This study reports patterns of phonological assimilation in consonant clusters in Urban Jordanian Arabic (UJA). We examine all possible C 1 C 2 combinations across a word boundary as well as the concatenations of consonant-final prefixes //in/ and //il/ and consonant-initial stems. The data show that place assimilation in UJA is regressive, and it can occur both across major articulators and within the same articulator (for coronals). UJA also exhibits voicing assimilation and emphasis assimilation. The main theoretical interest of the work lies in the observation that phonological assimilation in UJA is sometimes conditioned by the similarity between the two adjacent consonants. This is reflected in three patterns of assimilation. First, coronal consonants with a minor place difference (e.g., alveolar vs. palatoalveolar) may assimilate to each other only if the sonorancy of the consonants already matches. Second, coronal obstruents may undergo place assimilation when followed by a coronal obstruent, but not a velar obstruent. Third, voicing and emphasis assimilations occur only if the places of the adjacent consonants are identical underlyingly or as a result of place assimilation. These results are discussed briefly in the light of recent works by MacEachern
This study investigates the main English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learning difficulties Jordanian English-major undergraduates encounter from their perspective. For this purpose a questionnaire was developed and administered to 270 (50 male and 220 female) participants. The study addressed the four basic language skills (listening, speaking, reading and writing). The independent variables included gender, grade point average (GPA), and academic major. Ordered according to their difficulty, the skills were speaking, reading, writing and listening respectively. Some specific language learning problems are also discussed. Appropriate conclusions and recommendations are provided accordingly.
This study examines the morpho-syntax of labile anticausative structures in Jordanian Arabic (JA). Although the transitive counterpart of anticausatives is marked via morphological affixes that reflect structural and lexical components in Classical Arabic and Modern Standard Arabic, a number of verbs involving causative alternation exhibit identical forms in JA (e.g., ġala [+T] ‘to CAUSE boil something’ vs ġala [–T] ‘to BECOME boil’). Such variation poses challenges for mapping between verb morphology and its lexical semantics. To handle such variation, which is also observed cross-linguistically, we argue in favour of Schäfer (2008; 2012), Schäfer & Vivanco (2015), and Ramchand’s (2008) “causer-less” analysis over Koontz-Garboden’s (2009) “reflexive” analysis. This work further assumes the existence of a Voice phrase lacking a specifier (external argument) and assumes that Voice projection is headed by an implied Voice head (vcauser) that syntactically assigns the accusative case to its new subject and semantically encodes the internal argument and describes the resultant subevent of the verb. The work also provides an alternative solution for voice projection that lacks an explicit specifier bearing [+agent] or [+causer] feature specification. The work assumes the presence of an inchoative Voice head [vinch] introducing the Spec Voice Phrase, which encodes an inchoative resultant state of an event achieved over its theme. Contrary to Al-Qadi (2015), the present model assumes that such verbs constitute a middle position between transitive and intransitive verbs in JA but do not constitute a separate class of their own. Evidently, the correct characterization of the anticausative subclass distribution is that it surfaces wherever v is transitive as well as in intransitive volitional contexts (a non-natural class). More intriguingly, the presented material suggests that there is an ongoing process of diachronic change in spoken Arabic varieties (including JA) that amounts to the development and expansion of an inchoative class where no external or internal inchoative detransitivizing morphemes are involved. This topic, which incorporates an intriguing diachronic dimension in addition to the syntactic details, is missing from the generative literature on Arabic morpho-syntax and is potentially of sufficient interest to merit investigation.
This paper aims at considering the phonological status of word final geminates in Jordanian Arabic (JA) within Optimality Theory (OT). A ban on trimoraic syllables in the language triggers a process of degemination. A crucial distinction is made between geminates and long consonants based on moraicity. Geminates are moraic while long consonants are not.
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