Reviewed by Chentir Amina, Université de Provence, France

Sami Boudelaa edits this collection of eight papers originally presented at the Annual Symposium on Arabic Linguistics held at Cambridge University in March 2002.

In the first paper, ‘The organization of the lexicon in Arabic and other Semitic languages’, Georges Bohas claims that a lexical organization of Arabic—based on binary combinations of feature matrices—is superior to the traditional system based on triconsonantal roots. As evidence, he cites studies by Abelhadi Razouk (e.g. La notion de racine en arabe et sa perception chez le locuteur arabophone, DEA essay: Université Paris 8, 1999–2000), in which native speakers of Arabic seem to be able to read a word even if they cannot analyze its root and pattern. To describe phonetic and semantic relations, Bohas proposes a model based on phonetic matrices and etymons. Finally, he discusses the implications of this model for language in general.

Ignacio Ferrando approaches the notion of plural of paucity (PP) in ‘The plural of paucity in Arabic and its actual scope: On two claims by Siibawayhi and Al-Farraa’. After presenting a critical examination of some classical and modern studies in this field, Ferrando concludes that the notion of PP was firmly rooted in the minds of early Arabic linguists, although with sometimes contradictory perspectives. Its representation of small quantities and the variation between natural (i.e. plural attribute with plural subject) and deflected (i.e. feminine singular attribute with plural subject) agreements have led PP to be occasionally employed by some Arabic writers and poets, although it cannot be considered a psychologically productive process used in everyday Arabic language.

In his paper, ‘Why there is no koiné in Sanʕaaʔ, Yemen’, Andrew Freeman concludes that no koiné currently exists in Sanʕaaʔ. Through an ethnographic analysis of the life-modes of migrant workers and their relationship to the permanent residents of the area, Freeman analyzes possible reasons there has not been a merging of speech varieties in this urban setting. He notes that, although there are at least two distinct dialect systems in use, these dialects remain distinct despite their continuous changes.

Michael Ingleby and Fatmah A. Baothman contribute two papers. In the first, ‘Empty nuclei in Arabic speech patterns and the diacritic sukuun’, they show that the sukuun nucleus, from the point of view of duration, is as phonetically stable as other segments. Associated with the manifestation of phonological activity, it deserves to be included in the vowel inventory of the language models needed for accurate automatic speech recognition and synthesis. In their second paper, ‘Representing coarticulation processes in Arabic speech’, Ingleby and Baothman focus on differences of directionality in nasal assimilation and pharyngeal spreading. They show that nasal assimilation in Arabic follows the same regressive pattern as in English although the spreading of pharyngealization from emphatic segments is bidirectional and nonlocal.

Salwa A. Kamel compares the basic word order of classical Arabic and English in ‘The textual component in Classical Arabic: Investigating information structure’. Kamel goes a step further from other modernist treatments of Abdul-qaahir Aljurjani’s (Dalaaʔil ʔal-Iʕjaaz, ed. by Mahmoud M. Shaker. Cairo: Matbaʕat Al-madani, 1992) model, using labels provided by M. A. K. Halliday (An introduction to functional grammar, London: Edward Arnold, 1994) to highlight similarities and differences between the ways in which information structure is coded in the two languages.

Ghada Khattab, Feda Al-Tamimi, and Barry Heselwood present ‘Acoustic and auditory differences in the /t/-/ṭ/ opposition in male and female speakers of Jordanian Arabic’. They offer some speculative remarks and discussion of the articulatory exponents of emphasis as an issue in the sociophonetics of Arabic.

The final paper, ‘Pharyngealization effects in Maltese Arabic’, by Mary Ann Walter, describes the behavior of the historical emphatics in a Maltese dialect of Arabic that has lost the consonantal contrast between emphatic and nonemphatic (i.e. pharyngealized) segments. Results show the presence of a guttural dissimilation process similar to that found in South Palestinian Arabic. This suggests a fruitful area for future research.