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Aspects of Grammatical Variation in Jordanian Arabic

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Aspects of Grammatical Variation in Jordanian Arabic Aspects of grammatical variation in Jordanian Arabic Ekab Al-Shawashreh Thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Doctorate in Philosophy degree in Linguistics Department of Linguistics Faculty of Arts University of Ottawa © Ekab Al-Shawashreh, Ottawa, Canada, 2016 ABSTRACT This study investigates some aspects of grammatical variation in vernacular Jordanian Arabic (JA), namely word order variation and pro(noun)-drop variation. Much previous research on word order and subject expression in Arabic has been hampered by the use of eclectic methodologies (Bakir 1980; Eid 1983; El-Yasin 1985; Fassi Fehri 1993; Aoun & Li 1993; Brustad 2000). Conspicuously rare in contemporary studies of syntactic variation in Arabic are systematic analyses of spontaneous speech data (Edwards 2010: 94; but see e.g., Owens, Dodsworth & Rockwood 2009; Owens, Dodsworth & Kohn 2013). The dearth of quantitative studies of word order variation, as well as pro-drop variation, in colloquial Arabic provides the primary motivation for the present investigation. Drawing on the framework of variationist sociolinguistics (Labov 1972), I conduct an accountable analysis of word order variation, as well as pro-drop variation in a corpus of vernacular Jordanian Arabic recorded in the Irbid metropolitan area in 2014. The corpus is based on over 30 hours of digitized recordings obtained from 30 speakers stratified by age, sex, education, as well as urban/rural origin. I exploit these spontaneous speech data to: (i) assess the frequency of different word order and pro-drop variants in vernacular JA; (ii) ascertain which social and linguistic factors constrain the selection of major word order and pro-drop variants; and (iii) determine whether the apparent time component incorporated into the research design reveals any evidence of change in progress. Distributional and multivariate analyses of 4500 tokens (2049 for word order and 2422 for pro- drop) coded for the aforementioned social factors, in addition to an array of linguistic factors hypothesized to constrain variant choice (e.g., morphloexical class of subject, grammatical person and number, type of clause and transitivity) confirm that word order variation, as well as pro-drop variation, are subject to multiple constraints (Holes 1995; Owens et al. 2013). A first important finding concerns the quantitative preponderance of SV(O) word order in vernacular JA, which competes with less frequent VS(O). Another important finding is that null subject pronouns are the norm in vernacular JA. Statistical analyses of the linguistic factors conditioning the observed variability reveal that transitivity and definite subject pronouns are key predictors of SV(O) word order choice, while switch reference and person and number of subject are key predictors of overt subject pronouns, as determined by the relative magnitude of these effects. Particularly compelling is the social embedding of the variation in the case of word order variation. Age- and sex-differentiations in the data (Labov 1990), in addition to urban-rural split, reveal statistically significant differences, offering provisional indications that alternation between SV(O) and VS(O) word orders is implicated in ongoing change. Younger speakers, women and urban-origin speakers lead in the use of SV(O). The results foreground the utility of empirically accountable analyses of spontaneous speech in elucidating key issues relating to syntactic variation in modern varieties of spoken Arabic. The results generated by this approach reveal new findings not previously available from the intuited, elicited or written material on which much previous work on Arabic has been based. ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS It is a great pleasure for me to thank those who helped me a lot to make this work possible. First and foremost, I want to express my immense gratitude to my supervisor, Professor Stephen Levey, for being everything that one could dream a supervisor to be, and even much more. His constant support, encouragement and valuable comments and suggestions have been a source of inspiration during my work on this thesis. Without his supervision and insightful feedback, this thesis would never be in its present case. I was really fortunate to work with you. Words cannot express my respect and appreciation for you. For all what you have done, thank you so much from all my heart. I would like also to thank the members of my thesis committee: Professor Lotfi Sayahi, Professor Eric Mathieu, Professor Ana Arregui and Professor Dennis Ott, for their valuable comments and feedback. I want to thank the committee members for bringing to my attention the theoretical implications of the results of my thesis. I also want to thank Professor Lotfi Sayahi for all his encouraging words. I wish to express my gratitude to Professor Eric Mathieu for all his time and supervision during my work on the first qualifying paper. Sincere thanks to all committee members of my thesis. I would like to express my deep gratitude to my sponsor, Yarmouk University, not only for financially supporting me for four years but also for being a wonderful place where I got my BA in English Language and Literature in 1999 and my MA in Linguistics in 2004. In addition to that, I want to thank all my professors in the English Department for giving me the chance to teach in the department for almost four years and for nominating me for a scholarship to pursue my PhD at the reputable University of Ottawa. iii Many thanks also go to all professors at the University of Ottawa for making the department an outstanding academic environment. Special thanks are also due to all my colleagues at the Department of Linguistics at the University of Ottawa. Special thanks must go to each and every student in the department. Thanks are also extended to my research participants in Jordan who were more than willing to offer their time and efforts to take part in the sociolinguistic interviews that constitute the backbone of my work on this thesis. In spite of the complications of life and busy schedules, they devoted all their efforts and capacities to make the interviews as fruitful and successful as possible. Without their efforts, this thesis would not be successful. Last but not least, I want to thank my family for all their help and support. I want to thank my parents for all their prayers, wishes and financial support. They were always enthusiastic for me to pursue my degree: it has always been their lifetime-wish to see me teaching as a university professor. They helped me a lot during difficult times to overcome all obstacles during my study. To my brothers and sisters, I am really thankful for your constant love and support. No words can express my deep gratitude to my wife, Ghadeer Omari, for her patience, love, support and prayers to finish my degree and go back home safe and sound. Thank you so much for standing in my side all the time and for dedicating all your time and money to take care of our children, Ghaith and Sanad. To my source of inspiration, Ghaith and Sanad, I do not know how to say thank you for being a great motivation for me to finish my degree as soon as possible and go back home to be re-united with you. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT ...................................................................................................................................ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS............................................................................................................iii TABLE OF CONTENTS.................................................................................................................v LIST OF TABLES...........................................................................................................................x LIST OF FIGURES......................................................................................................................xiv LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS .......................................................................................................xv JORDANIAN ARABIC PHONEMES ........................................................................................xvi CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION 1.0 Above and beyond phonology...................................................................................................1 1.1 Word order in JA ......................................................................................................................3 1.2 Pro-drop in JA ...........................................................................................................................4 1.3 Research questions ....................................................................................................................5 1.4 The data .....................................................................................................................................6 1.5 Theoretical framework ..............................................................................................................6 1.6 Road map of the thesis ..............................................................................................................7 CHAPTER TWO: CONTEXT 2.0 Overview ..................................................................................................................................9 2.1 Word order variation ................................................................................................................9 2.1.1 Greenberg's
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