DOCSLIB.ORG

The Semiticisation of the Arabian Peninsula and the Problem of Its Reflection in the Archaeological Record Roger Blench

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
The Semiticisation of the Arabian Peninsula and the Problem of Its Reflection in the Archaeological Record Roger Blench British Foundation for the Study of Arabia Monographs No. 12 Series editors: D. Kennet & St J. Simpson Navigated Spaces, Connected Places Proceedings of Red Sea Project V held at the University of Exeter, 16–19 September 2010 Edited by Dionisius A. Agius John P. Cooper Athena Trakadas Chiara Zazzaro BAR International Series 2346 2012 Published by Archaeopress Publishers of British Archaeological Reports Gordon House 276 Banbury Road Oxford OX2 7ED England [email protected] www.archaeopress.com BAR S2346 British Foundation for the Study of Arabia Monographs No. 12 Navigated Spaces, Connected Places: Proceedings of Red Sea Project V held at the University of Exeter, 16–19 September 2010 © Archaeopress and the individual authors 2012 ISBN 978 1 4073 0929 3 Front cover: Detail from a Gujerati map of the Red Sea, drawn by an inhabitant of Kutch. Given the Alex Jones by a pilot in June 1835. © Royal Geographical Society (with IBG) Printed in England by 4edge, Hockley DTP by Athena Trakadas All BAR titles are available from: Hadrian Books Ltd 122 Banbury Road Oxford OX2 7BP England www.hadrianbooks.co.uk The current BAR catalogue with details of all titles in print, prices and means of payment is available free from Hadrian Books or may be downloaded from www.archaeopress.com R. BLENCH: THE SEMITICISATION OF THE ARABIAN PENINSULA The Semiticisation of the Arabian Peninsula and the Problem of its Reflection in the Archaeological Record Roger Blench Introduction One intriguing issue that remains unresolved is the posi- The Arabian Peninsula is entirely Semitic-speaking today, tion of the Gurage languages of Ethiopia; these languages with Arabic dominant and Modern South Arabian lan- are so different from Ethiosemitic (i.e., Amharic, etc.) guages confined to a small area of the extreme south, along and from each other that it is a real possibility that these the coast of the Ḥaḍramawt, in Oman and on Socotra. How- are relic Semitic languages, remaining in Ethiopia after ever, epigraphic South Arabian languages (Sabaean, etc.) the migration of the main core of Semites up the Nile Riv- were once much more widespread and indeed their speak- er.5 ers migrated across the Red Sea, speaking what would become Ethio-Semitic languages. Semitic languages are The South Semitic languages consist of three branches, relatively well-attested compared with other branches Modern South Arabian (MSA), Epigraphic South Arabian of Afroasiatic and the lack of diversity within Modern (ESA) and Ethiosemitic. The MSA languages are a set South Arabian argues that their arrival cannot be of any of six languages, confined to a small area of the extreme great antiquity. Nonetheless, we have no clear idea of when south, along the coast of the Ḥaḍramawt, in Oman and on Semitic languages became dominant in the Arabian Pe- Socotra (Figure 8:3). They are relatively well-document- ninsula, nor by what mechanism the existing populations ed, with substantial dictionaries of four of them.6 The ESA disappeared or were assimilated. The archaeology of languages are the so-called “Sabaean” languages which Arabia and adjacent parts of Ethiopia has become signif- are generally considered ancestral to modern South Se- icantly better known in the last few years and yet there mitic.7 These include Sabaean, Minaean and Qatabanian is no clear correlate in the material record for this re- inscriptions and are generally dated to between the 8th cen- markable process. This paper examines the evidence and tury BC and the 6th century AD.8 The ESA languages in- makes some proposals as to the nature and chronology of clude Aksumite, which is attested on both sides of the Red the Semiticisation of the Arabian Peninsula, using prin- Sea (Figure 8:4). During the 3rd century AD inscriptions of cipally lexical evidence from the Modern South Arabian the so-called (’)l type appear and are almost certainly the languages. precursors of Arabic-type languages gradually spreading down into the peninsula. However, it is logical to assume The Linguistic Situation the speakers reached the region much earlier and the lan- Semitic languages are part of the larger language phylum, guages only took on written form towards the last part of Afroasiatic, which includes Berber, Ancient Egyptian and their lifespan. the languages of Ethiopia as well as the Chadic languages of Central Africa (Figure 8:1). This classification is not There is no real doubt that the ancestors of both Epi- wholly settled, especially as to the inclusion of Omotic graphic (ESA) and Modern South Arabian (MSA) were and Elamitic.1 languages spoken in the Near East rather than Ethio- pia. But the date and processes whereby the speakers of The Semitic branch of Afroasiatic is well-known and de- these languages migrated and diversified are unknown. scribed, and has significant ancient attestations in the form Apart from inscriptions that can be read, some contain of Eblaitic and other epigraphic languages of the Near evidence for completely unknown languages co-existing East.2 By the standards of Afroasiatic, Semitic languages with ESA. Beeston9 cites an inscription from Marib which are extremely close to one another. Omotic, by contrast, begins in Sabaean but then switches to an unknown lan- is so internally divided that it has been long debated as guage. He mentions several other texts that have similar to whether it is a member of the Afroasiatic group and morphology (a final –k suffix) and may represent an un- whether Omotic constitutes a coherent branch.3 But the known non-Semitic language (or possibly a Nilo-Saharan Semitic Etymological Dictionary (SED)4 is likely to recon- language such as Kunama, for which such a feature would struct thousands of roots for common Semitic, the internal be typical). classification of which is generally agreed upon by schol- ars (Figure 8:2). 5. See, i.e., lexical data in Leslau 1979. 6. Leslau 1938; Johnstone 1977, 1981, 1987. 1. See Blench 2006 for a review of some of the alternative proposals. 7. Höfner 1943; Beeston 1984; Kogan & Korotayev 1997; Nebes & 2. Fronzaroli 1969; Rubin 2008. Stein 2004. 3. This is generally considered resolved. See e.g., Bender 2000, 2003. 8. Ricks 1982; Versteegh 2001. 4. Militariev & Kogan 2005, also in progress. 9. Beeston 1981: 181. 65 NAVIGATED SPACES, CONNECTED PLACES Figure 8:1. Afroasiatic classification. Figure 8:2. Semitic lan- guage phylog- eny. Figure 8:3. Modern South Arabian languages. MSA languages share an intriguing common feature with They have disappeared in other branches of Semitic, but some Afroasiatic languages on the mainland: the conserva- it is thought that they were a feature of proto-Afroasiatic. tion of lateral fricatives. The lateral fricatives, /ɮ/ and /ɬ/, This conservation may have relevance for the peopling of are relatively rare in the world’s languages but within Afro- South Arabia, as the old Afroasiatic root for “cattle” is ɬa, asiatic they occur in Chadic, Cushitic and MSA languages. which is widely attested with a lateral fricative. 66 R. BLENCH: THE SEMITICISATION OF THE ARABIAN PENINSULA Figure 8:4. Map showing approximate locations where ri.13 It is likely that they were assimilated by the incoming Epigraphic South Arabian languages are spoken. South Arabians and the possibility is that sedentarisation and the elaborated material culture that marks this is a sign of these early interactions. Although stone tools provide abundant evidence for early foragers, there are few clues to the ethno-linguistic iden- tity of their users, as Semitic languages are now dominant in Arabia. There is surprisingly little substrate vocabulary in MSA languages, providing few clues to the pre-Semit- ic populations. However, one possibility presents itself. All across the Arabian Peninsula, spreading as far north as Palmyra, the Solubba, hunter-gatherer traders, tinkers and musicians, persisted until as late as World War II.14 They were reputed to ‘not look like’ Bedouin and to have a deep knowledge of the desert. They have been identi- fied with the Selappayu of Akkadian records.15 One of the links with the foraging past was their use of the so-called “desert kites”, or gazelle traps, which are attested as early as 7,000 BC,16 but which were still in use in the 20th cen- tury. So the Solubba may have represented the last re- maining traces of the pre-Islamic populations of Arabia. Unfortunately, there seems to be no recent information on whether any still survive and whether their technical vo- cabulary of hunting or dog-breeding includes any distinc- tive lexemes. Western Asia was an important centre for livestock do- mestication, with goats, sheep and cattle all first attested archaeologically in this region.17 Livestock began to filter Evidence from Ethnography and Archaeology down into the peninsula by 6th or 7th millennium BC.18 The The ultimate homeland of Afroasiatic is Africa and most initial evidence is for cattle, but sheep and goats and pos- probably Ethiopia, where its most diverse branches, sibly domestic donkeys followed soon after. The earliest Omotic and Cushitic, are spoken. Semitic is a relatively site with evidence of domestic cattle is Manayzah in east- late branching from Afroasiatic, as testified by the relative ern the Ḥaḍramawt, which is dated to 6,000 BC.19 Shortly closeness of all Semitic languages. As a consequence, the afterwards the nearby site of Shi’b Keshiya (mid 5th mil- dominance of Semitic in the Arabian Peninsula is presum- lennium BC) provides evidence for ritual assemblages of ably comparatively recent. It must be the case that other cattle skulls, as well as co-associated ovicaprine herding quite different languages were spoken prior to Semiticisa- and continued extensive hunting. Analysis of the Keshiya tion several thousand years ago.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Saudi Dialects: Are They Endangered?
    Academic Research Publishing Group English Literature and Language Review ISSN(e): 2412-1703, ISSN(p): 2413-8827 Vol. 2, No. 12, pp: 131-141, 2016 URL: http://arpgweb.com/?ic=journal&journal=9&info=aims Saudi Dialects: Are They Endangered? Salih Alzahrani Taif University, Saudi Arabia Abstract: Krauss, among others, claims that languages will face death in the coming centuries (Krauss, 1992). Austin (2010a) lists 7,000 languages as existing and spoken in the world today. Krauss estimates that this figure could come down to 600. That is, most the world's languages are endangered. Therefore, an endangered language is a language that loses her speakers within a few generations. According to Dorian (1981), there is what is called ―tip‖ in language endangerment. He argues that a language's decline can start slowly but suddenly goes through a rapid decline towards the extinction. Thus, languages must be protected at much earlier stage. Arabic dialects such as Zahrani Spoken Arabic (ZSA), and Faifi Spoken Arabic (henceforth, FSA), which are spoken in the southern region of Saudi Arabia, have not been studied, yet. Few people speak these dialects, among many other dialects in the same region. However, the problem is that most these dialects' native speakers are moving to other regions in Saudi Arabia where they use other different dialects. Therefore, are these dialects endangered? What other factors may cause its endangerment? Have they been documented before? What shall we do? This paper discusses three main different points regarding this issue: language and endangerment, languages documentation and description and Arabic language and its family, giving a brief history of Saudi dialects comparing their situation with the whole existing dialects.
    [Show full text]
  • Gurage) Morphology∗
    Chaha (Gurage) Morphology∗ Sharon Rose University of California, San Diego 1. Introduction Chaha (cha) is a Gurage dialect belonging to the Ethiopian branch of the Semitic language family. It is a member of the Western Gurage group of dialects along with Ezha, Gyeta, Endegegn and Inor. Chaha itself also has some sub-dialects, Gura and Gumer. The data for this article come from the dialect spoken in the main Chaha town of Endeber and neighboring villages, such as Yeseme. Endeber is located approximately 180 kilometers south-west of Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia. The 1994 census ∗ Many thanks to Hailu Yacob and Tadesse Sefer for contributing data, and to Alan Kaye for editorial assistance. I am extremely grateful to Degif Petros Banksira for extensive comments on the article, leading to significant improvements. Errors are my responsibility. The following abbreviations are used: acc. = accusative; f = feminine; m = masculine; p = plural; s = singular; impf. = imperfect; pf. = perfect; juss. = jussive; conv. = converb; inf. = infinitive; impl. = impersonal; caus. = causative; neg. = negative; def.fut. = definite future; indef.fut. = indefinite future; O = object. Person, gender and number combinations such as 3fs correspond to subject marking unless otherwise indicated. Symbols are in accordance with IPA except for the palatal affricates, for which I use [c] and [j]. Note that the vowel I transcribe as [] is other authors’ (Leslau, Hetzron) [ä] and my [] is their []. 1 divides the Gurage into three groups according to language: Soddo, Silte and Sebat Bet. Sebat Bet translates as ‘seven houses’ and is a linguistic-cultural term referring to the seven main groups of the Western Gurage.
    [Show full text]
  • The Similarity and Mutual Intelligibility Between Amharic and Tigrigna Varieties
    The Similarity and Mutual Intelligibility between Amharic and Tigrigna Varieties Tekabe Legesse Feleke Verona Univerisity Verona, Italy [email protected] Abstract without major difficulties (Demeke, 2001; Gutt, 1980). However, the similarity among the lan- The present study has examined the sim- guages is often obscured by the attitude of the ilarity and the mutual intelligibility be- speakers since language is considered as a sym- tween Amharic and two Tigrigna vari- bol of identity (Lanza and Woldemariam, 2008; ties using three tools; namely Levenshtein Smith, 2008). Hence, there are cases where vari- distance, intelligibility test and question- eties of the same languages are considered as dif- naires. The study has shown that both ferent languages (Hetzron, 1972; Hetzron, 1977; Tigrigna varieties have almost equal pho- Hudson, 2013; Smith, 2008). Therefore, due to netic and lexical distances from Amharic. politics, sensitivity to ethnicity and the lack of The study also indicated that Amharic commitment from the scholars, the exact number speakers understand less than 50% of the of languages in Ethiopia is not known (Bender and two varieties. Furthermore, the study Cooper, 1976; Demeke, 2001; Leslau, 1969).Fur- showed that Amharic speakers are more thermore, except some studies for example, Gutt positive about the Ethiopian Tigrigna va- (1980) and Ahland (2003) cited in Hudson (2013) riety than the Eritrean variety. However, on the Gurage varieties, and Bender and Cooper their attitude towards the two varieties (1971) on mutual intelligibility of Sidamo dialects, does not have an impact on their intelli- the degree of mutual intelligibility among various gibility. The Amharic speakers’ familiar- varieties and the attitude of the speakers towards ity to the Tigrigna varieties seems largely each others’ varieties has not been thoroughly in- dependent on the genealogical relation be- vestigated.
    [Show full text]
  • Proposal for Ethiopic Script Root Zone LGR
    Proposal for Ethiopic Script Root Zone LGR LGR Version 2 Date: 2017-05-17 Document version:5.2 Authors: Ethiopic Script Generation Panel Contents 1 General Information/ Overview/ Abstract ........................................................................................ 3 2 Script for which the LGR is proposed ................................................................................................ 3 3 Background on Script and Principal Languages Using It .................................................................... 4 3.1 Local Languages Using the Script .............................................................................................. 4 3.2 Geographic Territories of the Language or the Language Map of Ethiopia ................................ 7 4 Overall Development Process and Methodology .............................................................................. 8 4.1 Sources Consulted to Determine the Repertoire....................................................................... 8 4.2 Team Composition and Diversity .............................................................................................. 9 4.3 Analysis of Code Point Repertoire .......................................................................................... 10 4.4 Analysis of Code Point Variants .............................................................................................. 11 5 Repertoire ....................................................................................................................................
    [Show full text]
  • Amharic-Arabic Neural Machine Translation
    AMHARIC-ARABIC NEURAL MACHINE TRANSLATION Ibrahim Gashaw and H L Shashirekha Mangalore University, Department of Computer Science, Mangalagangotri, Mangalore-574199 ABSTRACT Many automatic translation works have been addressed between major European language pairs, by taking advantage of large scale parallel corpora, but very few research works are conducted on the Amharic-Arabic language pair due to its parallel data scarcity. Two Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) and Gated Recurrent Units (GRU) based Neural Machine Translation (NMT) models are developed using Attention-based Encoder-Decoder architecture which is adapted from the open-source OpenNMT system. In order to perform the experiment, a small parallel Quranic text corpus is constructed by modifying the existing monolingual Arabic text and its equivalent translation of Amharic language text corpora available on Tanzile. LSTM and GRU based NMT models and Google Translation system are compared and found that LSTM based OpenNMT outperforms GRU based OpenNMT and Google Translation system, with a BLEU score of 12%, 11%, and 6% respectively. KEYWORDS Amharic, Arabic, Neural Machine Translation, OpenNMT 1. INTRODUCTION "Computational linguistics from a computational perspective is concerned with understanding written and spoken language, and building artifacts that usually process and produce language, either in bulk or in a dialogue setting." [1]. Machine Translation (MT), the task of translating texts from one natural language to another natural language automatically, is an important application of Computational Linguistics (CL) and Natural Language Processing (NLP). The overall process of invention, innovation, and diffusion of technology related to language translation drive the increasing rate of the MT industry rapidly [2]. The number of Language Service Provider (LSP) companies offering varying degrees of translation, interpretation, localization, language, and social coaching solutions are rising in accordance with the MT industry [2].
    [Show full text]
  • ENCYCLOPEDIA of HEBREW LANGUAGE and LINGUISTICS Volume 1 A–F
    ENCYCLOPEDIA OF HEBREW LANGUAGE AND LINGUISTICS Volume 1 A–F General Editor Geoffrey Khan Associate Editors Shmuel Bolokzy Steven E. Fassberg Gary A. Rendsburg Aaron D. Rubin Ora R. Schwarzwald Tamar Zewi LEIDEN • BOSTON 2013 © 2013 Koninklijke Brill NV ISBN 978-90-04-17642-3 Table of Contents Volume One Introduction ........................................................................................................................ vii List of Contributors ............................................................................................................ ix Transcription Tables ........................................................................................................... xiii Articles A-F ......................................................................................................................... 1 Volume Two Transcription Tables ........................................................................................................... vii Articles G-O ........................................................................................................................ 1 Volume Three Transcription Tables ........................................................................................................... vii Articles P-Z ......................................................................................................................... 1 Volume Four Transcription Tables ........................................................................................................... vii Index
    [Show full text]
  • Explorations in Ethiopian Linguistics: Complex Predicates, Finiteness and Interrogativity
    ABHANDLUNGEN FÜR DIE KUNDE DES MORGENLANDES Band 91 Explorations in Ethiopian Linguistics: Complex Predicates, Finiteness and Interrogativity Edited by Ronny Meyer, Yvonne Treis and Azeb Arnha Deutsche MorgenHindische Gesellschaft Harrassowitz Verlag ABHANDLUNGEN FUR DIE KUNDE DES MORGENLANDES Im Auftrag der Deutschen Morgenlandischen Gesellschaft herausgegeben von Florian C. Reiter Band 91 Board of Advisers: Christian Bauer (Berlin) Desmond Durkin-Meisterernst (Berlin) Lutz Edzard (Oslo/Erlangen) Sebastian Gunther (Gottingen) Jurgen Hanneder (Marburg) Herrmann Jungraithmayr (Marburg) Frank Kammerzell (Berlin) Karenina Kollmar-Paulenz (Bern) Jens Peter Laut (Gottingen) Michael Streck (Leipzig) 2014 Harrassowitz Verlag · Wiesbaden Explorations in Ethiopian Linguistics: Complex Predicates, Finiteness and Interrogativity Edited by Ronny Meyer, Yvonne Treis and Azeb Amha 2014 HarrassowitzVerlag · Wiesbaden Bibliografische Information der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek verzeichnet diese Publikation in der Deutschen Nationalbibliografie; detaillierte bibliografische Daten sind im Internet tiber http://dnb.dnb.de abrufbar. Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie� detailed bibliographic data are available in the internet · at http://dnb.dnb.de. For further information about our publishing program consult our website http://www.harrassowitz-verlag.de © Deutsche Morgenlandische Gesellschaft 2014
    [Show full text]
  • AMHARIC for More Information BOSTON UNIVERSITY
    AMHARIC For more information BOSTON UNIVERSITY http://deseta.net/?attachment_id=70 About Ethiopia & Prof. Fallou Ngom Amharic Director, African Language Program Ethiopia is one of the oldest locations of [email protected] human existence. Scientists consider it the 617-353-3673 region from which Homo sapiens first set out for the Middle East and points beyond. Ethiopia traces its roots to the Aksumite http://www.bu.edu/africa/alp/ Empire circa 300BC-800AD. It has been a monarchy for most of its history. Alongside Rome, Persia, China, and India, the Kingdom of Aksum was one of the great world powers of the 3rd century and the one of the first major empires in the world to officially adopt Christianity as a state religion in the 4th century. Amharic is a Semitic language spoken in Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Djibouti. It is the second-most spoken Semitic language in the world after Arabic and is the language of some 2.7 million emigrants, including people in Europe, the US, and Canada. Amharic has a growing body of literature in many genres: novels, poetry, government proclamations and records, educational African Studies Center books, religious material, proverb collections, dictionaries, technical manuals, 232 Bay State Road and books about medical topics. Boston, MA 02215 www.bu.edu/africa Did you know? Jamaica has an Amharic connection! Roots of the word “Rastafari” actually come from Amharic, and many Rastafarians learn Amharic because they consider it a sacred language. After Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie visited the island of Jamaica in 1966, Jamaicans Photo clipped from Fun with Phonics on Ethiopia TV organized study circles in Amharic—a parallel of sorts to the contemporary movement for MU 340 - Musical Cultures of the World civil rights in the United States.
    [Show full text]
  • The Arabic Language: a Latin of Modernity? Tomasz Kamusella University of St Andrews
    View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by St Andrews Research Repository Journal of Nationalism, Memory & Language Politics Volume 11 Issue 2 DOI 10.1515/jnmlp-2017-0006 The Arabic Language: A Latin of Modernity? Tomasz Kamusella University of St Andrews Abstract Standard Arabic is directly derived from the language of the Quran. The Ara- bic language of the holy book of Islam is seen as the prescriptive benchmark of correctness for the use and standardization of Arabic. As such, this standard language is removed from the vernaculars over a millennium years, which Arabic-speakers employ nowadays in everyday life. Furthermore, standard Arabic is used for written purposes but very rarely spoken, which implies that there are no native speakers of this language. As a result, no speech com- munity of standard Arabic exists. Depending on the region or state, Arabs (understood here as Arabic speakers) belong to over 20 different vernacular speech communities centered around Arabic dialects. This feature is unique among the so-called “large languages” of the modern world. However, from a historical perspective, it can be likened to the functioning of Latin as the sole (written) language in Western Europe until the Reformation and in Central Europe until the mid-19th century. After the seventh to ninth century, there was no Latin-speaking community, while in day-to-day life, people who em- ployed Latin for written use spoke vernaculars. Afterward these vernaculars replaced Latin in written use also, so that now each recognized European lan- guage corresponds to a speech community.
    [Show full text]
  • The Aksumites in South Arabia: an African Diaspora of Late Antiquity
    Chapter 11 The Aksumites in South Arabia: An African Diaspora of Late Antiquity George Hatke 1 Introduction Much has been written over the years about foreign, specifically western, colo- nialism in sub-Saharan Africa, as well as about the foreign peoples, western and non-western alike, who have settled in sub-Saharan Africa during the modern period. However, although many large-scale states rose and fell in sub- Saharan Africa throughout pre-colonial times, the history of African imperial expansion into non-African lands is to a large degree the history of Egyptian invasions of Syria-Palestine during Pharaonic and Ptolemaic times, Carthagin- ian (effectively Phoenician) expansion into Sicily and Spain in the second half of the first millennium b.c.e, and the Almoravid and Almohad invasions of the Iberian Peninsula during the Middle Ages. However, none of this history involved sub-Saharan Africans to any appreciable degree. Yet during Late Antiquity,1 Aksum, a sub-Saharan African kingdom based in the northern Ethi- opian highlands, invaded its neighbors across the Red Sea on several occasions. Aksum, named after its capital city, was during this time an active participant in the long-distance sea trade linking the Mediterranean with India via the Red Sea. It was a literate kingdom with a tradition of monumental art and ar- chitecture and already a long history of contact with South Arabia. The history of Aksumite expansion into, and settlement in, South Arabia can be divided into two main periods. The first lasts from the late 2nd to the late 3rd century 1 Although there is disagreement among scholars as to the chronological limits of “Late Antiq- uity”—itself a modern concept—the term is, for the purposes of the present study, used to refer to the period from ca.
    [Show full text]
  • The Purpose of This Report Is to Survey and Evaluate the Various Facets of the Teaching of Arabic in the United States and Give an Appraisal of the State of the Art
    DOCUMENT RESUME ED 024 051 AL 001 627 By- Abboud, Peter F. The Teaching of Arabic in the United States: The State of the Art. Center for Applied Linguistics, Washington, D.C. ERIC Clearinghouse for Linguistics. Pub Date Dec 68 Note- 47p. EDRS Price MF-$0.25 HC-$2.45 Descriptors- Annotated Bibliographies, *Arabic, Diglossia, *Instructional Materials, *Language Instruction, Sociolinguistics, Standard Spoken Usage, Surveys, *Teaching, *Teaching Methods, Textbook Evaluation The purpose of this report is to survey and evaluate the various facetsof teaching of Arabic in the United States, and to give an appraisal of the state of the art. The objectives o f Arabic language teaching, the special problems thatArabic presents to Americans, and the various components common to all foreign language teaching programs, namely methods, manpower, materials, and university resources are considered, and recommendations presented.Appended are (1) a selected list of materials used in Arabic instruction with brief descriptive and evaluative annotations, and (2) background information on the socio-linguistic profile of the area where Arabic is used today. (Author/AMM) a a EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER CLEARINGHOUSE FOR LINGUISTICS CENTER FOR APPLIED LINGUISTICS, 1717 MASSACHUSETTS AVENUE, N. W., WASHINGTON, D, C. 20036 U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH, EDUCATION & WELFARE 4-) OFFICE OF EDUCATION THIS DOCUMENT HAS BEEN REPRODUCED EXACTLY AS RECEIVED FROM THE PERSON OR ORGANIZATION ORIGINATING IT.POINTS OF VIEW OR OPINIONS STATED DO NOT NECESSARILY REPRESENT OFFICIAL OFFICE OF EDUCATION POSITION OR POLICY. it THE TEACHING OF ARABIC IN THE UNITED STATES: THE STATE OF THE ART by PETER F. ABBOUD L 001627 MAIRTNIMM.M.,11,11.4 Foreword This state-of-the-art paper has been commissioned by the ERIC Clearing- house for Linguistics in collaboration with the Foreign Language Program of the Center for Applied Linguistics.
    [Show full text]
  • Arabic Language Modeling with Stem-Derived Morphemes for Automatic Speech Recognition
    ARABIC LANGUAGE MODELING WITH STEM-DERIVED MORPHEMES FOR AUTOMATIC SPEECH RECOGNITION DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Ilana Heintz, B.A., M.A. Graduate Program in Linguistics The Ohio State University 2010 Dissertation Committee: Prof. Chris Brew, Co-Adviser Prof. Eric Fosler-Lussier, Co-Adviser Prof. Michael White c Copyright by Ilana Heintz 2010 ABSTRACT The goal of this dissertation is to introduce a method for deriving morphemes from Arabic words using stem patterns, a feature of Arabic morphology. The motivations are three-fold: modeling with morphemes rather than words should help address the out-of- vocabulary problem; working with stem patterns should prove to be a cross-dialectally valid method for deriving morphemes using a small amount of linguistic knowledge; and the stem patterns should allow for the prediction of short vowel sequences that are missing from the text. The out-of-vocabulary problem is acute in Modern Standard Arabic due to its rich morphology, including a large inventory of inflectional affixes and clitics that combine in many ways to increase the rate of vocabulary growth. The problem of creating tools that work across dialects is challenging due to the many differences between regional dialects and formal Arabic, and because of the lack of text resources on which to train natural language processing (NLP) tools. The short vowels, while missing from standard orthography, provide information that is crucial to both acoustic modeling and grammatical inference, and therefore must be inserted into the text to train the most predictive NLP models.
    [Show full text]