Arabic Cross-Dialectal Conversations with Implications for the Teaching of Arabic As a Second Language
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Arabic Cross-dialectal Conversations with Implications for the Teaching of Arabic as a Second Language Rasha Kadry Abdelatti Mohamed Soliman Submitted in accordance with the requirements for the degree of PhD in Arabic Linguistics The University of Leeds Linguistics and Phonetics School of Modern Languages and Cultures July, 2014 ii The candidate confirms that the work submitted is her own and that appropriate credit has been given where reference has been made to the work of others. This copy has been supplied on the understanding that it is copyright material and that no quotation from the thesis may be published without proper acknowledgement. The right of Rasha Kadry Abdelatti Mohamed Soliman to be identified as Author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. © 2014 The University of Leeds and Rasha Kadry Abdelatti Mohamed Soliman iii Dedication To my parents Hend El-Naggar and Kadry Soliman iv Acknowledgements "In the name of Allah, the most gracious, the most merciful. All praise to Allah by whose grace good deeds are achieved" I wish to express sincere gratitude and deep thanks to my supervisor, Dr. Melinda Whong for her advice, patience and encouragement. I owe her much for her intellectual guidance and moral support throughout every stage of my study and for all the invaluable skills she taught me which I know I will continue to grow and utilise. From the School of Modern Languages and Cultures at the University of Leeds, I would like to thank Ms. Karen Priestley for her excellent and prompt administrative support and Dr. Diane Nelson as my postgraduate tutor for encouraging me as well as many postgraduate students to participate in the organised annual PG conferences in which I received insightful feedback. I am indebted to all the Arabic speaking individuals who agreed to take part in this study, giving their time and effort and allowing me to record their conversations. Their participation is greatly appreciated. Special thanks to all those who helped me to record high quality dialectal sentences to use in my case study; Mr. Aimen Ghummed and Mr. Abdurraof Shitaw for their input in the Libyan dialect, Ms. Arwa Gandeel for her input in the Hijazi dialect and to my dear sister-in-law Asmaa Soliman for her input in the Levantine dialects. I am also very grateful to Professor. Dilworth Parkinson at Brigham Young University for allowing me to join the online Arabic-L mailing list through which I reached many Arabic linguists who provided me with support and references in analysing the urban dialects I used in my study. I am grateful to the Arabic students at the University of Manchester who wholeheartedly participated in the case-study of my research and to all those who gave me insight into their Arabic language learning needs. v I am heavily indebted to my beloved husband, Najeeb, for his support of my Ph.D. endeavour and for always being there for me throughout the exciting times of my study as well as the stressful ones. My love and thanks to my sweet children, Yusuf, Ismail and Haroon for innocently allowing me to take some of our time together to spend on my research and for always bringing smiles on my face when needed. My appreciation also goes to my sisters, brothers and friends for all their love, prayers and good wishes. Last but not least, I will always be grateful to my parents who always had confidence in me. I am grateful for the opportunities they opened up encouraging me to get into the field of Arabic language teaching and linguistics, for their trust and support in sending me to do my M.A. far away from them and for encouraging me to pursue my Ph.D. study. My deepest appreciation and heartfelt thanks go to them for their patience, their prayers, their sacrifice, their endurance, and for their love and endless support of my education. Thanks to all of you. Without your support this work would have never been possible. vi Abstract This research is divided into two interlinked parts. The first part reviews literature on the diglossia and variability of the Arabic language and investigates how mutual intelligibility is achieved in informal conversations between speakers of different Arabic dialects. 11 conversations were recorded between speakers of 12 Arabic dialects. Instances of borrowing from Modern Standard Arabic were observed and analysed. The participants were also interviewed after the recorded conversations in order to get more insight into the listening comprehension strategies that they applied to achieve intelligibility. The results show that the native speakers tend to rely mostly on their native dialect in cross-dialectal interaction with a much smaller number of borrowings from Modern Standard Arabic in comparison with previous studies. A number of listening strategies were observed to be used in order to aid intelligibility. These strategies included making use of the context, ignoring non- content words and making use of their linguistic knowledge and the root and pattern system in Arabic as a frame of reference in comprehending unfamiliar cognates. The analysis also showed that dialect familiarity has a major role in aiding comprehension between the native speakers of different Arabic dialects. The second part, first, examines the needs of learning Arabic as a second language in Higher Education, then presents a case study that tests the advanced Arabic learners’ level of cognate recognition in unfamiliar dialects and whether explicit strategy teaching and lexical training can improve their dialectal lexical comprehension. Five final year university students of Arabic with an advanced level in MSA and exposure to a dialect participated in this study. Pre and post-tests of dialectal listening comprehension were administered. The results of a higher score in the post-test confirmed that the explicit strategy training helped the Arabic students to achieve better comprehension of cognates in unfamiliar dialects. vii Table of Contents Dedication ......................................................................................................... iii Acknowledgements ........................................................................................... iv Abstract ............................................................................................................. vi Table of Contents ...............................................................................................vii List of Tables ...................................................................................................... xi List of Figures .................................................................................................... xiii List of Abbreviations ......................................................................................... xiv Transliteration Scheme ...................................................................................... xv Chapter 1: Introduction: The Arabic language and its diglossic nature .................. 1 1.1 What is Diglossia? ........................................................................................ 2 1.1.1 Views on diglossia ............................................................................ 5 1.1.2 Diglossia versus standardisation ...................................................... 7 1.1.3 Diglossia versus bilingualism ............................................................ 8 1.1.4 Diglossia versus code-switching and code-mixing ........................... 9 1.1.5 Diglossia versus register ................................................................. 10 1.1.6 Diglossia and dialects ..................................................................... 11 1.2 Arabic Diglossia .......................................................................................... 12 1.2.1 Brief history of Arabic diglossia and its emergence ....................... 12 1.2.2 The standardisation of Arabic ........................................................ 13 1.2.3 The languages of the occupied lands ............................................. 14 1.2.4 The current Arabic varieties ........................................................... 15 1.2.4.1 Classical Arabic (CA) ........................................................... 15 1.2.4.2 Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) ......................................... 16 1.2.4.3 The Arabic dialects ............................................................. 17 1.2.4.4 Educated Spoken Arabic (ESA) ........................................... 19 1.3 Overview of this research project .............................................................. 21 Chapter 2: Cross-dialectal conversations: Literature Review .............................. 24 2.1 Cross-dialectal conversations and mutual intelligibility ............................ 24 2.2 Arabic cross-dialectal conversations .......................................................... 26 2.2.1 Blanc’s study (1960) ....................................................................... 28 2.2.2 Ezzat’s study (1974)........................................................................ 29 viii 2.2.3 Abu-Melhim’s study (1992) ............................................................ 31 2.2.4 Abu-Haidar’s study (1994) ............................................................. 33 2.2.5 Shiri’s study (2002) ......................................................................... 34 2.2.6 Limitations in the studies on Arabic cross-dialectal communication .............................................................................