{"id":2546,"date":"2013-06-19T20:57:51","date_gmt":"2013-06-19T18:57:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/elanguage.net\/blogs\/booknotices\/?p=2546"},"modified":"2013-06-19T20:57:51","modified_gmt":"2013-06-19T18:57:51","slug":"arabic-language-and-linguistics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/?p=2546","title":{"rendered":"Arabic language and linguistics"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"margin-left: 2em; text-indent: -2em;\"><strong>Arabic language and linguistics<\/strong>. Ed. by <strong>Reem Bassiouney<\/strong> and <strong>E. Graham Katz<\/strong>. (Georgetown University roundtable on languages and linguistics.) Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2012. Pp. xiv, 232. ISBN <a href=\"http:\/\/www.worldcat.org\/title\/arabic-language-and-linguistics\/oclc\/843860189&amp;referer=brief_results\">9781589018853<\/a>. $44.95.<\/div>\n<p align=\"right\">\u00a0Reviewed by <a href=\"http:\/\/linguistlist.org\/people\/personal\/get-personal-page2.cfm?PersonID=55543\">Dimitrios Ntelitheos<\/a>, <em>United Arab Emirates University<\/em><\/p>\n<p>This book is a collection of articles from the 2010 Georgetown University roundtable on languages and linguistics, including grammatical, computational, sociolinguistic, and language pedagogy analyses. The book is divided into two parts; the first focuses on theoretical and computational linguistics, and the second discusses issues in sociolinguistics and applied linguistics.<\/p>\n<p>The book starts with a discussion of negation in Moroccan Arabic by <strong>Nizha Chatar-Moumni<\/strong>. The author argues that sentential negation in the dialect results from the association of the negative particle <em>ma-<\/em> and an undefined quantifier, while the presence of the \u2013S suffix licenses this association. <strong>Kamel A. Elsaadany<\/strong> and <strong>Salwa Muhammed Shams<\/strong> discuss the syntax and semantics of universal quantification in Arabic, arguing against a transformational analysis of the properties of the universal quantifier <em>kull<\/em>, proposing a lexical-functional grammar approach.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Ali Farghaly<\/strong> turns the discussion to statistical and symbolic paradigms in the field of Arabic computational linguistics, tracing the historical development of machine translation attempts. <strong>Youssef A. Haddad<\/strong> returns to Arabic syntax with a discussion of forward and backward raising, and non-raising structures, which he approaches through the Copy-plus-Merge theory of movement. <strong>Sarah Ouwayda<\/strong> explores the nominal domain and, specifically, the treatment of construct state nominals as semantic predicates of the type &lt;e,t&gt;, based on their interaction with adjectives, cardinals, and quantifiers. <strong>Usama Soltan<\/strong> investigates <em>wh<\/em>-questions in Egyptian Arabic and argues against a movement analysis based on empirical evidence form island insensitivity and intervention effects. The first part concludes with a historical discussion of the treatment of \u2018incomplete\u2019 verbs in the Arabic grammatical tradition, by <strong>Hana Zabarah<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>The second part begins with a study on women and politeness on Egyptian talk shows by <strong>Reem Bassiouney<\/strong>, focusing on assertiveness techniques such as interruption and floor controlling. <strong>Elena Canna<\/strong> examines the use of Arabic and French codes in Casablanca, targeting forms of address and, particularly, salutations and well-wishing formulas, showing that choice of code is controlled by social conditions. <strong>Ahmed Fakhri<\/strong> presents a genre analysis perspective on the derivational process of nominalization in Arabic discourse in legal genres such as court judgments. <strong>Gunvor Mejdell<\/strong> examines the status of intermediate forms of language emerging in diglossic language communities, in order to dissolve tensions concerning the choice of code.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Catherine Miller<\/strong> investigates the use of Moroccan Arabic in dubbing foreign series in Moroccan television, addressing the debate that this has initiated in Moroccan society. <strong>Karin Christina Ryding<\/strong> concentrates on academic Arabic programs and the concept of critical thinking. The author argues for explicit grammar instruction within communicative teaching as a process that enhances the learners\u2019 cognitive development. <strong>Yasir Suleiman<\/strong> considers the extralinguistic motives behind the compilation of pre-Islamic period grammars, treating grammar-making as a process that is informed by ideological considerations. Finally, <strong>David Wilmsen<\/strong> closes the second part with a discussion of dialectal variation in the expression of ditransitive verb arguments.<\/p>\n<p>This book is a valuable collection of articles for anyone interested in Arabic linguistics from a theoretical point of view, and in the possible computational, social, and educational applications of these theoretical insights.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Arabic language and linguistics. Ed. by Reem Bassiouney and E. Graham Katz. (Georgetown University roundtable on languages and linguistics.) Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2012. Pp. xiv, 232. ISBN 9781589018853. $44.95. \u00a0Reviewed by Dimitrios Ntelitheos, United Arab Emirates University This book is a collection of articles from the 2010 Georgetown University roundtable on languages and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2546"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2546"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2546\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2548,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2546\/revisions\/2548"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2546"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2546"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2546"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}