An Emergent Grammar Model for the Linguistic Notion of Diglossia in Arabic and Faifi Item Type text; Electronic Dissertation Authors Alfaifi, Essa Salman Q. Citation Alfaifi, Essa Salman Q. (2020). An Emergent Grammar Model for the Linguistic Notion of Diglossia in Arabic and Faifi (Doctoral dissertation, University of Arizona, Tucson, USA). Publisher The University of Arizona. Rights Copyright © is held by the author. Digital access to this material is made possible by the University Libraries, University of Arizona. Further transmission, reproduction, presentation (such as public display or performance) of protected items is prohibited except with permission of the author. Download date 11/10/2021 09:11:33 Link to Item http://hdl.handle.net/10150/648634 AN EMERGENT GRAMMAR MODEL FOR THE LINGUISTIC NOTION OF DIGLOSSIA IN ARABIC AND FAIFI by Essa Alfaifi __________________________ Copyright © Essa Alfaifi 2020 A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the SCHOOL OF MIDDLE EASTERN AND NORTH AFRICAN STUDIES In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY In the Graduate College THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA 2020 2 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Pursuing this PhD has been a truly life-changing experience that would not have been possible without the support and guidance that I received from many people. I would like to express my sincere gratitude and appreciation to my committee chair, Dr. Samira Farwaneh, for her professional guidance, advice, and unwavering support throughout the course of my research. I could not have imagined having a better advisor and mentor for my PhD program. I would like to also show my sincere gratitude and appreciation to Dr. Diana Archangeli, who continuously provided me with unflagging support in the form of discussion, feedback, and encouragement. Dr. Diana is the most humble person I know, and her supervision has had a significant influence on my view on linguistics. A special note of gratitude and appreciation also goes to Dr. Mahmoud Azaz for his patience, motivation, enthusiasm during the course of my research. He has always encouraged me to engage publicly with my work and to participate in scientific forums and conferences. Special thanks are also due to Dr. Yaseen Noorani. This dissertation would not have been possible without his perspicacity, insightful guidance, and immense knowledge. I am most thankful to my mom and my wonderful family. All of them have given me the emotional support to complete this project. I am also indebted to my friends and colleagues at the University of Arizona (departments of MENAS and Linguistics) and Jazan University, who supported me emotionally, intellectually, and financially throughout the process of this research. Finally, all native-speaking consultants deserve a note of appreciation and gratitude. All of them volunteered their time and efforts to make this project happen. 3 TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Figures 7 Abstract 8 Chapter 1: Introduction 9 1.1 Arabic diglossia 11 1.2 Diglossia and bilingualism 15 1.3 Diglossic variation, free variation, and alternation 19 1.4 Universal Grammar (UG) and Usage-based grammar 24 1.5 The diglossic variation problem under investigation in Faifi 26 1.5.1 Significance of the study 30 1.6 General research questions and objectives 30 1.7 Data 32 1.8 Outline of the dissertation 33 Chapter 2: A sketch of Faifi grammar 35 2.1 Background and language contact 35 2.1.1 Genetic affiliation 40 2.2 Previous work on Faifi 44 2.3 The phonemic system of Faifi (focused on the diglossic variants in question) 50 2.3.1 Faifi consonants 50 2.3.2 Vowels (brief description, chart, and examples) 70 2.3.3 A note on the modeling of diglossic variations 78 2.4 Syllable structure and syllabification 80 2.4.1 Syllable structure 80 2.4.2 Syllabification 82 2.5 Affixation in Faifi 89 2.5.1 Verb affixes 89 2.5.2 Noun affixes 94 2.6 Allomorphs and alternations in Faifi 96 Chapter 3: Theoretical framework 100 3.1 Previous work on Emergent Grammar 100 3.2 EG architecture 109 3.3 OT and EG: similarities and differences 113 3.4 Questions that are asked in the EG framework 115 3.5 Matrix Language Frame (MLF) 117 3.6 Motivation for using EG in the analysis of diglossic grammar 125 3.7 Research Questions 127 3.8 Methods 128 4 Chapter 4: Learning diglossic variations of phonemes 135 4.1 Learning different types of phonemes 136 4.1.1 Closed and open morph sets 147 4.2 Building morph sets for diglossic variants 150 4.2.1 Building diglossic morph sets for [sˤ/s͡ t] and [k/tʰ] 150 4.2.2 Building diglossic morph sets for [g/q] and [d͡ ʒʰ/d͡ ʒ] 156 4.3 Building Morph Set Relations (MSRs) 163 4.3.1 MSRs for the non-diglossic morph sets 163 4.3.2 MSRs for the diglossic morph sets 166 4.3.3 MSRs example for the diglossic passive verbs 166 4.4 Conditions 172 4.4.1 Internal conditions 172 4.4.2 External conditions 174 4.4.2.1 External conditions preventing mismatch between Low and High 175 4.4.2.2 Context-sensitive conditions 178 Chapter 5: Learning diglossic variations of morphemes 188 5.1 General conditions regulating diglossic morpheme combinations 188 5.2 Diglossic variations in the perfective verbs and their suffixes 190 5.2.1 Alternations in the perfective verb suffix in Faifi (Low) 190 5.2.2 The perfective verb-suffix alternations in High (MSA) 202 5.2.3 Diglossic variations in the perfective verb-suffix alternations 205 5.2.4 Summary 208 5.3 Diglossic variations in the definite system 209 5.3.1 Definite marker alternations in Faifi (Low) 209 5.3.2 Diglossic variations in the definite marking system 222 5.3.3 The interaction between the definite markers and the sound diglossic 226 variants 5.3.4 Summary 229 Chapter 6: An OT approach, conclusion and future studies 233 6.1 An OT approach 233 6.2 Conclusion 241 6.3 Future studies 248 6.3.1 Multiglossia 248 6.3.2 Irregular plurals problem 250 6.3.3 The root vs. the stem 251 6.3.4 Diglossic variation at the phrase level 255 Appendix 1 – Native speakers’ profiles 256 5 Appendix 2 – Samples of raw data sets 260 Appendix 3 – Samples of written Faifi materials 270 Appendix 4 – Materials used in the elicitation 272 References 275 6 List of Figures Figure 1.1 Diglossia continuum as perceived by Badawi (1973) 12 Figure 1.2 Map of the areas where Najdi and Faifi are spoken 14 Figure 1.3 Illustration of the diglossic variation between [k] and [tʰ] in Faifi 19 Figure 2.1 Map of area in which Faifi is spoken 36 Figure 2.2 Terraced farming in Faifa mounting 38 Figure 2.3 The traditional classification of the Semitic languages 41 Figure 2.4 Faifi consonant inventory 50 Figure 2.5 [s͡ t] and [sˤ] ultrasounds 55 Figure 2.6 The tongue position during the articulation of the emphatic [sˤ] 56 Figure 2.7 Praat spectrograms of the diglossic variants [s͡ tala/sˤala] 57 Figure 2.8 [tʰ] and [k] ultrasounds 60 Figure 2.9 Praat spectrograms of the diglossic variants [tʰalbin/kalbin] 61 Figure 2.10 [g] and [q] ultrasounds 64 Figure 2.11 Praat spectrograms of the diglossic variants [ga:ma/qa:ma] 65 Figure 2.12 [d͡ ʒʰ] and [d͡ ʒ] ultrasounds 67 Figure 2.13 Praat spectrograms of the diglossic variants [d͡ ʒʰamal/d͡ ʒamal] 68 Figure 2.14 Three-category vs. two-category diglossic variants 69 Figure 2.15 Faifi vowel chart 70 Figure 4.1 Illustration of input and partitions of the diglossic variants [sˤ/s͡ t] 142 Figure 4.2. Illustration of morph set updating process 143 Figure 4.3 A sketch of bottom-up learning processes 153 Figure 4.4 Two-category vs. three-category morph sets 161 Figure 4.5 Types of emergent conditions in Faifi diglossic grammar 186 Figure 6.1 Low and High grammars from OT vs. EG perspective 234 7 Abstract The study of the grammar in ‘diglossic speech communities’ in which two or more varieties of the same language are used in different contexts, raises important questions: How do these varieties interact? Are there clear-cut boundaries between language varieties in these contexts? Can we posit that speakers, in certain circumstances, may possess more than one internal grammar of their language that is associated with different social contexts? If so, how do speakers develop knowledge of this type of grammar? More importantly, how can we systematically account for the massive scale of variation that is part of any diglossic speech grammar? This dissertation demonstrates how the structural phenomena of diglossia can be derived from domain-general cognitive processes, including memory, attention to frequencies and similarities, categorization, establishing connections between similar categories, making generalizations from observed patterns, etc. These processes operate in multiple instances of language use and create the grammar of diglossic speech. This dissertation uses the diglossic grammar of Faifi, an Arabic diglossic speech community located in the Faifa mountains in southwestern Saudi Arabia, to demonstrate the emergent grammar properties. The same principles should apply to the other diglossic speech communities of Arabic. The analyses are grounded in the core of a relatively new framework called Emergent Grammar (EG), which drifts away from using the concept of Universal Grammar and genetic endowment specific to language as central in driving research questions and the way of interpreting data (Archangeli & Pulleyblank, 2012a,b,c; 2013; 2014a,b; 2015a,b,c; 2016; 2017; 2018 among others).