The Templatic Syllable Patterns of Reduplication and Stem-affixing Inflections in the Classical Arabic Based on Prosodic Morphology Theory

A morpheme, is a set of feature matrices dominated by a single node. Reduplication or gemination is one of the productive morphological processes which have been studied inclusively in different languages and in the frame of different linguistic theories like Generative Grammar, Optimality Theory and Minimalist Program. McCarthy's prosodic theory is justified by an analysis of the formal properties of the system of verbal processes like reduplication are the primary or sole morphological operations. This theory of nonconcatenative morphology recognizing the root as a discontinuous constituent. Under the prosodic model, a morphological category which characteristically reduplicates simply stipulates an output template composed of vowel and consonant. Consonantal roots and vocalic melodies in Arabic, although they contain bundles of the same distinctive features, can nevertheless be represented on separate autosegmental tiers. This ensures that the association conventions for melodies can operate independently on these two tiers. Association of autosegments from different tiers to the same segments will be subject to the natural restriction that no segment receives multiple associations for the same nontonal feature

Estimating Pragmatic Competence of EFL Learners' Listening Comprehension via Gricean Cooperative Principles

Understanding the pragmatic meanings of the utterances in exchanges is a serious challenge among English language learners. This study aimed to estimate the pragmatic competence of EFL learners’ listening comprehension concerned with cooperative principles (CPs) of TOEFL candidates taking the listening modules. The maxims of quantity, quality, relation, and manner helped test takers uncover the indirect or figurative meanings of the speakers' intended meaning of utterances. The design of the study was exploratory-quantitative and interpretative. The participants were 150 high and low achievers of MA students majoring in TEFL. The research instrument was a 50-item listening test that was randomly selected from the Educational Testing Service (ETS). The participants took the listening test in the fall semester of 2022. Data from the listening test were collected and analyzed via t-test and ANOVA. Findings showed understanding CPs was effective in the learners’ listening performance. Furthermore, results indicated high and low achievers' recognition of quantity and manner principles was significantly different. However, there was no such difference in learners’ comprehension regarding the maxims of quality and relevance. Implications of the study suggest that EFL learners must focus more on the pragmatic meanings of quantity and manner rather than quality and relevance maxims

English and Persian Context-Bound Interpretation of Expressive Subtle Attitudes through Contrastive Pitch Range Pattern

Prosodic cues are useful in detecting particular elements of conversational style and social intention of the speaker in a daily conversation. This article focuses on investigating the effectiveness of these prosodic aspects to identify different attitudes and to explore how FO with other acoustic and temporal features is involved in the expression of feelings. As reference for each language, Searle’s classification of illocutionary force and Pierrehumbert’s auto-segmental –metrical theory were followed. A group of 40 random-chosen undergraduate male and female students from Ahvaz Azad University were involved in the study. As an instrument, two versions of a closed-ended questionnaire were used to elicit data. To reveal significant differences between two languages regarding expressive speech act through different intonation patterns, a Chi-square test and a Paired-sample t-test were conducted to analyze the data and to reveal whether there is any significant difference between patterns of the two languages. The data analysis showed that the subjects did not have enough knowledge about direct and indirect strategies of the target language while expressing expressive attitudes. Finally, the findings indicated that a description of attitudinal states may benefit from incorporation of prosody as well as context of are effective elements in the speech encoding process. Providing English foreign language learners with socio-cultural norms, pragmatic knowledge and input with specific feedback through various intonational patterns improve their communicative competence while expressing and interpreting emotions and attitudes in English as the target language