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This research aims to investigate the concept of code-switching (CS) between English and Arabic and the CS practices of Saudi online users via a Translanguaging (TL) lens for more inclusive view towards the nature of the data from the study. It employs Digitally Mediated Communication (DMC), specifically the WhatsApp and Twitter platforms to understand how the users employ online resources to communicate with others on a daily basis. This project looks beyond language and considers the multimodal affordances (visual and audio means) that interlocutors utilise in their online communicative practices to shape their online social existence. This exploratory study is based on a data-driven interpretivist epistemology as it aims to understand how meaning (reality) is created by individuals within different contexts. This project used a mixed-method approach, combining a qualitative and a quantitative approach. In the former, data were collected from online chats and interview responses, while in the latter a questionnaire was employed to understand the frequency and relations between the participants' linguistic, non-linguistic practices and their social behaviours. The participants were eight bilingual Saudi nationals (three men and five women, aged between 20 and 50 years old) who interacted with others online. The study data were gathered from 194 WhatsApp chats and 122 Tweets which were analysed and interpreted according to three levels: conversational turn-taking and CS; the linguistic description of the data; and CS and persona. This project contributes to the emerging field of analysing online Arabic data systematically, the field of multimodality and bilingual sociolinguistics. In addition, it bridges some of the existing gaps in the DMC literature. The findings of this study are that CS by its nature, and most of the findings, if not all, support Wei's (2018) notion of TL that multiliteracy is one's ability to decode multimodal communication, and that this multimodality contributes to the meaning.

This thesis considers three intertwined research questions that are relevant to the phenomenology of dislocation in Modern Standard Arabic, henceforth MSA. The first of these research questions concerns the possible types of dislocation constructions. The second question concerns the interpretation of dislocation constructions. The last question takes on the syntactic make-up of dislocation constructions. As far as the first question is concerned, I argue that left-peripheral elements in MSA are not uniform and thus they are best analyzed as comprising two different types: Clitic Left Dislocation I and Clitic Left Dislocation II. I further argue that the same constructions which appear in the left periphery have a presence in the right periphery, namely Clitic Right Dislocation I and Clitic Right Dislocation II. I further show that the determining factor underlying the partitioning of clitic resumption in MSA is morphological case (mis)- matching. Concerning the second question, I maintain that the interpretation of dislocation constructions in MSA is rooted in contrastiveness: the idea that the dislocated elements are drawn from a contrast set in the discourse. As an answer to the third question, which constitutes the backbone of this thesis, I argue that the previous literature, which advances the idea that the dislocated element and its associated clitic in Clitic Left Dislocation I & Clitic Right Dislocation I coappear in the same clause, is empirically and conceptually problematic. As a solution to this impasse, I argue for the bisentential analysis: the idea that the dislocated element originates in a different clause from the clitic. Crucially, this thesis contributes to the 'biclausal' debate by furnishing an argument for an ellipsis-based analysis of Clitic Left Dislocation I & Clitic Right Dislocation I based on data from MSA.

Communicative Language Teaching has been changing the way foreign languages are taught since the 1970s. Arabic degree courses responded to this by teaching Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) communicatively, meaning essential components of communicative competence, notably sociolinguistics, were absent, making courses at odds with the approach. In the majority of English Higher Education Institutions (HEIs), students are taught to speak, listen, read and write in MSA and often expected to pick up a regional variety (RV) during their year abroad. This study has revealed that some HEIs have introduced RVs into the curriculum or classroom. However, an important component of degree-level Arabic is missing: a background understanding and awareness of the language situation. This absence of what makes Arabic so unique, which starts with diglossia, means courses cannot do justice to the language itself. When developing the curriculum, a shift has been identified in the wider field of HE due to the changing climate in which HEIs operate. Engaging students in their education and making approaches more student-centred is advocated in the wider literature as a solution to face the changes of the modern-day world, making HEIs more competitive, accountable and inclusive, and improving the student experience. To date, no comprehensive research has investigated what this means for undergraduate degree-level Arabic or how it can be drawn on when developing the curriculum. This study addresses this gap through mixed-methods research to explore multiple perspectives, data was gathered from eight of the nine English HEIs offering undergraduate Arabic: 122 student questionnaires and 15 student interviews, 12 tutor interviews and 14 classroom observations. This three-dimensionality was crucial to achieve as comprehensive a picture of the discipline as possible. There is a long-standing debate on whether degree-level courses should include practical or theoretical knowledge. As Arabic is learnt at university ab initio, the practical acquisition of the language is expected. It requires a different approach to other L2s due to the complexity of the language situation. Some components of communicative competence may need to be discarded on Arabic beginner levels by using MSA in inauthentic situations. However, an awareness of the language situation complements practical skills acquisition and is consistent with what universities are for: providing a fuller understanding of the subject matter. This study urges HEIs to experiment with including a module on Arabic linguistics, which would raise awareness surrounding the language situation as well as promoting student agency, academic conversation and transparency.

Modern Arabic colloquial varieties exhibit significant phonological variation that has only partially been incorporated into previous typological efforts. This thesis motivates a phonological typology of sixteen modern varieties, exploring not just the crucial ingredients of the phonological grammar including syllable and foot structure, but also the lexical and postlexical nature of prosodic structure. I argue that there are two axes for phonological variation in Arabic: Tolerance and Repair, that is, varieties differ in terms of which types of syllables they tolerate and in how they repair violations of syllable structure, and these axes do not covary. In terms of Tolerance, varieties differ in acceptance of quantity. Varieties that permit long segments have restrictions on the segmental level, whereas varieties that do not have restrictions on the moraic level, and varieties that allow long consonants or clusters but not long vowels have restrictions on the X-slot tier. In addition to the canonical 2 or 3 elements, individual varieties may also permit an extra element in their medial syllable rime according to variety-specific restrictions including coronality, fast speech, and sonority. As such, this typology provides mechanisms to account for the data in each and every variety, rather than merely providing a canonical set of features that not all varieties fit. Repair is concerned with how violations of syllable structure are repaired in terms of epenthesis direction and the licensing of word edge extrasyllabic segments. I propose that catalectic moras are required to incorporate extrasyllabic material across the word. The Onset/Coda distinction can therefore be expressed as whether the extrasyllabic material is incorporated as the onset or coda of a syllable containing a catalectic mora. Epenthesis occurs where the catalectic mora is not permitted to surface without overt segmental material. The difference between domain edge behaviour therefore follows from this - where the catalectic mora is the peripheral element, the surface cluster is permitted; but where it is non-peripheral, epenthesis occurs as the catalectic mora is filled by an epenthetic vowel. 'Extreme' Onset/Coda varieties are those that permit catalectic moras word-internally in domain edge syllables. Furthermore, I explore the prosodic word structure of Arabic, finding that there is a preference for affixes to attach after a stressed syllable that accounts for lengthening phenomena and apparent stress exceptions. This thesis demonstrates that there are constraints on both the input and output of the phonological grammar, and that the variation rests on the acceptability or violation of the constraints. Thus, the Arabic typology emphasizes two aspects: first, variation in phonology is not just on the surface, and second, abstract quantitative analyses including catalexis are fundamental to our understanding of how prosodic structure can survive across a range of dialects.

This thesis reports on the results of eight acceptability judgment experiments on Saudi Arabic elliptical questions (sluicing). These results are presented in two sections. The first section reports on the results of four experiments on sluicing with prepositional phrases in Saudi Arabic. I show that, in standard cases of merger-type sluicing and contrastive sluicing, where the antecedent is a PP, there is no penalty for leaving out the preposition in the wh-remnant. I refer to such examples as OPUS. The findings reveal that the status of the examples depends on the status of the most acceptable synonymous source within the ellipsis site; in particular, when neither a cleft structure nor a resumptive structure is grammatically available at the ellipsis site, the acceptability of OPUS decays. I interpret this as evidence that there is syntactic structure at the ellipsis site and that the wh-remnant in these elliptical questions can - and sometimes must - relate to a resumptive pronoun at the ellipsis site. The second section reports on the results of four experiments on sluicing with degree phrases in Saudi Arabic. I show that, in standard cases of merger-type sluicing, there is a penalty for the lack of a syntactically isomorphic structure within the ellipsis site. The findings reveal that the status of examples depends on the availability of a syntactically isomorphic structure at the ellipsis site; in particular, when only a semantically identical structure is acceptable in Saudi Arabic, the acceptability of sluicing decays. Overall, the results of the eight experiments suggest that sluicing in Saudi Arabic presents evidence that there is a silent structure at the ellipsis site, which is syntactically isomorphic to the antecedent. In cases in which no syntactically isomorphic pre-sluice is grammatical in Saudi Arabic, the acceptability of sluicing decays.

The expansion of digital communication mediums from private mobile messaging into the public through social media presented an opportunity for the data science research and industry to mine the generated big data for artificial information extraction. A popular information extraction task is sentiment analysis, which aims at extracting polarity opinions, 'positive, negative', or 'neutral', from the written natural language. This science helped organisations better understand the public’s opinion towards events, news, public figures, and products. However, sentiment analysis has advanced for the English language ahead of Arabic. While sentiment analysis for Arabic is developing in the literature of Natural Language Processing (NLP), a popular variety of Arabic, Arabizi, has been overlooked for sentiment analysis advancements. Arabizi is an informal transcription of the spoken dialectal Arabic in Latin script used for social texting. It is known to be common among the Arab youth, yet it is overlooked in efforts on Arabic sentiment analysis for its linguistic complexities. As to Arabic, Arabizi is rich in inflectional morphology, but also codeswitched with English or French, and distinctively transcribed without adhering to a standard orthography. The rich morphology, inconsistent orthography, and codeswitching challenges are compounded together to have a multiplied effect on the lexical sparsity of the language, where each Arabizi word becomes eligible to be spelled in many ways, that, in addition to the mixing of other languages within the same textual context. The resulting high degree of lexical sparsity defies the very basics of sentiment analysis, classification of positive and negative words. Arabizi is even faced with a severe shortage of data resources that are required to set out any sentiment analysis approach. In this thesis, we tackle this gap by conducting research on sentiment analysis for Arabizi. We addressed the sparsity challenge by harvesting Arabizi data from multi-lingual social media text using deep learning to build Arabizi resources for sentiment analysis. We developed six new morphologically and orthographically rich Arabizi sentiment lexicons and set the baseline for Arabizi sentiment analysis on social media.

This is an ethnographic study investigating the negotiation of identity and belonging in Harūb, Saudi Arabia. This thesis addresses the question: how do people in Harūb use language to position themselves in relation to dominant power structures? This question is answered from three different angles using discourse analysis. First, this thesis uses the concept of enregisterment to trace the development and construction of the Badawi dialect in Harūb. The analysis shows that salient linguistic features used in Harūb have become enregistered with Badu identity in terms of ideologies of linguistic differentiation. The historical and social processes of isolation, modernization and marginalization have given rise to discursive practices of naming and drawing boundaries around their way of speaking. Second, this study looks at how place is used to define Badu identity. As the traditional lifestyle of subsistence farming and shepherding is being disrupted and residents of Harūb feel marginalized, place has become critical in the construction and maintenance of Badu identity. The analysis illustrates that through place-making, engaging in the ‘politics of belonging’, and constructing belongingness people in Harūb imbue the landscape with qualities of self-sufficiency and freedom. As individuals draw on these resources of place, they construct and maintain Badu identity, ultimately putting themselves back in the “center” giving themselves a place to belong. Third, this study demonstrates how older women who have been marginalized in society use stancetaking to contest their position. Women’s role in Harūb drastically changed when new power structures were instituted. This paper analyzes the accounts of the past and present as told by the younger and older generation of women using the concept of chronotope. Those born before the change in power narrate a freedom to confinement chronotope while those born after the change in power narrate an ignorant to educated chronotope. Through the telling of these opposing accounts, these two generations of women engage in stancetaking, (dis)aligning with the Saudi state and with each other. Ultimately, as the younger women accept the new account and reject their mothers’ perspective, the collective memory of the community is changed. Additionally, as Arabic dialects in southwest Arabia exhibit rare features not found in other areas of the Arabic-speaking world, this thesis documents some of those linguistic features found in Harūb.

The current study investigates the sequential organisation of the Syrian Arabic polar interrogative sequence. By implementing Conversation Analysis ethnomethodology, the study explores the action and form-related preferences which underpin the structure and the various trajectories of this type of sequence. The study demonstrates that some Syrian Arabic language-specific features, such as the conventionally declarative form of polar interrogatives, promote specific types of responses, such as repetitions. In the absence of morphosyntactic marking of polar interrogatives in Syrian Arabic, interactants orient to epistemic asymmetry and sequential positioning to mark a turn-at-talk as a polar question. One outcome of such orientation is that Syrian Arabic interactants display high sensitivity towards each other’s epistemic rights. Syrian Arabic interactants implement various lexical, grammatical and sequential resources to index their level of epistemic access to the issue in question. Responses to polar interrogative questions vary according to the level of knowledge indexed and projected in those questions. The level of knowledge indexed and projected in polar questions would also determine whether a third turn is relevant or not within the polar interrogative sequence. The position of the polar interrogative sequence within talk-in-interaction has also an impact over the form and the extent of the response. The position of the polar interrogative sequence also determines whether a third turn is relevant or not within that sequence. This study also demonstrates that the polar question/response system in Syrian Arabic is strongly biased towards positive format in terms of grammar. Such form-related bias intersects with the action-related bias towards confirmation, agreement and acceptance. Finally, the current study demonstrates that Syrian Arabic interactants orient to achieving intersubjectivity before bringing the polar interrogative sequence to closure.

This study provides a comprehensive description of lexical stress and vowel epenthesis in Alatawalah Arabic (AA), a variety spoken in the village of Alatawalah southwest of Saudi Arabia, which has never been studied before. It presents and compares an account of both processes in classical Optimality Theory (OT) and stratal OT. Stress can be a purely phonological process in many words in AA. Yet, on the other hand, morphology affects it greatly, to the extent that stress-based minimal pairs such as /ˈmak.ta.bəh/ ‘library’ and /mak.ˈta.bəh/ ‘his office’, figure in the dialect. A substantial number of affixes triggers different stress requirements, namely, the repulsion of stress, and forcing it to be placed on the rightmost foot. Such affixal stress requirements lead to the rise of degenerate feet, and the inability of heavy syllables to attract stress. Intriguingly, affixal stress requirements may also clash, resulting in some affix’s stress requirement, blocking that of another. Vowel epenthesis prohibits unsyllabified consonants, onset clusters, and word-final geminates in AA words. Vowel epenthesis that remedies the prohibition on word-final geminates has never been attested before in any Arabic dialect. Furthermore, only the AA variety can have up to three epenthetic vowels per word. In addition, the epenthesis process is shown to be optionally applied, in specific environments, suggesting a form of opacity. Despite the extensive interaction of morphology with stress, and the opacity of vowel epenthesis, I demonstrate full classical and stratal OT accounts for both processes. Stratal OT is shown to be superior to classical OT, and is also shown to provide an insightful explanation as to why some stress requirements can be blocked in specific environments.

Few studies have investigated first language (L1) attrition and second language (L2) acquisition of segmental and suprasegmental aspects of speech. The current research includes three separate studies that examined L1 attrition and L2 acquisition of prosody of wh-words, vowels formants and the voice onset time (VOT) of voiceless stops in late consecutive Arabic-English (A-E) and English-Arabic (E-A) bilinguals. All three studies explored whether late L2 learners’ language use and phonetic aptitude (i.e. talent) affect the prosody of wh-words, the formants of shared vowels and the VOTs of voiceless plosives among advanced learners of English and Arabic. Sixty participants participated in the three studies: 15 E-A bilinguals, 15 A-E bilinguals, 15 monolingual English speakers and 15 monolingual Arabic speakers. Both bilingual groups had been living in the L2 environment for about 20 years and had completed a proficiency test, a phonetic aptitude test and a language background questionnaire. In study I, the participants read brief dialogues of wh-question/answer pairs; the bilinguals read them in Arabic and English. To capture differences in slope steepness and the amount of curvature, the pitch contour of the wh-question words was analysed using growthcurve analyses. The monolinguals’ results revealed a steep rise to a high target in Arabic whwords, but no such high target in English wh-words. The bilinguals’ results revealed that A-E and E-A bilinguals approximated the prosodic patterns of the L2. An asymmetrical pattern of L1 attrition was found, showing attrition among the E-A bilinguals, but not among the A-E bilinguals. Additionally, language use, but not phonetic aptitude, modulated how closely bilingual participants approximate native patterns. In study II, the participants read words containing different vowels that are shared across English and Arabic in isolation and in a carrier phrase. The bilinguals read the vowels in Arabic and English. The first three formants (F1, F2 and F3) were extracted at vowel midpoints using Praat and then normalised. The monolingual groups’ results revealed differences in some of the shared vowels in Arabic and English. The bilinguals’ results revealed L1 attrition among the A-E bilinguals and the E-A bilinguals. Language use and phonetic aptitude were not found to influence the vowel formants of A-E and E-A bilinguals in L1 attrition and L2 acquisition. In study III, the participants narrated different cartoons, three in English and two in Arabic, and the bilinguals narrated them in both languages. VOT was measured using Praat from the interval between the plosive release and the onset of voicing. The monolinguals’ results showed that the VOTs of voiceless plosives differed in Arabic and English. As in study I, the bilinguals’ results showed an asymmetrical pattern of L1 attrition, showing attrition among the E-A bilinguals, but not among the A-E bilinguals. As in study II, language use and phonetic aptitude were not found to influence the VOTs of A-E and E-A bilinguals in L1 attrition and L2 acquisition. The results suggest that L1 use may prevent L1 phonetic attrition, but only at the suprasegmental level. Some of the segmental results further support the Speech Learning Model (SLM): some areas of pronunciation are more vulnerable to attrition than others and some areas are more likely to achieve native-likeness than others. The present study revealed that some aspects of native-like L2 acquisition can occur alongside L1 attrition, which means that while these aspects are acquired well in the L2, they are susceptible to attrition in L1. However, this is not true for all aspects. Finally, the findings confirm that acquiring a language from birth is not sufficient to ensure L1 native-likeness in the production of bilingual speech.

This thesis focuses on phonological processes that result from phonology-morphology interaction in Abha Arabic, which is a variety spoken in the southwestern region of Saudi Arabia. The main motivations are providing an account of vowel processes in Abha Arabic and testing Stratal OT’s ability to account for vowel epenthesis, vowel lengthening, and vowel shortening. The Stratal OT framework is put to the test to see if it can account for opacity, which proved to be problematic for different frameworks. It is established, with examples from Abha Arabic, that opaque processes that result from attaching affixes and morpheme interaction across word boundaries can be accounted for in the Stratal OT framework. Accounting for the different behaviours of epenthetic vowels needs a framework with different levels. Repairing consonant clusters provided a rich source for the analysis because they are repaired in many different ways in the dialect under study. The position and the quality of the epenthetic vowel vary based on the level these clusters are repaired at. Stratal OT is able to make use of the different levels to account for the inconsistency in epenthetic vowels behaviour. Moreover, two other vowel processes result after morphological operations take place, i.e. vowel lengthening and vowel shortening. Both processes take place after attaching different suffixes. In some cases, attaching two phonologically similar suffixes can either trigger a change in vowel length or not. The failure of the change in vowel length in the triggering environment is considered as an opaque interaction. Furthermore, some suffixes can change stems’ vowel quality, while other phonologically similar suffixes cannot do that. A framework with different levels, like Stratal OT, can explain that the effect of attaching affixes differs based on the level they are attached at. This conclusion supports the need for levels to account for opacity resulting from phonology-morphology interaction caused by attaching affixes at different levels.

This thesis investigates the acquisition of verb inflection in Libyan Arabic (LA), and the role of input. It is a case study in which there is a single participant, a girl acquiring LA as a first language, and her parents are the main source of input. Data were collected by observation of naturalistic interactions over a period of thirteen months at home during play time, meal times, and story reading sessions. The thesis contributes to the theoretical debate about the question of whether young children have adult-like syntactic representations, and what role parental/carer input plays in the acquisition of inflectional verb morphology. The results confirm what has been reported in the literature, that very young children optionally use finite verb forms in finite contexts side-by-side with default verb forms. Agreement errors are few. The results also demonstrate that the parents studied do not regularly provide negative evidence, and if they do so, they do not provide it after every error the child makes. The results show that negative evidence has little effect on the acquisition of certain grammatical features from which the child does not recover, even after the error is corrected. This thesis contributes to our knowledge of first language acquisition by presenting data from a variety of the Arabic language family which has not been investigated before. Moreover, it adds new results to the few existing findings about the acquisition of the verbal domain in Arabic. Furthermore, it provides new results about the role of input in language acquisition in general and in the acquisition of Arabic in particular.

This research explores Arabic teachers' experiences and understandings of living Arab culture as part of their curriculum subject in mainstream secondary schools in England. Arabic is a growing subject at secondary level in England, and is offered in some schools alongside more traditional options such as French and Spanish. The linguistic requirements of the course are prescribed in a relatively clear manner in the Key Stage 3 Programme of Study and in the Arabic GCSE examination specifications. However, the cultural dimension of the course is less prescriptive. In addition to this, the meanings of 'culture' in language education and those of 'Arabic'/'Arab' are complex and often subjective. Bringing the unheard voices of Arabic teachers into discussions on Modern Foreign Languages (MFL) is therefore a worthwhile and necessary endeavour, in order to understand what it means for them to 'live' Arab culture as part of their curriculum subject. This qualitative, interpretive study draws on Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) to delve into detailed and contextualised accounts of the lived experiences of six teachers working in mainstream state-maintained secondary schools in England. All teachers taught the Arabic GCSE and were recruited purposely. The research question asks: 'What are Arabic teachers' experiences and understandings of living Arab Culture as part of their curriculum subject?' The findings of four teachers are presented in rich detail. Following this, the findings of all six participants are presented according to four overarching 'Dimensions of Experience', which are presented in order to convey both the similarities and differences within their experiences and understandings. These 'Dimensions of Experience' comprise: imposing order on Arab culture; being (un)certain; coping with context; and striving for moral and social learning. The teachers appeared to conceptualise 'Arab culture' differently. Given the lack of prescriptivism, some for example understood it as linked to religion, others not, or underpinned by pan-Arab identity, or Modern Standard Arabic. They also experienced various levels of certainty in what they were doing. Interestingly, many believed that what they were doing was what was expected of them. The context of both the national examination assessment system as well as different student backgrounds formed an integral part of teachers' experiences of living culture as part of their subject too. Finally, although the particularities of their experiences varied, the teachers seemed to understand Arab culture in their subject as a way to address social and moral learning - including for example criticality and tolerance. These idiosyncratic perceptual processes are explored alongside relevant literature in order to present an informed discussion. This thesis concludes by stating the contributions to knowledge made in the areas of language teacher research, curriculum thinking, and methodological approaches in education.

This thesis investigates the syntax of Conjoined Question Phrase Construction (such as when and where do you ...?) in Najdi Arabic (NA). NA allows such questions under certain constraints, which are sensitive to the categorial status of the fronted conjoined wh-phrases, i.e. argumental wh-phrases vs. adjunct wh-phrases. With the first constraint, when the subject and the object are wh-phrases, the subject wh-phrase is what should be fronted, whereas the object wh-phrase remains in situ (as in who saw what?). The second constraint concerns cases when the multiple wh-phrases are an argumental wh-phrase and an adjunct wh-phrase. The argumental wh-phrase should not be a subject here but rather an object wh-phrase, which in turn should remain in situ, while the adjunct wh-phrase is fronted (as in when did John see whom?). The third constraint pertains to instances with fronted conjoined adjunct wh-phrases. Here the two wh-phrases should be fronted, separated by the coordinating conjunction wa ‘and’ (not any other coordination conjunction as in when and where did you see the man?). Using the main theoretical assumptions of the Minimalist Program (henceforth MP) (Chomsky, 1995 and subsequent work), Phase Theory (Chomsky, 1999, 2000, 2001 and subsequesnt work), Rizzi’s (1997) split CP-system and Nunes' (2001, 2004) Sideward Movement, this thesis provides a unified analysis of the three constraints mentioned above. As for the first constraint, the study argues that the head of CP is endowed with an EPP feature. C° attracts the first wh-phrase it c-commands to its Spec. This implies that argumental wh-phrases do not need to move to the left periphery driven by their own requirements. This accounts for why the second object wh-phrase remains in situ, which I assume moves at LF. As for the second constraint, the study argues that adjunct wh-phrases move to the left periphery because they have a strong [Q] feature. When the subject is a wh-phrase, it is the closest wh-word to the head of the CP and it will be attracted by the EPP feature on C °, something that leads to the ungrammaticality of the question. Even if C°’s need to have its Spec filled would be fulfilled by the subject wh-phrase, the question remains ungrammatical because the adjunct wh-phrase (having a strong [Q] feature) is banned (by the subject wh-phrase) from moving to CP. This accounts for why questions with an adjunct wh-phrase and an object wh-phrase (which has a iv low position in the derivation) are grammatical. As for the third constraint, the study argues that this is a consequence of two factors: the strong featural content of adjunct wh-phrases and CP not being recursive. In order to solve the apparent tension (of moving two wh-phrases into one structural position), NA devises what I label as pseudo-coordination. The two wh-phrases are conjoined under one XP, i.e. &P. The implementation of this combination and insertion is executed through sideward movement (à la Nunes 2001, 2004). This thesis also investigates questions starting with a wh-word leiʃ “why” followed directly by another wh-word. The discussion reveals that the wh-word leiʃ “why” in such context is not a wh-word but a discourse particle which reflects the speaker's surprise at the question at hand.

This thesis investigates the syntax of possession and agreement in Najdi Arabic (NA, henceforth) with a particular focus on the possession expressed at the level of the DP (Determiner Phrase). Using the main assumptions of the Minimalist Program (Chomsky 1995, and subsequent work) and adopting Abney’s (1987) DP-hypothesis, this thesis shows that the various agreement patterns within the NA DP can be accounted for with the use of a probe/goal agreement operation (Chomsky 2000, 2001). Chapter two discusses the syntax of ‘synthetic’ possession in NA. Possession in NA, like other Arabic varieties, can be expressed synthetically using a Construct State (CS), e.g. kitaab alwalad (book the-boy) ‘the boy’s book’. Drawing on the (extensive) literature on the CS, I summarise its main characteristics and the different proposals for its derivation. However, the main focus of this chapter is on a lesser-investigated aspect of synthetic possession – that is, possessive suffixes, the so-called pronominal possessors, as in kitaab-ah (book-his) ‘his book’. Building on a previous analysis put forward by Shlonsky (1997), this study argues (contra Fassi Fehri 1993), that possessive suffixes should not be analysed as bound pronouns but rather as an agreement inflectional suffix (à la Shlonsky 1997), where the latter is derived by Agree between the Poss(essive) head and the null pronoun within NP. This results in an agreement inflection (a possessive suffix) being spelled-out on Poss°, which shows up ultimately on the possessum as a consequence of the latter’s head movement to Poss°. The chapter concludes with some cross-linguistic data, coming in particular from Finnish, that allow for the same type of analysis. Chapter three is concerned with possession in NA formed analytically by means of agg, the so-called Free State (FS), which has not been previously analysed from a generative perspective. This chapter is primarily concerned with instances where agg shows overt morphological agreement in number and gender with the possessum (e.g. as-sijjaarah agg-at ar-rad d aal ‘the-car.SG.F of-SG.F the-man’). It is argued that agg-possessum agreement obtains under an Agree relation between the possessive marker agg and the possessum DP within its c-command domain, deriving an inflected form of the possessive marker. Several pieces of evidence are given in favour of the proposed analysis. Chapter four discusses another instance of analytic possession, which contains the possessive markers abu and umm (possessive ‘with’). Descriptively, in NA (and other Arabic dialects), the two markers show agreement with the possessor DP: if the possessor is Feminine gender umm ‘with.F’ is obligatorily used and when it is Masculine gender abu ‘with.M’ must be employed. Given the fact that this type of possession has received little or no attention in Arabic, this work provides the first description of these two markers and compares them with the English possessive with as well as the Modern Standard Arabic marker ðuu ‘with’. As for the syntactic derivation, it is argued, along the lines of Levinson (2011), that possessives containing the two markers have the same syntactic structure as their English possessive with counterparts. However, to the extent that the two Arabic markers show agreement with the possessor, unlike English possessive with, a slight modification is needed on the proposal to capture abu and umm agreement facts. It is proposed that the possessor DP in NA is merged lower in the lexical projection PP and not higher in the functional projection (pP), as suggested for English. Finally, chapter five addresses the other main type of possession, i.e. that expressed at the level of the clause, the so-called predicative possession. Predicative possession in NA is mainly formed by the use of the locative preposition ind ‘at’ in constructions like: al-bint ind-ha sijjaarah (the-girl at-her car) ‘the girl has a car’, where the preposition ind behaves like a possessive verb; it is marked with a pronominal possessive suffix which corresponds to the phi-features of the lexical possessor. It is proposed that this suffix attached to ind (and various other categories) is an inflectional agreement marker, which is realized on the preposition as a reflex of an agreement relation established with the possessor. It is also shown that this pattern of agreement in possessive sentences is not a unique property of NA, but rather found in many (un)related languages (cf. Stassen 2009).

The purpose of this two cycles design-based research study is to explore the approaches with response to and perceptions of teachers towards a professional development programme (PDP) for enabling them to design, develop, and implement technology enhanced learning (TEL) activities for teaching Arabic as a foreign language (AFL). The PDP was designed with reference to Laurillard’s (2002) conversational framework and Passey’s (2011) learning elements framework. Semi-structured interviews, online open-ended questionnaires, and observations are used for data collection. The results are analysed and presented visually and in text to show different levels of detail. The findings identified teachers’ positive and negative perceptions towards the support elements provided throughout the PDP in addition to: 1) their pedagogical outcomes in relation to the different types of support provided; 2) the positive influencers and barriers that affected them throughout the PDP; 3) their produced outcomes (artefacts); and 4) their students’ responses from their perspectives. The design principles of a successful implementation of a PDP were also included based on findings. Finally, this study attempts to assist PDP designers by referring to the theoretical and practical implications that can help them in designing similar programmes. In addition, originality in terms of the design, development, and implementation of the PDP are highlighted, so adding to the learning design body of knowledge with respect to foreign language learning.

This thesis provides an interdisciplinary study of Audiovisual Translation, Cultural Studies and Film Studies, as well as an analysis of the subtitling of sensitive language from English into the Modern Standard Dialect of Arabic. The research is the first to adopt the term sensitive as a language category in the audiovisual mode of subtitling, and within the context of film genre. The thesis combines two methods, namely case studies together with three surveys to investigate sensitive language. The TV films The Bounty Hunter, and the linguistically-rich and challenging Meet the Fockers, are analysed from the perspective of The Middle East Broadcasting Centre's subtitling, as well as amateur subtitling. The applicability of relevant theoretical positions, including Skopos (Vermeer), foreignisation/domestication (Venuti) and subtitling vulnerability (Díaz-Cintas) are tested and put under pressure by this particularly complex translation environment. The thesis engages with Saldanha and O'Brien's methodological framework and relies upon Nornes' categories of abusive and corrupt subtitles. By surveying over 2,000 respondents, the thesis is the most inclusive sample, to date, of a study which (i) examines viewers' attitudes towards current subtitling norms, (ii) provides an insight into what Arabic translators learn in theory about swearing and sensitive language, and what they have to do in practice; and (iii) determines what translators of other languages learn about the same issues and how they expect them to be handled by Arabic translators on Saudi screens.

Background. This study investigates the features of pragmatic and conversational skills in the language of Arabic-speaking adolescents with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) by comparing them with typically developing (TD) Arabic-speaking adolescents in Saudi Arabia. It aims to identify the differences in the pragmatic behaviours of the two groups (ASD and TD) with respect to four main pragmatic areas: discourse management, communicative functions, conversational repair and presupposition abilities. Impairments in these areas are the most commonly reported pragmatic deficits among people with ASD and impede their ability to conduct conversations successfully. This study addresses the gap in research on adolescents with ASD in Saudi Arabia and the lack of tools to evaluate pragmatic competence and impairment in the Arabic language. It further addresses methodological limitations of previous studies on pragmatic skills in ASD. Methods. 15 Arabic-speaking Saudi adolescents with ASD and a control group of 15 Arabic-speaking Saudi TD adolescents participated in this study as well as their caregivers. The adolescents were matched for gender (10 male and 5 female in each group, TD and ASD); first language (Arabic); and verbal ability. All participants were in the normal IQ range. A comprehensive, mixed-methods approach was used to assess the pragmatic and conversational skills of the adolescents, including both direct and indirect measures from two sources of information, the adolescent participants and their caregivers, and both quantitative and qualitative methods. Data were collected on the adolescents' performances using semistructured conversations with the Yale in vivo Pragmatic Protocol (YiPP; Simmons et al., 2014), and natural language samples. In addition, a caregiver questionnaire, the Pragmatics Profile of Everyday Communication Skills (PPECS; Dewart and Summers, 1996) was used to collect data on the caregivers' perceptions of the adolescents' abilities. Result of the YiPP and the PPECS were statistically analysed and language samples were analysed using discourse analysis methods. Results. Findings based on both the adolescents' performances and the caregivers' perceptions show an overall deficit in the pragmatic and conversational skills of adolescents with ASD compared to their TD peers. However, variations were found in the pragmatic performances of participants with ASD, especially in their caregivers' ratings, and pragmatic strengths were reported in some areas. Both the adolescents' performances and the caregivers' ratings show that adolescents with ASD have deficits in their conversational repair and presupposition abilities. In the discourse management domain, the TD adolescents performed significantly better than adolescents with ASD in the pragmatic areas of turntaking, topic maintenance, and topic initiation. Yet, the caregivers did not detect differences between the two groups in these discourse management abilities. Moreover, the caregivers reported that adolescents with ASD have issues related to pragmatic behaviours, such as rejecting and terminating conversations; whereas, these difficulties were not found in the adolescents' performances. These variations may be the result of a number of social and environmental factors that may have facilitated their communication. Conclusion. This study has significant implications for both ASD interventions and assessment. It provides a comprehensive assessment approach for measuring pragmatic skills, including both direct (participants' performances) and indirect (caregivers' perceptions) measures. Variations found in the adolescents' skills indicate that more personalised intervention programmes are needed to address their pragmatic difficulties and utilise their strengths. Future research may benefit from adopting the combined approach used in this study to explore pragmatics in ASD. Differences between caregivers' perceptions and the performances of individuals with ASD should be considered, as well as the influence of various factors on their communication.

The Arabic language is a morphologically complex language that causes various difficulties for various NLP systems, such as POS tagging. The motive of this research is to investigate the development and training of a compression-based Arabic POS tagger using the PPM algorithm. The adoption of the algorithm for Arabic POS tagging may increase the efficiency and reduce the Arabic language ambiguity problem. The best text compression algorithms can be applied to NLP tasks often with state-of-the-art results. This research examines the use of tag-based compression of larger Arabic resources to re-evaluate the performance of tag-based compression which may reveal POS linguistic aspects of the Arabic language. We also found that tag-based text compression for the Arabic text can be utilised as a means of evaluating the performance and quality of the Arabic POS taggers. The results of the experiments show that the tag-based compression of the text can effectively be used for assessing the performance of Arabic POS taggers when used to tag different types of the Arabic text, and also as a means of comparing the performance of two Arabic POS taggers on the same text. With the rapid growth of Arabic text on the Web, studies that address the problems of classification and segmentation of the Arabic language are limited compared to other languages, most of which implement word-based and feature extraction algorithms. This research adopts a PPM character-based compression scheme to classify and segment Classical Arabic (CA) and Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) texts. An initial experiment using the PPM classification method on samples of text resulted in an accuracy of 95.5%, an average precision of 0.958, an average recall of 0.955 and an average F-measure of 0.954, using the concept of minimum cross-entropy. Segmenting the CA and MSA text using the PPM compression algorithm obtained an accuracy of 86%, an average precision of 0.869, an average recall of 0.86 and an average F-measure of 0.859. This research describes the creation of the new Bangor Arabic Annotated Corpus (BAAC) which is a Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) corpus that comprises 50K words manually annotated by parts-of-speech. For evaluating the quality of the corpus, the Kappa coefficient and a direct percent agreement for each tag were calculated for the new corpus and a Kappa value of 0.956 was obtained, with an average observed agreement of 94.25%. The corpus was used to evaluate the widely used Madamira Arabic POS tagger and to further investigate compression models for text compressed using POS tags. Also, a new annotation tool was developed and employed for the annotation process of the BAAC.

This thesis describes the phonology, morphology, syntax and lexicon of the Arabic variety spoken in the al-ʿAwābī district (northern Oman). This district played an important role in the history of the Ibadism and of Oman in general, especially in the period when Rustāq was capital of the Sultanate (c. 1600 CE). The prominence of the dialect spoken in this area finds evidence in the work Ein arabischer Dialekt gesprochen in ‘Oman und Zanzibar written by Carl Reinhardt in 1894, which constitutes the starting point of this thesis and material for comparison. Reinhardt’s work was presented as a linguistic guide to German soldiers quartered in the Sultanate and in Zanzibar, when part of East Africa was a German colony. This thesis considers the lexical and grammatical core of Reinhardt’s work and aims to reanalyse it considering the vernacular used by present-day inhabitants of al-ʿAwābī town and Wādī Banī Kharūṣ. Chapter 1 offers an overview of the linguistic situation of Oman within the Arabian Peninsula and of the al-ʿAwābī district itself, including remarks on the fieldwork site and the methodology used for this research. Chapter 2 is an account of the phonological characteristics of the dialect spoken in the district, followed by the nominal and verbal morphology (Chapters 3 and 4, respectively), and the syntax (Chapter 5) of the al-ʿAwābī district vernacular. In addition to this core, a prominent part is dedicated in this thesis to the analysis of the rich cultural lexicon used in the district (Chapter 6): foreign borrowings, quadriliteral roots indicating plant and animal names, traditional medicine, clothing, accessories, etc., culminating in the compilation of a lexical glossary organised in roots (Annex 2). Annex 1 presents an overview of the history of the Sultanate, whereas Annex 3 inlcudes a traditional song, and local proverbs.

The thesis is a study on classical Arabic phraseology on the basis of prose works by Lisān ad-Dīn Ibn al-Khaṭīb (d. 776/1374). It reinvestigates the linguistic concept of a phraseme from a theoretical perspective and adopts the approach of cultural analysis to a selected corpus of classical Arabic phasemes. The results indicate that classical Arabic phrasemes, whether referential or communicative, have four main source domains: historical references, nature, material culture and habitus, and Islamic religious motivations (with either religious or non-religious target domains). The cultural phenomenon that motivates most of them is cultural modelling, although it does not contribute to their fixedness. Two other cultural phenomena - cultural symbolism and quotation - were found to have the strongest impact on phrasemes' fixedness levels, albeit with some exceptions.

This thesis investigates the syntax of various verbs in Kuwaiti Arabic which realise functional heads encoding Tense, Aspect and Modality, in addition to being used as lexical verbs. It investigates some fundamental issues such as the markedness of the perfective and imperfective verbal forms with respect to Tense and Aspect, and, the aspectual and temporal properties of the active participle form, which is generally considered a nominal category. This study incorporates the Event Phrase hypothesis building on Cowper (1999), Borer (2005), Ramchand (2008) and Travis (2010) and inspired from event-semantics (e.g. Davidson 1967, Higginbotham 1985 and Parsons 1990). EventP is a functional projection in the syntax of the clause that relates to the eventive argument (the Davidsonian argument). However, the details of how this phrase functions syntactically have not been precisely described, especially for Arabic. This research aims to clarify the functions of EventP based on data from KA. I argue that the EventP is a key ingredient in the syntactic representation of the clause structure. It relates to the distinction between eventive and non-eventive predicates, or the Individual-level and Stage-level predicates. Furthermore, I argue that analysing sentences in Arabic as eventive or non-eventive can account for a number of puzzling phenomena in the behaviour of verbal and non-verbal predicates. Some of these phenomena include: the null present tense copula; the mixed nominal and verbal behaviours of the active participle; the derivational gap with verbs such as yiʃbah 'resemble' and yigrab 'relate to'; the varying temporal and aspectual readings of the imperfective depending on the verb class. An example of this is that the Achievement verbs resist the present tense and the progressive reading. I present an analysis of EventP that can account for these phenomena. Furthermore, I argue that analysing the predicates as eventive or non-eventive (following Adger and Ramchand 2003) allows for a more consistent generalisation of the functions of the TMA verbs discussed in this thesis, namely the auxiliary verb kaan 'be.PAST', the inceptive verb gaam 'get up.INITIATE ' and the durative verb gaʕad 'sit.CONTINUE'. I show that it is possible to generalise over the functions of TMA verbs in relation to eventive sentences regardless of whether they have verbal or non-verbal predicates.

Within the field of loanword phonology, this study enhances our understanding of the role played by the contrastive features of the borrowing language in shaping the segmental adaptation patterns of loanwords from the source language. This has been achieved by performing a theoretical analysis of the segmental adaptation patterns of English loanwords into Qassimi Arabic, a dialect spoken in the region of Qassim in central Saudi Arabia, using an Optimality-Theoretic framework. The central argument of this study assumes that the inputs to QA are fully-specified English outputs, which serve as inputs to QA. Then, the native grammar of QA allows only the phonological features of inputs to surface that are contrastive in QA. Thus, redundant or noncontrastive phonological features in QA are eliminated from the outputs. The evidence behind the argument that the contrastive features of QA segments play a main role in the adaptation process emerges from adapting the English segments that are non-native in QA. For instance, English lax vowels /ɪ/, /ʊ/, /æ/ are adapted as their tense counterparts in QA [i], [u] and [a]. I have argued that the reason for this adaptation lies in the fact that the feature [ATR] is not a contrastive feature within the QA vowel inventory. Therefore, dispensing with the value of the input feature [-ATR] culminates in the tense vowels appearing at the surface level. To identify the contrastive features of QA phonological inventory, I rely on the Contrastive Hierarchy Theory proposed by Dresher (2009). This theory suggests that phonological features should be ordered hierarchically to obtain only the contrastive features of any phonological inventory. This is achieved by dividing any inventory into subsets of features until each segment is distinguished contrastively from all others. Therefore, the features of QA segments are built initially into a contrastive hierarchy model. Within this hierarchy, features are created and ordered according to one or more of the following motivations: Activity, Minimality and Universality. Finally, the contrastive hierarchy of QA segment inventory is converted into OT constraints. The ranking of these constraints is sufficient to account for the evaluations of the segmental adaptation patterns of loanwords from English into QA. For instance, based on the contrastive hierarchy of QA, /b/ is contrastively specified as [-sonorant, +labial, -continuant]. In the adaptation of English consonants, the English input segment /p/ is mapped consistently to [b] in the QA. In this case, the contrastive hierarchy of QA consonant inventory contains the co-occurrence constraints *[αVoice, +labial] and *[αCoronal, +labial], which filter the input features if the input is fully-specified [-sonorant, +labial, -coronal, -continuant, -voiced, ...], and permits only the contrastive features [-sonorant, +labial, -continuant] to surface.

This study describes a wide range of syntactic aspects of negation in Turaif Arabic (TA), a spoken variety of Saudi Arabia, with some comparison with other varieties, and develops an approach to the syntactic analysis of core aspects of negation in TA within the framework of Lexical Functional Grammar (LFG). The main focus of this study is on the syntax of sentential and constituent negation, negative coordination, and negative sensitive items. I additionally deal with issues related to neg raising predicates and universal quantification. Building on previous syntactic accounts of negation in LFG, I treat sentential negative particles mā and lā as non-projecting words occurring under the Neg-hat category as sisters of the verbal predicate at the terminal node level and associated with a feature ENEG + in the f-structure. The negative form mū and its inflected negative forms are treated as fully projecting word-forms under the I node, given their function as a negative copula that also expresses the present tense. It is the alternation with inflecting counterparts that signals the negative copula form, as opposed to the presence of invariant mū/mahu, which signals constituent negation. Negative coordination in Arabic is analysed in LFG for the first time, focusing particularly on the emphatic negative coordination construction expressed through lā . . . wala . . . both when coordination of sentence predicates (verbal and non-verbal) is involved, and in the coordination of arguments/dependents. A non-flat c-structure schema is proposed, along with the appropriate lexical entries for lā and wala. In the f-structure, use is made of three features: ENEG + for sentence/main predicate negation, CNEG + for constituent negation, and NC + for negative concord. In the discussion of negative sensitive items, it is shown how negative concord items and negative polarity items differ in TA only on the simple criterion of occurrence as a negative fragment response to a question. In other respects, each constitutes a heterogeneous category, for example with respect to its occurrence or not, within non-veridical as well as anti-veridical contexts.

This thesis concerns the description and analysis of floating and non-floating quantifiers in Hijazi Arabic (HA) within the framework of Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar (HPSG). This work is a contribution to the long-standing debate on the relation between floating and non-floating quantifiers. It investigates the properties of Hijazi Arabic floating quantifiers to be able to determine whether they belong to the nominal or the verbal domain, and to provide an answer, or a close approximation, to the question that keeps being asked in the literature with respect to how floating quantifiers are generated. This work focuses on quantifiers in HA, and attempts to provide a unified account that takes into consideration, and tries to link and unify, the following properties: • Quantifiers have three forms which are parallel to that of ordinary nom- inal forms: Simple, construct state, and free states. For this reason, I pursue the claim that quantifiers are categorically Nouns, and not a functional category Determiner (D) or Quantifier (Q). They differ from 'ordinary nouns' in terms of their agreement behaviours and semantic properties. • Definiteness in HA is a head feature and is associated with no lexical category, and for that we might claim that HA lacks the category Determiner (D). • Contrary to the analysis provided in some transformational approaches, floating and non-floating quantifiers in HA cannot be related to their nominal associate by syntactic transformation. Floating quantifiers are here analysed as adjuncts that can alternate between being NP modifiers or VP modifiers, but which are nevertheless always related to an associated noun, semantically, and display the need to be anaphorically-bound to it. I propose that non-floating quantifiers take the same distribution as that of ordinary nouns, which I take to imply that nouns, and non-floating quantifiers are actually two instances of the same type. By adopting a lexical hypothesis that makes use of lexical rules, I account for their definiteness agreement and definiteness inheritance in the framework of HPSG. In contrast, I demonstrate that floating behaviours display a series of puzzles that can be resolved, or better analysed, on the basis of their treatment as NP or VP adjuncts, involving a MOD feature. The latter can only ever be subject-oriented, yet can linearly come in between complements, and still modify the V, due to my proposal of a flat VP phrase structure. To account for the syntax and semantics of the floating quantifier with the NP, the lexical information associated with the quantifier in the lexical entry encodes the syntactic and semantic properties that concern its distribution.

This dissertation studies in detail a number of phonological aspects accounted for through a Stratal OT analysis, in Tobruq Libyan Arabic (TLA), which is a variety that belongs to the set of dialects that are referred to collectively as Eastern Libyan Arabic. As will transpire from this work, TLA differs from Benghazi Arabic, which is always taken to be a representative dialect of Eastern Libyan Arabic. The study particularly engages in the investigation of the phonology-morphology interface, whose conflicting interactions function as triggers of a number of phonological processes in TLA. Central to our focus will be syllable-structure formations and resyllabifications, stress patterns and their assignment, as well as vowel syncope and the contrasting behaviour of epenthetic vowel insertion. The former processes are shown to be affected by two morphological factors: the type of word class, and the type of morphological ending that attaches to a monomorphemic word. It will also emerge from this study how (inflectional and derivational) allomorphy is very much conditioned by phonology, yet not only in terms of the usual vowel- vs. consonant-initial effects, but also in terms of the stem-form's syllable-structure type and the number of syllables, as well as the number of consonant radicals within the stem. The work on syncope in this study will reveal yet another property which makes the TLA dialect distinct from the typical characterisation of Eastern Libyan Arabic based on the Benghazi dialect. It will be shown that TLA is a non-differential dialect where both high and low vowels are subject to deletion resulting in effects on the syllable structure, stress assignment, and vowel quality. On the basis of the Stratal OT analysis that is motivated throughout this dissertation, given its effective handling of a number of morphophonological phenomena, through a constraint-based analysis, it is shown how at the stem level, syncope causes onset complexity and low vowel raising, while contrastively, at the word level, no vowel deletion is applied, except the application of other processes such as epenthesis, vowel lengthening, and stress shifting.

This thesis mainly investigates ditransitive constructions with lexical as well as pronominal objects in two historically unrelated languages: Iraqi Arabic, a poorly documented language, and English (including British English dialects). The aim is to obtain insight into possible crosslinguistic similarities and differences in the ditransitive constructions, which is a controversial issue in generative theory, and thus, contribute to the theory of argument structure, Case, and agreement, particularly in relation to pronouns. It shows that Iraqi Arabic provides a rich environment for the study of ditransitives as it exhibits a wide variety of ditransitive patterns. The thesis will first present the descriptive facts of ditransitives of Iraqi Arabic which covers word order options, Case-marking, and passives. Then, it will review the various current approaches on ditransitives within a generative theory of grammar. A special focus will be given to the debate about the nature of the relationship between DOCs and PDCs, in particular whether it is derivational or projectional. Later, the thesis will introduce the reader to the theory of pronouns where a distinction will be made between the terms strong, weak pronouns, affixes and clitics as well as discussing their syntactic properties. It will address the question regarding the derivation of pronominal clitics, whether they are X°s or XPs, i.e. whether they are a wordlevel or phrase-level category. In addition, Shlonsky' (1997) and Roberts' (2010) theories of clitics will be presented. A close investigation and comparison of pronominal objects in Arabic, particularly Iraqi Arabic, and English is expected to shed more light on the syntax of pronominal objects in general, including the distinction between strong, weak and clitic pronouns, and pronominal objects of ditransitive verbs in particular. Following Holmberg et al (2018), it will be argued that the ditransitive predicate in the DOC contains, in addition to v and V, an applicative head, Appl which assigns a role to the Recipient, while V assigns a role to the Theme. There is cross-linguistic variation regarding how the two objects are 'Case-licensed'. I will argue that, in Iraqi Arabic and Standard English, v assigns Case to the Recipient while Appl assigns Case to the Theme. In some British English dialects, on the other side, v may assign Case either to the Recipient or Theme. This is due to flexible licensing by Appl in these dialects as Appl may license either the Recipient or the Theme. In the PDC, on the other hand, v will assign Case to the Theme while the Goal gets Case from a preposition. In addition to the Appl attested in the DOC which I will term Appl 1, I will argue that Iraqi Arabic exhibits another Applicative head which I will term Appl 2. The latter introduces a iv Benefactive argument in clauses containing such arguments. What is special about Iraqi Arabic is that these Appl heads can be realized as the special form, -iya in the language when the following object is a pronoun. In analyzing pronominal objects, I will argue that pronominal objects in Iraqi Arabic are syntactic clitics. I will adopt a version of the theory proposed by Shlonsky (1997) where the pronominal clitics of Arabic are derived by Agree between v and a pronominal object, with incorporation in the sense of Roberts (2010). According to Roberts (2010), the pronominal clitic is a spell-out of agreement between v and a defective object. I will claim that English pronominal contracted objects are syntactic clitics, too, derived in a similar way. It will be argued that the two languages under investigation are more similar than what traditionally is thought to be the case especially as regards exhibiting syntactic clitics. The similarity between the two languages can be seen especially in the DOC construction in that both languages allow the DOC with a defective Recipient and full DP-Theme. Furthermore, both disallow the DOC with a full DP-Recipient and a defective Theme. Moreover, both languages allow the DOC with a defective Recipient and a defective Theme. In addition, both languages exhibit the DOC with two full-DP objects as well as the PDC with lexical or pronominal objects. Still, there are differences in that while some British English dialects allow the pattern, she gave it'im/John where the Theme is defective, and the Recipient is defective or a full-DP object, Iraqi Arabic disallow this construction. The flexibility of Appl 1 to agree with either the Recipient or the Theme attested in some British English dialects is not found in Iraqi Arabic as the latter allows Appl1 to agree only with the Theme in the DOC. The implication here will be that while the unvalued features of v can be valued only by the Recipient in Iraqi Arabic, it can be valued either by the Recipient or Theme in some British English dialects. Another difference to be pointed out between the two languages is that while Iraqi Arabic exhibits Appl1 and Appl 2, British English dialects exhibits only Appl1. Earlier work on a range of grammatical structures has shown the benefits of detailed crosslinguistic comparison. This dissertation adds to this body of work and further confirms its value through the results achieved from a comparison of ditransitives in English and Iraqi Arabic.

My thesis is an examination of the sentence structures of Old Babylonian omen protases and apodoses, and of their information-value. I have used Arabic grammatical theory and seven basic grammatical tools that remained theoretical constants throughout the development of the tradition to frame my approach: a system divided into three sentence types, a focus on the first constituent of a sentence, basic sentence structures, reduced or augmented or extended sentences derived from a basic structure, preposing and delaying tactics, strictly nominal and verbal environments, and a functionalist approach to constituents' values. I have chosen to use Arabic grammatical theory instead of the model provided by standard Assyriological grammars because two areas of research, thriving in Arabic studies and modern linguistics, have not yet been brought into Assyriology. The first is the study of sentences structures set within a tripartite model that focuses on the sentence-initial constituent to categorise constructions. The second is the study of the information-value of sentences and of their constituents within a model that anticipates two contrastive sentence types, one that communicates the known or least newsworthy information first, and another that communicates the new or more newsworthy information first. This approach has led me to reassess two current grammatical issues in Assyriology: the identification and function of the 'nominative' casus-pendens, and the frequency and function of the 'accusative' casus pendens. I have raised a third question by addressing the issue of terminology to propose that a class of words be coined frozen nouns. I have used the result of my structural and functional analyses to give a functionalist reading of Old Babylonian sentences. My aim is to show that Arabic grammatical theory can bring fresh perspective to the study of Old Babylonian grammar, and open new grounds to the study of Old Babylonian omen texts.

This thesis considers negation in 54 modern Arabic varieties from a typological point of view (as in Song 2001, Croft 2003 and Miestamo 2005). The types of negation investigated here are: standard negation, non-verbal negation, negative imperatives, negative existential clauses, negation with pseudo-verbs, negative indefinite pronouns and negative concord constructions. This approach results in 30 generalizations capturing different ways of expressing different types of negation among the contemporary varieties of Arabic; for example: the construction for standard negation in modern Arabic varieties is almost always symmetric (done by the addition of the negative morpheme to the affirmative clause only) and very rarely asymmetric (an example is the dialect of ʔAbha); there is no š-variety (a variety that uses ...-š negatively in standard negation) where ...-š is not, at least optionally, omitted in emphatic negation; the negator mā can commonly negate imperatives in every Arabic region, except in the Arabian Peninsula where this is extremely rare. One of the most interesting results the study reveals is that negation in Arabic is going through a cycle additional to the Jespersen’s cycle which is already identified by several studies (e.g., Lucas, 2009 and Diem, 2014). In the first stage of this additional cycle, a single negator is used to negate both verbal and non-verbal clauses. In the second stage, this negator is attached to a personal pronoun to negate non-verbal clauses only. In the third stage, a new single morpheme is coined and generalized to negate any non-verbal clause. In the fourth stage, this new morpheme is used to negate certain types of verbal clauses. In the last stage, verbal and non-verbal clauses return to be negated similarly, in that this new coined morpheme can negate both of them. In the study, this cycle is referred to as the Arabic negative cycle.

The present study is a sociolinguistic investigation of the Al-Ahsa urban dialect (AU) in eastern Arabia, a dialect that belongs to the Najdi type of dialects. The focus of this investigation is on the dialect spoken in the urban centres of Al-Ahsa (Hofuf and Mubarraz). Two salient vocalic features of AU dialect are examined against internal (linguistic) constraints and 3 external (social) factors. Data are collected through sociolinguistic interviews with 36 native speakers, distributed over two age groups and with almost equal representation from both genders. Beside age and gender, variation in the use of these features is also measured in relation to the speakers' socio-sectarian affiliation. The data are analysed within the framework of the quantitative variationist paradigm using Rbrul. The first linguistic variable is rounding/unrounding of (ɑ:) in word medial position, of which unrounding is the innovative feature. The second variable is imala (vowel raising) in the feminine ending in the unbound state, of which lowering is the innovative variant. Data analysis shows that the traditional rounding of (ɑ:), as well as, vowel raising in the feminine ending are undergoing change in the speech of Al-Ahsa people, and that there is a tendency to unround the vowel regarding the former variable, and to lower the short vowel in the latter in their speech. However, the rate of linguistic change in the first variable is noticeably higher than in the second one. The linguistic variable (a:) is associated with socio-sectarian identity and so this adds pressure to the force of change on that variable as compared to the feminine ending (-a) which has no direct sectarian association. Overall, Al-Ahsa dialect is levelling out of the local features and replacing them with features found in the supra-local variety in the central region of Saudi Arabia. This change is found to be influenced by the social factors of 'age', 'gender', and 'socio-sectarian affiliation'. The method of interpreting the results of the present study focuses on local issues that include the social composition of the community under investigation, community social practices, role of genders, social meaning of the linguistic choice.

The aim of this study is to describe and understand the prosodic design of Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) political monologues. To work towards this aim, we compare two political monologues produced by the same speaker with a broadcast news reading produced by a news announcer. Through comparison of political monologues and broadcast news reading, we highlight linguistic strategies which could be used in any genre of speech, and also what we argue to be persuasive strategies which contribute to the political work of persuasion. We rely on a combination of prosodic, syntactic, and discourse (semantic) evidence to account for linguistic strategies, and on a similar combination of prosodic, syntactic, and discourse (semantics and pragmatics) evidence to account for persuasive strategies, but our primary contribution is highlighting the use of prosody as a persuasive political strategy. A further contribution of this work to the field of knowledge is the elaboration of a set of fine-grained prosodic, syntactic, and discourse structures proposed for broadcast MSA monologues. The prosodic, syntactic, and discourse structures are first labelled independently according to a set of criteria (set out in Chapter 4 Methods). Then, we triangulate the results of labelling the prosodic, syntactic, and discourse structures independently, in Chapters 5-6 leading up to Chapter 7 where the major contribution of this work is highlighted, that is, the use of prosody as a persuasive strategy. The main argument in this work is structured in this gradual way because of the way the process of segmentation is carried out on all three data samples. The process of segmentation starts with identification of abstract forms, and then associates functions to these abstract forms based on detailed explanations of specific linguistic phenomena drawn from the process of triangulation. Therefore, the methodology implemented for broadcast MSA, which can also serve as a methodology for analysing MSA political monologues, is an integral and essential part of the main argument in this thesis.

This thesis provides an original contribution to ongoing research on so-called Islamic State (‘IS’) by using a multiple case-study approach to offer an in-depth analysis of Arabic and English language narratives related to four atrocities committed by the group: (1) the mass killing of hundreds of Iraqi soldiers, known as the Speicher massacre, (2) the captivity and sexual enslavement of Ezidi girls, known in Arabic as sabi, (3) the executions of a number of western, Arab, and Kurd victims, and (4) the destruction of cultural artefacts in Nineveh province. The analysis engages with the discourses of ‘IS’, western, Arabic, Iranian, and Kurdish media, survivors, ‘IS’s’ religious opponents, and other actors. The dissertation uses a social narrative theory as its conceptual framework that I seek to develop by focusing on the fragmentation in narratives, on one hand, and on the multimodal resources through which narratives circulate, on the other. To this end, I combine the theory with Boje’s (2001) notion of antenarrative and Kress’(2009) understanding of the three resources of discourse, genre, and mode, to investigate ways in which narratives first unfold and how they later change as they are translated. Translation is understood in the thesis as a multi-directional movement that simultaneously takes place across multiple resources without necessarily crossing language boundaries. The findings of this study reveal that the aforementioned resources contribute to transforming narratives. In translation, ‘IS’s’ narratives can be delegitimized and confronted, or the opposite. Examining the changes in these narratives as they are translated in multiple directions is a novel contribution to the field of translation studies in relation to the digital media environment.

The Arabic language is a complex, diglossic language, with varying written (fuṣḥá) and spoken ('āmmīyah) forms. While the study of mixing between fuṣḥá and 'āmmīyah in spoken Arabic has received some scholarly attention, far less attention has been paid to mixing in writing, which this study seeks to address. Badawi's (1973) landmark study of Egyptian Arabic use identified five language levels, assuming naturally that written Arabic exists as either Classical or Modern Standard Arabic, while mixing between written and spoken forms is reserved as a feature of Educated Spoken Arabic (ESA), despite the proliferation of mixed literary works by renowned writers such as Tawfiq al-Hakim, Yusuf Idris and Yusuf Sibai at the time. Since Badawi's (1973) study, studies of mixed Arabic have centred around ESA (Eid, 1988; Bassiouney, 2006), uncovering to some extent the type and degree of, and motivations for, mixing, which have been used as a backdrop for the examination of mixed writing in this study. More recently, Høigilt & Mejdell (2017), Mejdell (2014), Ibrahim (2010), and Rosenbaum (2000) have identified occurrences of mixing in written Arabic. The aim of this study therefore, is to take a holistic view of Arabic writing, across different times and media, towards establishing a theoretical framework for Egyptian Arabic writing, including fuṣḥá, 'āmmīyah and socalled 'mixed' forms. The catalyst for this study, as well as for the proliferation of mixed and 'āmmīyah writing, has been the expansion of the internet and the rapid increase in online writing. For Arabic at least, the Arab Spring and social media within it, have played an important role in the widespread use of 'āmmīyah in writing, which this study aims to place within the wider context of Arabic writing.

This study investigates how to classify Arabic dialects in text by extracting features which show the differences between dialects. There has been a lack of research about classification of Arabic dialect texts, in comparison to English and some other languages, due to the lack of Arabic dialect text corpora in comparison with what is available for dialects of English and some other languages. What is more, there is an increasing use of Arabic dialects in social media, so this text is now considered quite appropriate as a medium of communication and as a source of a corpus. We collected tweets from Twitter, comments from Facebook and online newspapers from five groups of Arabic dialects: Gulf, Iraqi, Egyptian, Levantine, and North African. The research sought to: 1) create a dataset of Arabic dialect texts to use in training and testing the system of classification, 2) find appropriate features to classify Arabic dialects: lexical (word and multi-word-unit) and grammatical variation across dialects, 3) build a more sophisticated filter to extract features from Arabic-character written dialect text files. In this thesis, the first part describes the research motivation to show the reason for choosing the Arabic dialects as a research topic. The second part presents some background information about the Arabic language and its dialects, and the literature review shows previous research about this subject. The research methodology part shows the initial experiment to classify Arabic dialects. The results of this experiment showed the need to create an Arabic dialect text corpus, by exploring Twitter and online newspaper. The corpus used to train the ensemble classifier and to improve the accuracy of classification the corpus was extended by collecting tweets from Twitter based on the spatial coordinate points and comments from Facebook posts. The corpus was annotated with dialect labels and used in automatic dialect classification experiments. The last part of this thesis presents the results of classification, conclusions and future work.

Pronunciation has received relatively little attention within the field of Arabic second language teaching and learning, particularly with respect to the more prominent areas of morphology, syntax, psycholinguistics and sociolinguistics. In the field of phonetics and phonology, it has been argued that Arabic pharyngealised sounds are distinctive and unique to Arabic and they are considered the most difficult sounds to acquire by L2 learners of Arabic. This research included two experiments that focused on examining the ability of a group of Arabic L2 learners from different L1 backgrounds to perceive and produce the fricative sounds /z/, /θ/, /f/, /ʃ/, /ħ/, /h/, /χ/, /ɣ/, /ʕ/, /sˤ/, /ðˤ/, /s/, /ð/, and the emphatic sounds /sˤ/, /ðˤ/, /dˤ/, and /tˤ/ in contrast with nonpharyngealised variants /s/, /ð/, /d/ and /t/. The aims were to investigate which aspects of acquisition were difficult and to examine the effects of technology-based instruction and traditional-based instruction to find an appropriate pronunciation teaching method to facilitate the perception and production of fricatives and emphatics. The technology-based method used in this study was adapted from Olson (2014) and Offerman and Olson (2016) to investigate the extent to which using speech analysis technology (Praat) can help in visualising the difference between pharyngealised and non-pharyngealised sounds in order to aid production and perception learning. The traditional-based method used in this study included repetition, practicing minimal pairs, and reading aloud techniques. Data were collected from forced-choice identification tasks and recordings taken during pre- and post-test conditions. The results revealed that the some of the fricatives and all the emphatic sounds posed perception and production difficulty to some L2 learners of Arabic, which is likely to be due to the absence of these sounds from the learners' L1s. The results also showed significant improvements among all participants after the traditional and technology training courses. However, no significant difference was observed between L2 learners who received the traditional-based method and those who received the technology-based method. Both methods have increased students' awareness and understanding of the features of the sounds under investigation. The contribution of the current study is to show how Arabic fricative and emphatic sounds can be effectively taught using form-focused instruction involving different traditional and technological techniques. This research has implications for the implementation of both techniques for language teachers and researchers as it shows how both approaches can be used to enhance students' perceptive and productive skills.

Language attitude research is mainly concerned with the opinions, beliefs, stereotypes and prejudices that speakers hold with respect to certain language or speech varieties (Garrett, 2010). In doing so, it involves investigating how cognitive processes, which include stored beliefs about languages or speech varieties, within one's mental lexicon result in an act of being positive or negative about a certain speech variety or language (Cargile, Giles, Ryan, & Bradac, 1994; Kristiansen, Garrett, & Coupland, 2005). Simply put, language attitude research explores how behavioural input such as stereotypes and beliefs might lead to behavioural output such as language variation and change processes (Garrett, 2010; Oppenheim, 1982). Using an attitudinal approach, the present study examines how the historical background of Makkah city within the Hijaz region and the rapid urbanization of Saudi Arabia affected the make-up of the social structure and led to a dichotomous dialect situation in Hijaz. Thus, two main dialects have emerged in the Hijaz region: the urban Bedouin Hijazi dialect and the Hadari Hijazi dialect. I adopted an integrated approach where I used direct and indirect measures to study Hijazi Saudi attitudes towards dialect variation in Hijaz. Three research questions are addressed: RQ1: What do Hijazi people perceive to be occurring linguistically in Hijaz? RQ2: What are the most common characteristics that are associated with the urban Bedouin Hijazi and Hadari Hijazi dialects, and what are the dimensions behind the observed characteristics? RQ3: How do Hijazi people identify urban Bedouin Hijazi and Hadari Hijazi? Do they rely on linguistic factors or metalinguistic factors in the identification of dialects? Findings were discussed and compared to studies in the field of language attitude research (Garrett, Williams, & Evans, 2005a; Giles, 1970; Ladegaard, 1998; Stewart, Ryan, & Giles, 1985), socio-phonetic research (Hay & Drager, 2010; Hay, Nolan, & Drager, 2006; Niedzielski, 1999), Hijaz region historical research (Bianchi, 2004; Munt, 2014; Tagliacozzo & Toorawa, 2015), migration and urbanization in Saudi Arabia research ( Weston, 2011; Wilson & Graham, 2016), and dialectology research in SA (Alrumaih, 2002; Alahmadi, 2016; Ingham, 1971, 1982).

This thesis investigates the structure of DPs in Jordanian Arabic (JA) focusing on Nominal Ellipsis (NE). Cross-linguistically, research on NE has produced a number of perspectives on the mechanisms involved in the licensing of NE. I argue that most of the mainstream approaches to NE cannot capture the full set of the ellipsis facts in JA, and that the ellipsis data in JA can be best captured under the ellipsis and stranding approach of Saab and Lipt ak (2016). I show that ellipsis takes place at two levels inside the DP, and that pronominalization arises as a by-product of a stranded affix scenario due to the application of ellipsis at the lower NP level. The investigation of NE in JA has implications for the structure of DPs containing numerals and for possessive DPs. It will be shown that that two classes of numerals in JA occupy different structural positions in the extended nominal projection giving rise to different agreement patterns and affecting the possibilities of ellipsis. As concerns possessive DPs, I investigate the behaviour of the Construct State and Free State constructions under ellipsis. I argue that the two constructions behave differently under ellipsis, and that the possessor DP merges in different positions. Overall, this thesis contributes signi cantly to the debate on the necessary conditions(s) for ellipsis licensing in the DP. It also has implications for the structure of the DP in Arabic.

This thesis investigates the practices of Arabic localisation as it presents a neglected area of localisation research, localising to a developing market. The thesis aims to establish a connection between localisation and Translation Studies, by exploring the ways in which this area can be theorised starting from the approaches developed by Lawrence Venuti (in particular the notions of foreignisation and domestication), and Christiane Nord (translation as interpersonal activity). Creating a theoretical framework which marries the cultural turn and functionalist approaches helps address the dynamics of Arabic localisation on both micro and macro levels. The thesis also aims to provide a holistic view of Arabic localisation, by considering translation processes and outcomes, and by attempting to understand how Arabic localisation is perceived by its target audience. In order to achieve these goals, the thesis presents three case studies devoted, respectively, to the FIFA 15 video game, the Knorr website and the educational platform Blackboard Learn. It follows a mixed method approach to answer about the unique nature of each case study. This includes text analysis which covers each medium’s localisation literature, the Arabic translated content of the selected products and related business articles. In addition, relevant online materials, such as gaming fora and Youtube gaming channels, are analysed to assess the response of the FIFA and Knorr target audience to the translation they receive. Due to the privacy of Blackboard Learn’s content and users, access to a student’s and an instructor’s accounts were sought from an Arabic university, and a questionnaire was developed to assess quantitatively and qualitatively the Arabic users’ response to the platform’s Arabic localisation. The significance of this thesis lies in its methodology and findings. Employing strategies from a range of backgrounds, academic, professional and social, produces a novel methodology for translation research and for addressing the complexity of the discipline of localisation, as well as understanding the effect of its technical and commercial aspects on translation practices and outcomes. By approaching localisation from a Translation Studies perspective, the thesis contributes to both disciplines. The thesis highlights the ways in which localising to a developing market is different from many of the practices discussed in the localisation literature. In addition, the context of Arabic localisation proves to be a fertile ground where Venuti’s theory of foreignisation and domestication can be relocated, and the debate about it acquires new nuances.

This thesis examines the loss of case markers in Arabic. It provides a morphophonological investigation assuming there are consequences for losing the vocalic case markers in Arabic. The main consequence is the innovation of the CVCC syllable type in Arabic. The investigation focuses on trilateral nominal that consists underlyingly of فؼًْ CVCC. In its nature, it is a diachronic-synchronic examination that was undertaken upon finding a research gap in literatures. The rationale for conducting this investigation is the evident parallel in the phonological function and the locus between the lost vocalic short markers and the modern epenthetic vowels. In addition to the morpho-syntactical function, case markers in Arabic phonologically prevent final-clusters from surfacing in CVCC underlying sequences. Since modern Arabic dialects lost the vocalic case markers it is expected that they manifest final consonantal clusters on the surface of such nominal underlying CVCC sequences. However, contrary to this expectation, an epenthesis process, which has captured a synchronic interest from phonologists, occurs in the dialects preventing the realization of CVCC syllable type. Notably, no investigation was done to examine the possibility that this epenthesis originated due to the loss of the markers even though phonologists realized that the epenthesis is provoked to prevent the final-clusters from surfacing. This study contributes towards understanding: (i) the loss of the vocalic markers, (ii) the raise of the modern epenthesis and (iii) the innovation the superheavy syllable type CVCC in Arabic. Moreover, a goal in this study is to present an account for the data within a moraic approach in a framework that characteristically captures generalizations through a ranking for constraints in different levels. The account for data in this thesis is through the tools of the Stratal version of Optimality Theory.

This thesis investigates the syntax of temporal and conditional adverbial clauses in Najdi Arabic (NA, henceforth). It essentially brings several pieces of empirical evidence that such clauses maintain the peripheral vs. central dichotomy which has been attested in some other (un)related languages (see, mainly, Haegeman 2003, 2004, 2006, and subsequent works). This means that conditional adverbial clauses are sub-classified into peripheral conditional adverbial clauses and central conditional adverbial clauses. The same classification is applied to temporal adverbial clauses, i.e. peripheral temporal adverbial clauses and central temporal adverbial clauses. The study also furnishes empirical evidence that the two types of clauses (peripheral vs. central) are at odds over their external syntax (i.e. the adjunction site within the accompanying main clause) and their internal syntax (with particular focus on their CP structure). The study shows that NA peripheral adverbial clauses (both temporal and conditional) are 'less' integrated with the accompanying main clause. They are adjoined to the CP of the accompanying clause; hence they do not fall within the syntactic domain of several operators of the accompanying main clause. As for the inner structure of NA peripheral adverbial clauses, the study shows that such clauses obtain a richer CP inner structure; no functional phrases within the CP layer are truncated. I mainly dwell on the observation that movement to the left periphery of NA peripheral adverbial clauses is allowed. The only exception is that such clauses lack the upper Topic Phrase. On the other hand, NA central adverbial clauses (both temporal and conditional) are 'much' integrated with the accompanying main clause. They are adjoined to the vP/VP/TP layers of the accompanying clause. This indicates that such clauses fall within the domain of several operators of the accompanying main clause. Such a type of clauses does not, e.g., have their independent temporal anchoring. As for the inner structure of NA central adverbial clauses, the current thesis argues that such clauses have a truncated CP structure in that functional phrases of Topic Phrase and Focus Phrase are truncated. The lack of such phrases gives consequently rise to the observation that no topicalization nor focalization is permitted in such clauses. As for why such clauses begin with a verb (i.e. the VSO word order is the only option allowed), the study argues that the lexical verb undergoes a head movement to adjoin to the head of Finiteness Phrase (FinP; cf. Rizzi 1997). The study argues the head of FinP has no Edge Feature (EPP), something that results in that no element such as subject or object is permitted to move to Spec,FinP.

This thesis investigates, within the framework of Relevance Theory (RT), the semantics and pragmatics of the discourse connective but in English and its counterparts in Modern Standard Arabic, namely lākinna , lākin, and bal. The study focuses mainly on Blakemore’s (2002) relevance-theoretic account of but in which she argues that but encodes a procedural meaning that guides the hearer to interpret what follows as contradicting and eliminating an assumption. She claims that but encodes a unified meaning that accounts for its different uses of contrast, correction, denial of expectation and utterance-and discourse-initial use. In this study, however, I highlight a number of gaps in Blakemore’s analysis of but and argue that, although a unified account of but is desirable, it cannot be maintained. Hence, I argue that there are two different buts in English, each associated with a different meaning and a different syntactic distribution. The correction but seems to be available only when preceded by an explicit negation and followed by a constituent smaller than a full clause. On the other hand, a preceding negation is not a prerequisite for the denial but which allow s its conjuncts to be full clauses or constituents smaller than a full clause. I propose that but in English encodes two different procedures. The first procedure which is associated with the denial but constrains the inferential processes that result in the contradiction of a manifest assumption that cannot be relevant as an explicature. The other procedure which is associated with the correction but constrains the inferential processes involved in the interpretation of the second conjunct and the context for its interpretation as a replacement of an explicitly denied assumption . This analysis works for the Arabic counterparts of but as well. I show that both lākin and lākinna are the equivalents of denial but , whereas the equivalent of correction but is bal and lākin when preceded by negation and followed by a phrase.

This thesis is the first of its kind to study the (linguistic) phenomenon of systematic polysemy and examine its pervasiveness in Arabic (both Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) and Jordanian Arabic (JA)). Systematic polysemy in this study is defined as the case where a lexeme has more than one distinct sense and the relationship between the senses is predictable by rules in language. In the narrow sense, however, this phenomenon refers only to the productive type of regular polysemy, which is defined vis-à-vis Apresjan’s (1974) notion of totality of scope (e.g. the content/container type). The integral function of this research is to (i) identify the major (as well as the minor) patterns of regular polysemy in Arabic in the major lexical categories of nouns, verbs, and adjectives; (ii) determine the extent to which these patterns converge with or diverge from the already explored patterns, mainly in English; and (iii) test the applicability of Pustejovsky’s (1995) Generative Lexicon (the GL) in accounting for the various Arabic data on polysemy. The study found that nearly every regular polysemous pattern observed in English was also present in Arabic, albeit with a few attested differences. For example, the regular pattern of the mass-to-count alternation (e.g. coffee—a coffee) is very rarely encountered in Arabic. In addition, the animal/meat alternation in English behaves rather differently in Arabic in the way the language elicits a non-countable (mass) meaning from a countable counterpart. With respect to lexicography, this study adds to the already studied patterns in Atkins and Rundell (2008). The dissertation also raises additional questions for the GL framework with respect to property nominalizations, nominalized adjectives, and generic collective nouns.

This thesis provides a general descriptive account of the morpho-syntactic expression of negation in fifteen Modern Arabic varieties and investigates three of these varieties in more depth. The thesis contributes to the typological literature on negation through a survey of the negation patterns in a number of related and geographically close varieties. It sheds light on the most influential factors that unify the negation patterns found in these varieties, which are predicate type and form. It is found that the type of the predicate, such as verbal and nonverbal predicates, as well as the form of the verbal predicate, such as active participle as opposed to other verbal forms, play an essential role in determining the negation markers used. In addition, this thesis gives a comprehensive account of a number of negative elements in Libyan Arabic, namely the negative auxiliary, negative particle mʕəš, and miš as a metalinguistic marker, and establishes the morpho-syntactic properties and pragmatic functions of these elements. It concludes that the negative auxiliary is used for a specific pragmatic function, which is to deny assumed background information. It also finds that even though miš is not a negation marker exclusive for metalinguistic negation, it is a special metalinguistic marker that signals the metalinguistic reading of verbal sentences.

The aim of this thesis is to provide a description of comparative constructions in Modern Standard Arabic (henceforth MSA) and develop an analysis for some of the facts framed within Head - driven Phrase Structure Grammar (henceforth, HPSG). To the best of my knowledge, MSA comparative constructions have not been addressed before but present an interesting challenge for Arabic and general linguistics. MSA has simple and complex comparatives, which look rather like their counterparts in many other languages. Simple comparatives are indeed like those of other languages, in that it involves adjectives with a distinctive form and semantics and an extra PP complement. Complex comparatives, however, are quite different. They involve an adjective with a nominal complement, which may be an adjectival maṣdar (known in English as adjectival noun) or an ordinary noun, and are rather like so-called 'adjectival constructs'. Complex comparatives in English and many other languages might be analysed as involving periphrasis, where a slot in a paradigm is filled not by a single word but by a pair of words. My analysis, however, argues that MSA complex comparative construction is not a case of periphrasis. Instead, it is an independent construction that expresses the meaning that would otherwise be expressed by certain missing forms. Simple comparatives, complex comparatives, and adjectival constructs can all be analysed with lexical rules within HPSG. With a 'real' nominal comparative that quantifies a noun, the thesis shows that in MSA kutubun ʔakṯar 'more books' and kutubun ʔaḥsan 'better books' are syntactically essentially the same in which we have nouns with an attributive adjective. The thesis also shows that MSA has both ordinary clausal comparatives and phrasal comparatives. The former is introduced only by maa and involves adjectival and nominal gaps and adverbial gaps in subcomparative cases and the latter is introduced by free relatives maa , man and allḏai and have either nominal gaps or resumptives. It was also shown that maa comparatives with nominal gaps are ambiguous and can be either a clausal or a phrasal complement.

Arabic is a language that makes extensive use of the so-called cognate object construction, which is made up of two elements: a lexical verb plus an accusative-case marked NP that is represented by a verbal derived N called the maṣdar in Arabic; the verb and the N are morphologically and semantically related. The cognate object construction has been the focus of much interest for many authors cross-linguistically, and yet it remains an understudied linguistic phenomenon in Arabic. The majority of studies have been carried out in a very traditional framework. They provide brief descriptions concerning the construction and do not make the more precise and well-defined distinctions required for a modern analysis (see e.g. Al-Galayni 1993; Ryding 2005; Salehbeik & Ghorbani 2014). Therefore, in this thesis I provide a linguistic characterization of the construction in Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) which covers morphological, syntactic, semantic aspects. I indicate that in Arabic the cognate object construction incorporates a network of types that exhibit variations at the different linguistic levels. The thesis also attempts to answer the recurrent question in the literature regarding the semantic and syntactic status of the cognate object. In works such as Kim & Lim (2010) and Pereltsvaig (2016), cognate objects are of two types; there are cognate objects that function as direct objects of the verb, and there are cognate objects that function as predicates. In previous analyses, cognate objects have been awarded a unified treatment. They are analysed as thematic arguments, as in the works of Macfarland (1995); Höche (2009); and, more specifically as structural thematic objects in Massam (1990). In other works, cognate objects are analysed as adjuncts (Jones 1988) or as predicates (Mittwoch 1998; Mirto 2007; Horrocks & Stavrou 2010). In this thesis, I provide extensive evidence based on objecthood, referentiality and the diagnostic properties of predicative NPs. I argue that there are at least three types of cognate objects in Arabic: (i) cognate objects that function as direct objects of the verb which are found in a transitive or a ditransitive construction; (ii) cognate objects that function as coverbs and hence create a complex predicate; and (iii) cognate objects that function as adjuncts. Therefore, I aim in this thesis to fill the gap in the literature on the study of the construction in Arabic, to revalidate the significant works by Kim & Lim (2010) and Pereltsvaig (2016) in revealing the heterogeneous nature of the construction, and the significant work by Massam (1990), which reveals the objecthood of certain types of cognate objects which superficially appear as distinct from ordinary objects and were hence analyzed differently in the literature.

This thesis investigates the syntactic structures and the properties of three particle-based exclamatives in Gulf Arabic: vocative exclamatives which involve two particles yaa and ʔaya, and non-vocative exclamatives which involve the particle ʔamma. It implements Chomsky (1995)'s Minimalist Program with Rizzi (1997)'s Split CP Hypothesis in the analysis of the data. I propose that particle-based exclamatives are derived from the underlying verb ʔa-taʕaʒab (1-exclaim) and the preposition min (about) via the ellipsis of the tense phrase which dominates the verb phrase and the preposition. The exclamative particle licenses their ellipsis by blocking the tense phrase and the preposition from spelling out to surface. Focus fronting contributes to the derivation to the fronting movement of the degree phrase, which hosts the exclamative nominals, to the spec of focus phrase prior to the ellipsis operation. I also propose that exclamative particles are complex by carrying two features: the exclamative feature and the deictic feature. Due to their complexity, exclamative particles are decomposable into two heads: an exclamative head and a deictic head, in accordance to Tsoulas (2015) and (2016)'s approach.

This study examines the nature and sequencing of offering and receiving hospitality in Libyan society and discusses the extent to which offers and refusals are conventionalized in Libyan Arabic language. I investigate the attitudes, beliefs and ideologies behind this conventional Libyan Arabic linguistic practice. The study looks particularly at Libyan Arabic people in relation to their day-to-day hospitality interchanges. Within this, I examine the different types of Libyan Arabic offer sequences and the sociolinguistic factors that account for their form and structure. Several existing studies focus on how offering speech acts are employed to promote or maintain social harmony during interactions; for example: Alaoui (2011) and Emery (2000). However, to my knowledge, no work has analysed longer stretches of Libyan Arabic offering interactions to see how Libyan hospitality interactions are significantly influenced by the cultural beliefs, attitudes and ideologies derived from Islamic teachings and Arabic traditions. My work is also unique in focusing on offering, refusing and insisting interactions. For this study, I analyse the data using a mixed qualitative methods approach: (focus group, interviews, and naturally occurring data). The variety of data examined in Libyan Arabic language makes the results obtained through this study of greater value. However, this is not to argue that a given language or cultural community is homogeneous, nor that generalisations about the behaviour of sequencing, offering and receiving hospitality can be made for all Arab cultures. To analyse the data, I chose a combined approach Spencer-Oatey’s (2000, 2008) rapport management model and a discursive approach to politeness. This offers an opportunity to study interpersonal relations, by going beyond linguistic strategies as responses to face threatening/enhancing acts, to study how social relationships are constructed, maintained or threaten rapport during interactions. In my analysis, I suggest that the degree of intimacy between the interactants, gender, the context of the situation, and religion are important factors in the structuring of offering hospitality, which denote the social competency of their interlocutors to establish identity and affirm solidarity. This thesis shows that the interactional moves of offering hospitality (insisting and refusing) are ritualized and conventionalized behaviour. This may be because at an ideological level there is significant stress on hospitality as a dominant principle of daily life among Libyans. Hence, Libyan Arabic speakers tend to privilege association rights and obligations over equity rights. Although the basic elements appear in hospitality sequences in many offering interactions, the sociality rights and obligations differ according to the contextual factors and the situational circumstances thus the way those sequences are interpreted and considered appropriate differs.

Despite the vast research on simultaneous interpreting in different settings, little is known about interpreting practices in the field of TV, particularly between Arabic and English. The recent events of the Arab Spring led to more reliance on simultaneous interpreting for broadcasting presidential speeches live to audiences worldwide. Emotive overtones were a salient feature in the Arabic-language speeches and posed challenges to the TV interpreters who had to handle other difficulties and constraints involved in the task. The current study aims to investigate the way TV interpreters, who worked in the simultaneous mode, handled the task of conveying the emotive overtones employed in Arabic-language political speeches into English. It also aims to examine the difficulties and challenges that emerged during this process and might have influenced the interpreters’ choices. The study also evaluates the way the TV interpreters handled this task and whether the original emotive effect was maintained, upgraded, downgraded or abandoned in their renditions. To achieve its aims, the study analysed a corpus of four Arabic presidential political speeches delivered during the Arab Spring, along with their English simultaneous interpretations produced by different international TV stations. The analysis relied on a macro framework and a micro framework. The macro framework presents an overview of the wider context of the Arabic-language speeches and the individual speakers to help understand the linguistic choices made by the speakers. The micro framework investigates the linguistic tools which were employed by the speakers to stir people’s emotions. The study analyses the Arabic-language speeches through applying emotive categories which are based on Shamaa’s (1978) classification of emotive meaning according to their linguistic level: phonological, morphological, syntactic, and semantic and lexical levels. The micro level also investigates the strategies which were used by the TV interpreters to render the emotive linguistic tools into English. By adopting a qualitative approach, the study aims to contribute to a better understanding of TV simultaneous interpreting between Arabic and English, as well as the practices of TV interpreters when working into their B language and rendering emotiveness.