are distorted by spontaneous slips of the tongue. According to Fromkin (1973, 1980) and Stemberger (1983) a slip of the tongue occurs when the speaker's actual utterance differs in some way from the intended utterance. It involves unintentional movement, addition, deletion, blending or substitution of material within an utterance and can be phonological, morphological, lexical or syntactic. It is not the product of intentional ungrammaticality, ignorance or language play. In slips, two linguistic elements interact. "Two segments may change place in a sound exchange and two synonymous words may fuse into one in a blend" (Pfau, 2014:1). Over the past century, slips of the tongue have been examined as scientific evidence within the context of two different traditions: psychological and linguistic. The purpose of this study is to explore slips of the tongue. A qualitative descriptive approach was used to collect and analyze the slips of the tongue of some Qataris.qscienc

Borrowed Words In Qatari Dialect: A Case Study

According to Graddol (2004) "The world's language system is undergoing rapid change because of demographic trends, new technology, and international communication. These changes will affect both written and spoken communication." The previous quotation reflects a linguistic reality. It is impossible to deny the influence of technology and international communication, not only on language, but also on our daily lives. The process of borrowing is one of the many ways in which technology and international communication affect language. Some of the borrowed words have Arabic equivalents, while others do not. Nevertheless, most of these borrowed words are subject to phonological and morphological changes. The main cause of the borrowing phenomenon may be that, as Baker stated, "translation activity in the Arab World is still too slow when compared to the speed with which new terms are coined for new concepts in the West and the frequency of their usage once coined" (1987, 88). Many of the loanwords, some of which are Arabized, are widely used today in Qatari Arabic. Arabization involves the rendering of foreign terms into Arabic in its original linguistic form, after introducing minor phonetic and/or morphological changes where necessary. This method has received much opposition from language purists, who fear that the assimilation of foreign terms may change the identity of Arabic and, if applied to excess, would even result in some form of a hybrid language. However, faced with the massive influx of new terms which need to be rendered into Arabic, even the purists have had to accept Arabized terms which have found their way into the language and increasingly gained acceptance, with or without academies' approval. (Ibrahim, 2006). Although linguistic borrowing is a universal phenomenon that has been noted historically and studied a lot , it is of interest to investigate this practice and its patterns in Qatari Arabic and to know to what extent the Qatari informants are able to know the meaning and the origin of some of the borrowed words in Qatari Arabic. Thus, the researcher collected one hundred of exotic foreign words which are Arabized and used in Qatari dialect and will ask Qataris to identify the meaning and the origin of the borrowed words. The focus in this study will be on the ability of the Qatari informants to identify the meaning and the origin of the borrowed words in question. Objectives: ?Identify some borrowed words used in the Qatari dialect. ?Identify the origin of the borrowed words. ?Identify the types of borrowed words. ?measure the knowledge of the sample to know the meaning of the borrowed words. ?measure the ability of the sample to determine the origin of the borrowed words.qscienc

Citizenship and Surveys: Group Conflict and Nationality-of-Interviewer Effects in Arab Public Opinion Data

More research than ever before uses public opinion data to investigate society and politics in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). Ethnic identities are widely theorized to mediate many of the political attitudes and behaviors that MENA surveys commonly seek to measure, but, to date, no research has systematically investigated how the observable ethnic category(s) of the interviewer may influence participation and answers given in Middle East surveys. Here we measure the impact of one highly salient and outwardly observable ascriptive attribute of interviewers nationality using data from an original survey experiment conducted in the Arab Gulf state of Qatar. Applying the total survey error (TSE) framework and utilizing an innovative nonparametric matching technique, we estimate treatment effects on both nonresponse error and measurement error. We find that Qatari nationals are more likely to begin and finish a survey, and respond to questions, when interviewed by a fellow national. Qataris also edit their answers to sensitive questions relating to the unequal status of citizens and noncitizens, reporting views that are more exclusionary and less positive toward out-group members, when the interviewer is a conational. The findings have direct implications for consumers and producers of a growing number of surveys conducted inside and outside the Arab world, where migration and conflict have made respondent-interviewer mismatches along national and other ethnic dimensions more salient and more common.Open Access funding provided by the Qatar National Library. The authors would like to thank the anonymous referees for their helpful feedback and suggestions that greatly contributed to improving the final version of this article. They would also like to thank the Editors for their generous support during the review process. Data collection for this study was supported by a Grant (NPRP 6-086-5-014) from the Qatar National Research Fund, a member of The Qatar Foundation.Scopu

GLOBALIZATION AND NATIONAL IDENTITY IN QATAR: DOES EXPOSURE TO GLOBALIZATION LEAD TO CHANGES IN NATIONAL IDENTITY ACROSS DIFFERENT GENERATIONS OF QATARI CITIZENS?

This era is marked by globalization, a process whereby states and individuals are interconnected through a global network. Globalization entails the emergence of a global culture which is considered a threat to national identity, often publicized by states and academics. Further, globalization specifically cultural globalization is seen to have an impact on national identity particularly amongst younger generations. Nonetheless, studies haves shown that globalization is not always a negative phenomenon. The Qatar National Vision 2030 states that globalization can be compatible with Qatar’s culture and traditions, elements firmly ingrained in Qatar national identity. Qatar is committed to foster national identity to ensure national cohesiveness while retaining its role in the global network. The promotion of national identity amidst cultural globalization is a state goal. This research employs a quantitative research design to assess the impact of globalization on national identity across different generations of Qatari citizens namely those aged 18 and above. Based on the findings, it can be argued that globalization and national identity are positively correlated

Language mirrors gender preference

The following piece of research will look at certain aspects of contemporary usage of Arabic and English. The aim is to reveal prejudicial attitudes in the language use that demean women while on the other hand glorify and honor men. The paper will not only try to describe a linguistic phenomenon and its social context, but will also attempt to show how linguistic differentiation and usage reflect social structure i.e. it is a direct consequence of the structural social inequality found in the community. Data from Arabic, mainly Qatari Arabic, and English in the fields of names, insults, word ordering and titles is presented to provide evidence that sex-related bias in language usage is evident everywhere, albeit in different forms and fashions, and to different degrees