Plural and Gender Inflection of English Loanwords in Colloquial Saudi Arabic

This study sought to explore how loanwords in Arabic are pluralized, whether loanword plurals are rule-based or idiosyncratic and the productivity of each type of loanword plural form: The Masculine Sound Plural (MSP), Broken Plural (BP), two or more Plurals, Zero Plural (ZP), Borrowed/Foreign Plural (BP) and Hybrid Plural (HP). It also aimed to shed light on the factors that contribute to the emergence of new, idiosyncratic plural forms. Analysis of a sample of 265 loanwords used in Standard and Colloquial Arabic collected from some Internet websites and glossaries showed that 37% of the loanwords in the sample have no plural forms (a Zero Plural) such as invariable singular nouns referring to food and drink (pizza, cappuccino), names of diseases and medications (bilharzia, Panadol), names of chemicals (potassium; ); sports (judo), sciences or areas of study (انثروبولوجيا anthropology), non-count nouns (ديزل diesel), Proper Nouns with a unique reference كونغرس) Congress ), noun referring to genus لافندر) lavender), and collective nouns (باغاج baggage). Results also showed that 35% of the loanwords take a BP only, whether it is a sole plural or a second or third plural form for the same loanword; 22% have double plurals as in nouns referring to some nationalities, ethnicities and religious groups, specialists and political loanwords; 16% have a BP (كادر /ka;dir/ > كوادر /kawa:dir/ cadres); 13% have a MSP together with another plural; 15% retain their Foreign Plural (يوتيوبرز YouTubers; موفيز movies; شيبس chips; داتا data); 4% have multiple plural forms (Malay (pl): الماليز (BP), ماليزيون (MSP), ماليزيات (FSP) and 1.5% have a HP (شوزات shoes+a:t/). Findings also showed that 46.5% of the loanwords follow the Arabic pluralization rules in the MSP, BP and FSP formation, even in the case of loanwords with double and multiple Plurals. Loanwords with a FP and HP represent a new morphological phenomenon in Arabic that was not reported by any prior study in the literature. The factors that contribute to the emergence of new idiosyncratic plural forms are discussed. Findings are also discussed in the light of some integration/adaptaion models of Arabic morphology. Recommendations for Arabic, English and translation pedagogy are given.

In Moroccan Arabic, like in many other Afroasiatic languages, certain nouns may have more than one plural form. For instance, teswera ‘photo’ has plurals tsawer and tswerat. However, their diminutive systematically resorts to -at suffixation in the plural. The aim of this study is twofold. First, it presents an interface approach which aims to determine the structural location of number and capture the empirical contrast between broken and sound plurals. It is argued that the sound plurals are associated with the standard Num projection, whereas the broken plurals are associated lower in the structure with the n projection. Second, it provides a templatic analysis of the diminutive formation, showing that the diminutive and the internal plural markers compete for the same templatic position. External evidence for the analysis is drawn from the phenomenon of emphasis spread. The nP is presented as the maximal domain of emphasis spread in nouns.

This study examines the acquisition of broken plural (BP) patterns generated by child speakers of Jordanian Arabic (JA). Data were collected from 20 Jordanian children via an experimental production test. Children were given pictures of a set of singular entities depicting nouns and pictures containing their plural counterparts, and they were asked to say the names of the items in the pictures in an attempt to provide their corresponding plural forms. The results reveal that the acquisition of correct BP patterns appears critical for children. The feminine sound plural (FSP) was employed as the default pattern by children and thus is acquired before the BP, with the acquired patterns mainly shaped by productivity, predictability (but not familiarity) and overgeneralization (morphological, phonological, and semantic). Based on the oral speech corpus produced by adult JA speakers, published in Semarchive, a rough count of plural pattern frequencies was undertaken. The FSP proved to be less frequent than BPs in tokens and can thus be considered a minority default, a finding that calls into question the validity of Boudelaa and Gaskell’s corpus (2002. A re-examination of the default system for Arabic plurals. Language and Cognitive Processes 17(3). 321–343) on JA. Although 3- to 5-year-old children use the FSP as the most productive pattern, frequency does not significantly contribute to the predictability of the distribution in shaping the correct plural form at this stage of learning BPs.

The acquisition of dual and plural nominal marking was examined. Forty-four Kuwaiti Arabic-speaking children aged 4–9 years were presented with a set of pictured stimuli of real and nonsense words and were asked to provide the plural and dual form. The results showed that Feminine Sound Plural (FSP) was used early on and more frequently than the Masculine Sound Plural (MSP) and the Broken Plural (BP). FSP was noticeably employed as the default form by younger children before differentiation gained ground, and it was often overgeneralized to MSP and BP. The children showed higher accuracy in using the dual than the plural forms. Finally, young children tended to use non-conventional ways to express number marking before acquiring target forms.

This study provides preliminary data on Palestinian Arabic and English plural elicitations in Palestinian Arabic heritage-speaking children in the United States. Since dual formation is present in Palestinian Arabic but not English, this kind of investigation could elucidate whether a shift from heritage language (Arabic) to language of environmental dominance (English) affects the ability to access L1 plural formation. An elicited production task was administered to 21 typically developing Palestinian Arabic heritage-speaking children, aged 5;04 to 9;11 years.1 The task was designed to elicit productions of Palestinian Arabic dual and sound and broken plural, and regular and irregular plurals in English. Half the items in each language and category were based on real words and the other half on pseudowords. Parent questionnaires provided background information. Findings revealed systematic effects of language, plural category, and lexicality. Dual production correlated with feminine plural formation in Arabic, and dual appeared to be preferred over masculine and broken plurals. Effects of lexicality across the two languages provided insight into distinct patterns of productivity for plural marking. Although effects of socioeconomic status were not found to be significant, parental education and home exposure to Palestinian Arabic correlated with children’s performance on irregular pluralization. Findings are discussed with a view to informing further studies.

One of the most challenging, but rather interesting, topics in the literature of Arabic phonology and morphology is the broken plurals (BP). The most widely acceptable account of Arabic BP, as far as I know, is McCarthy (1982) within the framework of Autosegmental Phonology. This paper presents and discusses the model of McCarthy (1982) and shows that it is unsatisfactory for providing a plausible account for Jordanian Arabic BP, as it suffers from a number of exceptions that McCarthy found hard to account for. The emergence of Optimality Theory (OT) in the 1990s has opened the door for further perspectives of treating different phonological problems. This paper shows that there are three major issues that constitute a challenge to McCarthy's Model of Arabic BP within the framework of Autosegmental Phonology. They include dialectal variation, the existence of more than one surface plural form for the same input, and the difference in the outputs of BP forms with the same underlying form. It also cannot account for the diverse shape of similar forms. As an alternative, this paper proposes a model within the framework of Optimality Theory that can account for and solve all the challenging problems for McCarthy’s model in a satisfactory and straightforward manner.

Sound plural and broken plural assignment in classical Arabic

Fixing the broken plural in Maltese

We investigate the storage and processing of sound and broken plural forms in the Maltese lexicon by means of a cross-modal priming study. The results show no significant differences in reaction time between sound and broken plurals, but indicate a different priming effect for sound than for broken plurals. We argue that the different priming effect is a result of the phonological overlap between sound singulars and their corresponding plurals forms, while broken singulars and their plurals do not share the same phonological structure. Our results support a single-mechanism model of morphological processing in which both frequency of pattern and morphophonological similarity interact.

Human language is rule-governed. These rules are innate in the native speakers and vary from one language to another. The variations in the morphological and syntactic structures in languages pose difficulties to the second language learner in the target language. This paper therefore, examines and contrasts the plural formation of nouns in English and Ikwerre (Omuanwa) with a view to identifying the morphological and syntactic structural differences associated with pluralisation which may pose difficulty to the second language learner. The theoretical framework adopted is Contrastive Analysis (CA). This paper revealed that there is an overwhelming difference between plural formation of nouns in English and Ikwerre (Omuanwa) as English plural markers are suffixes while Ikwerre plural markers are prefixes. While English is full of irregularities and a lot of exceptions to given rules of pluralisation, most nouns in Ikwerre form their plurals by using plural markers which are free morphemes before the host. This paper therefore, recommends that second language learners of English whose first language is Ikwerre should make conscious effort to learn the plurals of words in English the way they are, so as to use the correct plural forms of words in English sentences.

188 LANGUAGE, VOLUME 75, NUMBER 1 (1999) lau (174-86) studies the so-called impersonal form in the Gurage dialects of Caha and Ennemor. Takamitsu Muraoka (206-15) comments on three points of morphology of the Aramaic of the Ahiqar Proverbs: the masculine plural emphatic morpheme ; the infinitive of derived conjugations; and the object suffix -yh for 3rd person masculine plural. Some of these features may be placed in the wider context of internal Aramaic dialectology and the position of Aramaic within Semitic (see John Huehnergard . 1995. Palmyra and the Arameans. Aram 7.261-82). Jan Retsö (268-82) deals with the relation between state (status) and plural markers in Semitic morphology and addresses some essential issues in Semitic studies: the allegedly conservative morphological system of the Î Arabiyya; the origins of the external plural markers; the tanwîn; etc. In Retsö's interesting article, as complete as it is, one misses a mention of Vermondo Brugnatelli's treatment of the feminine plurals in Old Aramaic (1991. The 'feminine ' plurals in Old Aramaic: New light from Tell Fekherye. Proceedings of the fifth international Hamito-Semitic congress, ed. by Hans G. Mukarovsky , 196-84. Vienna: Institute für Afrikanistik und Ägyptologie). Furthermore, an analysis of similar morphemes in other Afroasiatic branches can shed light on the evolution of their functions. For instance, Chadic languages (especially Hausa) have a formative t marking feminine, singulative, and diminutive; an agreement pattern in the deictic system which exhibits ? formasculine, tfor feminine, and? for plural; noun plurals marked with both a suffix -n and an infix -a-; etc.; (see Paul Newman. 1987. Hausa and Chadic languages. The world's major languages, ed. by Bernard Comrie, 705-23. Oxford: Oxford University Press). The distribution of the different systems of external and internal plurality represents a productive diagnostic for Semitic and Afroasiatic subclassification, as Robert R. Ratcliffe has shown in his recent article on broken plurals (1998. Defining morphological isoglosses: The 'broken' plural and Semitic subclassification. Journal of Near Eastern Studies 57.81-123). [Gonzalo Rubio, Johns Hopkins University.] Essays on language function and language type dedicated to T. Givón. Ed. by Joan Bybee, John Haiman, and Sandra Thompson. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 1997. Pp. vi, 478. This festschrift comprises twenty articles on various topics in functional/typological linguistics. The book opens with a picture of Givón playing a fiddle, followed by encouraging letters and personal anecdotes about the man of honor by twelve ofhis friends and colleagues and a rather impressive bibliography of Givón's publications in linguistics from 1966-1995. As the title may suggest, the volume is a rather eclectic selection of works which offers something ofinterest to everyone with an interest intypological/ functional issues. Joan Bybee's article, 'Semantic aspects of morphological typology', starts off the volume, relating morphological typology to grammaticization patterns. Bybee puts out a new hypothesis on why Chinese did not evolve to develop obligatory grammatical categories noting that Chinese 'speakers avoid redundancy, and hearers maintain an open set ofinferencing options; in particular they do not elevate grammatical cues over those provided by the lexical semantics and the context' (35). Colette Grinevald offers an interesting linguistic autobiography about growing up trilingual in her article, 'Living in three languages'. Of particular interest to ergativity enthusiasts will be Spike Gildea's article, 'Introducing ergative word order via reanalysis', where he illustrates word order configurations in Cariban and traces the absolutive-verb bond as a historical derivative of a possessor-possessed bond. Matthew S. Dryer's article, 'Are grammatical relations universal', explains that similarities among languages should be attributed to functional and cognitive principles, not formal constructs . R. M. W. Dixon and Alexandra Aikhenvald distinguish four basic types of syntactic derivations relating to predicate arguments in their article, ? typology of argument-determined constructions'. Marianne Mithun exemplifies lexicalization and grammaticization patterns in Native American languages in 'Lexical affixes and grammatical typology .' In 'On zero anaphora', Charles Li presents data from Late Archaic Chinese, where he shows that referents are not expressed twice unless there is a syntactic or discourse reason to do so. Ofparticular interest to Austronesianists and voice enthusiasts would be Thomas Payne and Thomas Laskowske's article 'Voice in Seko Padang...

Muscat Arabic exhibits unique prosodic tendencies in the formation of broken plurals which, as a result of their uniqueness, have not received adequate theoretical exploration in the literature of broken plural formation. Building on McCarthy’s pre-Optimality Theoretic claims on broken plurals in Classical Arabic, I argue that an ‘affixed mora [μ]’ attached at a certain locus in the broken plurals enforces two expansions of the iambic foot to be realized in two distinct shapes of broken plurals in Muscat Arabic. I further show that the affixed [μ] associates in a position that does not disrupt the prosodic and syllabic canons of the language as a whole. This is manifested in a ranked set of constraints couched in a unified Optimality Theoretic analysis which reflects the grammar of Muscat Arabic.

Chinese and English belong to different language families, so they often have different forms of expression. Chinese has no definite grammatical category of number and has almost no number inflection. Plural meaning is usually implied in the syntactic structure or in the context by a bare noun, or is expressed through the plural marker 们 and the numerical adjectives such as many, numerous and each, as well as by quantifiers and reduplications. However, English nouns express number category by inflection as well as by quantifiers at times, so their grammatical number is far more complicated than that of Chinese nouns. From the point of view of grammatical form, English nouns are often considered as countable and uncountable nouns. Uncountable nouns cannot be directly modified by a numeral without unit specification, nor can they be combined with an indefinite article. Thus, cheese is quantified as three slices of cheese. However, uncountable nouns can also be quantified without specifying a unit of measurement, such as much coal. A number of uncountable nouns can be used in the plural form to mean ‘a large amount of’ as in the following example from Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English (hereinafter, LDCE) ‘The ship drifted into Turkish territorial waters’. In such cases, although water is uncountable, it has the plural form. In some cases, native English speakers can turn the theoretical uncountable nouns into countable ones (Landau, 2001). There seems to be no absolute boundary between countable and uncountable nouns.

Within the domain of inflectional morpho-syntax, differential processing of regular and irregular forms has been found in healthy speakers and in aphasia. One view assumes that irregular forms are retrieved as full entities, while regular forms are compiled on-line. An alternative view holds that a single mechanism oversees regular and irregular forms. Arabic offers an opportunity to study this phenomenon, as Arabic nouns contain a consonantal root, delivering lexical meaning, and a vocalic pattern, delivering syntactic information, such as gender and number. The aim of this study is to investigate morpho-syntactic processing of regular (sound) and irregular (broken) Arabic plurals in patients with morpho-syntactic impairment. Three participants with acquired agrammatic aphasia produced plural forms in a picture-naming task. We measured overall response accuracy, then analysed lexical errors and morpho-syntactic errors, separately. Error analysis revealed different patterns of morpho-syntactic errors depending on the type of pluralization (sound vs broken). Omissions formed the vast majority of errors in sound plurals, while substitution was the only error mechanism that occurred in broken plurals. The dissociation was statistically significant for retrieval of morpho-syntactic information (vocalic pattern) but not for lexical meaning (consonantal root), suggesting that the participants' selective impairment was an effect of the morpho-syntax of plurals. These results suggest that irregular plurals forms are stored, while regular forms are derived. The current findings support the findings from other languages and provide a new analysis technique for data from languages with non-concatenative morpho-syntax.

<p>This morphophonemic study aims to analyze pluralization processes for common nouns in English and native Turkish. To achieve this, a contrastive analysis focusing on English and Turkish plural markers from a structuralist point of view is taken. The results of the analysis reveal the differences and similarities between two languages in terms of plural markers. As for the differences, it is found that English and Turkish differ in regular and irregular plural forms as well as active role of consonants and vowels for pluralization process. Similarities for plural markers include focusing on the final sound of nouns, relying on distinctive features of sounds, employing allomorphs and using plural markers as suffixes for both languages to a varying degree. The findings of this study might help learners of English and Turkish by revealing the differences and similarities in both languages.</p>