Studies in Arabic Linguistics

This volume features a set of selected peer-reviewed articles, which represent research by some very prominent scholars and some promising researchers in the field. The articles cover a wide range of areas in Arabic linguistics, namely Sociolinguistics, Phonetics, Phonology, Morphology, Syntax, and Language Acquisition. They also feature research on a number of Arabic dialects namely Egyptian Arabic, Emirati Arabic, Jordanian Arabic, Lebanese Arabic, Sudanese Arabic, and Syrian Arabic. Some of the contributions engage prominent issues that relate to current development in the Arabic speaking world. For example Reem Bassiouney’s paper is a significant contribution in that regard. Other contributions, such as the ones by Stuart Davis, Abdel-khalig Ali, Lababidi & Park, Ntelitheos & Idrissi, present innovative studies in Arabic Morphology, Phonetics, Phonology, and Language Acquisition respectively. How Arabic can serve as a testing ground for some theoretical constructs and approaches is exemplified by Peter Hallman, Phil Crone, and Youssef Haddad’s contributions in the area of Syntax and its interface with other fields.

This volume makes important contributions to the growing body of descriptive and theoretical studies in Arabic linguistics. It focuses on the rich linguistic work being done on Arabic dialects. The papers on individual dialects draw attention to the micro-variation that exists, emphasize that they do not comprise a uniform group, and reveal the implications of dialectal variation for linguistic theory. The chapters are distributed over three parts: phonetics and phonology, syntax, and sociolinguistics. They address first and second language acquisition, historical linguistics, phonetics, aspects of negation, light verb constructions, raising verbs, and sociolinguistic variation. The book is indispensable reading for those working in dialect description, the analysis of Arabic and the Semitic languages, and linguistic theory more generally.

This volume provides a unique collection of studies representing diversity and innovation in Arabic linguistics. The volume includes several groundbreaking papers authored by leaders in the field organized around key aspects of Arabic morphosyntax, semantics, phonology, and sociolinguistics, as well as language acquisition and neurolinguistics. Balancing depth and width of coverage, the volume integrates a variety of papers associated with inherent dialectal and diglossic variation, innovative questions, data, and approaches, as well as innovative reexaminations of existing theoretical frameworks, making a meaningful contribution to the understanding of Arabic linguistic structure and human language representation/processing throughout all papers. The volume is intended to highlight the potential contribution of Arabic linguistics and to endorse further contributions to the sparse knowledge of language representation and processing in Arabic to further develop our understanding of innate linguistic knowledge. It draws special attention to the potential contribution of studies of diversity in Arabic dialects and between the two language varieties of Arabic, for the broader study of human language.