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Non-canonical coordination occurs when non-constituents are conjoined. Two major types of non-canonical coordination are gapping and non-constituent coordination (NCC). Non-canonical coordination has received interest for its relevance to core issues in syntax, such as constituency and phrase structure. The aim of this article is twofold. First, it provides empirical evidence for non-canonical coordination from Jordanian Arabic (JA) via an experimental investigation. Two acceptability judgment tasks (rating on a Likert scale) were designed to investigate the status of gapping and NCC in JA. A generalized linear model (GLM) was fit to the data, using the (glm) function from the mlogit package in R. There was a main effect of gapping (χ 2 = 13.203, p < 0.001) and NCC (χ 2 = 15.371, p < 0.001) on the acceptability of the constructions in the positive direction. Second, the article provides an analysis of the facts that is couched in terms of left-to-right syntax via a hybrid analysis that assumes that non-canonical coordination can have two sources: a complementizer phrase source and a vP source.

This article investigates the production of the emphatic consonants /?, ?, ?/ by typically developing Jordanian children. Sixty typically developing monolingual Ammani Arabic-speaking children (30 boys and 30 girls) with ages ranging from 2 to 7;11 years were recruited in a production experiment. In the experiment, they were asked to produce 18 minimal pair words with emphatic consonants and their corresponding plain coronals in all word positions. Contrary to Amayreh & Dyson (1998) and Hamdan & Amayreh (2007), >50% of Ammani Arabic-speaking children produced emphatic consonants by the age of 3, >75% produced them by the age of 4, and >90% produced them by the age of 5. Acoustically, they produce them in an adult-like manner at the age of 6 word-initially and medially and at the age of 7 word-finally. The acoustic measurements confirm that children's productions become increasingly adult-like with age. Compared with nonemphatic consonants, the appearance of emphatics tends to be delayed in Ammani Arabic. This delay in the production of emphatics, which are among the least frequently occurring consonants in Arabic, is likely due to their articulatory complexity, which involves a secondary co-articulation (the so-called pharyngealization). The current findings help clarify the developmental trajectory of children's acquisition of emphatic consonants and should be informative for both researchers and clinicians.

This study investigated phonological whole-word measures in bilingual Arabic-English speakers to explore how the target approximations influence children's phonological development. To this end, fifteen bilingual Arabic-English speakers and nine monolingual Arabic-speaking children aged 36–48 months (mean = 42) participated in a parent–child conversation. The study calculated four measures: the phonological mean length of utterance (PMLU), the proportion of whole-word proximity (PWP), the proportion of whole-word correctness (PWC), and the percentage consonant accuracy (PCC). The findings revealed significant differences in each measure between bilinguals and monolinguals. It seems that bilinguals' lower scores resulted from a decreased rate of language exposure, but not because of slow language acquisition and development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research examines the production of subject-verb agreement inflection in person, number, and gender in Urban Jordanian Arabic-speaking individuals with Down syndrome (DS). Third person singular masculine, third person singular feminine, and third person plural suffixes (3MS/3FS/3P) were investigated to achieve this objective. The research involved 60 participants, 30 males and 30 females, enrolled in Nazik Al Hariri Welfare Center for Special Education in Amman. The participants were divided into three groups by age, kindergarten 2 (7.1 to 12.5), school-age (13.10 to 17.6), and vocational training (18.3 to 27.3). Data were collected via a picture-naming task. The results showed that verb agreement constitutes a severe problem in individuals with DS. All three age groups showed some degree of language decline. The 3MS form was the most used and the most accurate form by the three DS groups (48.5%), followed by the 3FS (35.3%) and the 3P (22.8%). A significant finding of this study is that the acquisition of agreement for person, number, and gender by the DS groups is associated with inconsistency and atypical asynchrony. In addition, the results show that age significantly affects the DS groups' production of subject-verb agreement. Thus, the study recommends early intervention for the verb system and subject-verb agreement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: This study aims at investigating the phonological development of the six guttural consonants of Jordanian Arabic, /χ/, /ʁ/, /ħ/, /ʕ/, /ʔ/, and /h/. Method: An articulation test is designed to involve two tasks: picture naming and repetition. The test includes 54 words for picture naming and 18 words for repetition, representing all possible positions of the targeted guttural sounds. Samples are collected from 40 typically developing Ammani-Jordanian Arabic– speaking monolingual children, living in Amman, Jordan. Respondents are equally divided into eight age-related trajectories: 2–2;6, 2;6–3, 3–3;6, 3;6–4, 4– 4;6, 4;6–5, 5–5;6, and 5;6–6 (years;months). No child with a history of hearing, speech, or vision disorders is included. The data are analyzed using production accuracy, where the three developmental trajectories of production (customary, acquisition, and mastery) are determined for each guttural, and error analysis, addressed based on perceptual judgments, providing details of every mispronounced or deleted guttural. Results: The results show that /χ/, /ħ/, /ʕ/, and /ʔ/ are acquired before the age of 6 years, while /ʁ/ and /h/ are still not acquired by this age. Respondents use relatively variant alternatives for the mispronounced cognates, including guttural, nonguttural sounds, and vowel substitution. The /ʁ/ is the guttural with the highest number of alternatives, while /ʔ/ gets the least. The analysis also reveals patterns of guttural deletion, with variations across different guttural sounds and positions. Despite errors/deviations made, respondents score accuracy percentages that gradually increase in correlation with age. The guttural /ʁ/ starts with the lowest accuracy percentages, while /ʔ/ and /ħ/ start with the highest. Conclusions: These findings illuminate on the developmental trajectory of guttural acquisition and enrich our understanding of children’s evolving perception and production abilities. They offer valuable insights into the patterns of guttural sound production in Jordanian Arabic–speaking children, laying the groundwork for further research and the development of targeted assessment and intervention strategies to support phonological development in this population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aims to investigate refusal strategies used among Jordanian Arabic speakers and EFL learners of English in Jordan. Two Discourse Completion Tests (DCT), containing scenarios of refusal, were completed by 43 Jordanian Arabic speakers along with 37 EFL learners of English in Jordan. Data analysis reveals three main refusal categories used in the data: direct, indirect and adjuncts to refusals. Jordanian Arabic speakers used 7% direct refusals, 57% indirect refusals, and 36% adjuncts to refusals. In contrast, EFL learners used 13% direct refusals, 62% indirect refusals, and 25% adjuncts to refusals. Additionally, strategies such as insisting, insulting, praising the other, and invoking the name of God were observed. In conclusion, both groups preferred indirect refusal strategies over other types. It was also noted that EFL learners used more direct and indirect refusal strategies than Jordanian Arabic speakers but fewer adjuncts to refusals. Both groups produced similar strategies in response to the four types of situations, indicating that cultural background significantly influenced the way refusals were performed, despite the different languages used. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Language Learning Strategies (LLSs) assist learners to develop cognitive or behavioral competences to make the language learning process more self-directed and effective. In the current educational contexts, think-aloud methods are used to provide insights into the cognitive processes of individuals as they engage in enhancement of skills and tasks or problem-solving activities. This study aimed at identifying the type and frequency of LLSs used by intermediate and advanced Jordanian EFL learners and investigating whether there were any qualitative differences in the behaviour of participants while using think-aloud protocols in completing their tasks. A qualitative research design was followed, by sampling 70 senior university students of Al al-Bayt University, Jordan. The Oxford Quick Placement Test was used to further classify them into intermediate (36 students) and advanced (34 students) groups. For major tasks of the study, 20 students were randomly selected from each of these two groups. These groups were assigned think-aloud tasks in reading, writing and listening to investigate the LLSs they used. The results revealed a diverse range of LLSs employed by the participants across various tasks, except for social strategies, as the tasks did not involve any social interaction or communication. It was also revealed that participants were active strategic learners and were aware of their cognitive processes. The study can help EFL learners in general, and Jordanian ones in particular, gain a deeper insight into the actual use of LLSs when dealing with language tasks, which can make a positive impact on their performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This is the first study that investigates polysyllabic shortening in Arabic. It aims to find out the extent to which Modern Standard Arabic employs this phonetic mechanism, which is usually associated with stress-timed languages. Data were collected from 10 Jordanian speakers reading 6 sets of words representing the six monophthongs in Arabic in a carrier sentence. Based on the acoustic analysis of 180 vowels, it was found that the vowels in monosyllabic words were significantly longer than their counterparts in polysyllabic words. However, the differences between the vowels in disyllabic and trisyllabic words were much smaller. Findings suggest that polysyllabic shortening is not invoked as a mechanism to maintain the stress-timed rhythm of stress-timed languages. Rather, it seems to be a universal phonetic feature that applies in different degrees that are commensurate with the rhythm of the language in question [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dyslexia is a learning disability mostly evident in inaccurately recognizing a word, mainly because of the deficit of the phonological components of a language. This research aimed to investigate the phonological abilities of Jordanian Arabic (JA) speaking children with and without dyslexia using whole-word measures. Data from Jordanian dyslexic children were compared between three reading groups (poor readers, typical readers, and advanced readers) through three tests: (i) phonological mean length of utterance (pMLU), (ii) the Percentage of Consonant Correct (PCC) and (iii) the Proportion of Whole-Word Proximity (PWP). Findings show that the typical and the advanced readers had a relative score in pMLU, PWP and PCC, which were significantly higher than those registered by dyslexic and poor readers. Additionally, three phonological processes were found in Jordanian dyslexic children's readings: omission, substitution, and metathesis. Omission was the most frequent process employed by Jordanian dyslexics, particularly in diand polysyllabic nonsense words. The study concludes that whole-word measures can reflect the phonological abilities of children using both real and nonsense words. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current study evaluates the accountability of Native Listeners (NLs). The study recruited speakers from a mixture of Arabic dialects and accents as one group and LAFL as another group where both groups spoke actual Arabic words with long and short vowels in contrast. A main consequence of choosing the present experimental manipulation is the outcome that NLs of Arabic had increasingly slow right recognitions in the follow-on test. The conclusion of the present experimental manipulation supports the claim that the handling of words is delayed if data accessible to NLs is incomplete. Additionally, this experimental manipulation adds to our awareness of the accountability of the NLs themselves towards LAFL. The study is expected to assist in considering the accountability of listeners in the communication barrier as explained by the inadequate top-down processing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Speech errors are an important source of information to understand language processing and production. Earlier research focused on different types of errors including semantic and phonological errors while malapropisms, which refer to slips of the tongue involving whole word substitutions that share phonological similarities but are not related semantically, have not received adequate attention in the Arabic language. Drawing on malapropisms in Jordanian Arabic, we bring evidence on the supremacy of suprasegmental phonological aspects in Arabic phonology. This is unexpected as stress in Arabic is non-phonemic and fully predictable, besides Arabic rhythm is much less stress-timed than that of Germanic languages. Data was collected from spontaneous speech over a period of three years. Results showed that malapropisms share the primary stress position, the number of syllables and the word rhythmic pattern with the target words. To a lesser degree, the target and the error share the same rime and initial segments. Findings suggest that suprasegmental features are very crucial in Arabic phonology, like in Indo-European languages. Evidence suggests that formal similarity that is based on the syllabic and metrical structure of words plays a significant role in language processing and the organization of the mental lexicon in Arabic, which suggests that this is a language universal. Furthermore, our findings do not agree with earlier claims that Arabic has a flat syllabic structure. Rather, evidence suggests that Arabic, like English, has a hierarchical syllable structure, which seems to represent another language universal. More research on other Arabic dialects is recommended to corroborate these findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Jerash Journal for Research & Studies is the property of Jerash University and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)