Speakers Of Jordanian Research Articles

Refusal Strategies by Young Jordanian Speakers in Arabic and English

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.

Foot duration and polysyllabic shortening among Arab speakers of English

This study investigates a neglected aspect of second language acquisition. It compares the timing patterns adopted by speakers of English as a foreign language with those of English native speakers. The paper aims to explore the extent to which Arab speakers, whose L1 is not as stress-timed as English is, can acquire the mechanisms of polysyllabic shortening in English. Three groups (English native speakers and two groups of Jordanian speakers of English) were requested to read three sets of monosyllabic, disyllabic and trisyllabic words in a carrier sentence. The total length of the word and the vowel duration in all the words were measured. Clear differences between the native speaker group and the non-native speaker groups were attested. Results show that isochronous foot duration and polysyllabic shortening are a tendency in English speech timing, rather than a fundamental process. Furthermore, acquiring the timing patterns of the stress-timed English rhythm is challenging to Arab speakers.

A Cross-Cultural Differences in Advice-Giving Strategies among Jordanian and British Speakers

Advice-giving means offering guidance or recommendations offered with regard to prudent future action. The individuals vary in their methods of offering advice. Such differences might be attributed to the cultural differences. Therefore, the present study aims to investigate the cross-cultural differences in advice-giving strategies among Jordanian and British speakers. It aims to examine the types of advice-giving strategies employed by Jordanian speakers and British speakers. It investigates the effect of gender, and social power and distance (=, +) on advice-giving among Jordanian speakers and British speakers. The study further seeks to identify the degree of politeness among the Jordanian speakers and British speakers in offering advice. To this end, a total of (60) participants are divided into two groups; (30) Jordanian speakers and (30) British speakers. Each group consists of (15) males and (15) females. To analyze the data, Hinkel’s (1997) taxonomy of advice-giving strategies, direct, indirect, and hedge as well as Brown and Levinson's (1987) politeness theory are used. Hinkel multiple choice questionnaire consists of (8) situations; (4) of them pertained to advice-giving for peer, whereas (4) of them pertained to advice-giving for instructors. As for giving advice for peers, the findings reveal that Jordanian speakers used direct advice-giving strategies, while British speaker used indirect advice-giving strategies. As for advice giving for instructors, British speakers used more indirect giving strategies than Jordanian speakers, whereas Jordanian speakers used more hedge advice giving strategies than British speakers. The advice-giving strategies, whether indirect or hedge fall under politeness strategies. Regarding the gender differences in using advice-giving strategies, the results show that Jordanian male speakers were inclined towards using direct advice giving strategies more than females. The finding reveal that females used indirect, hedge, and polite advice-giving strategies, while males used direct and impolite advice-giving strategies. The study recommends investigating advice-giving among other cultures such as between Asian speakers and Jordanian speakers.

Polysyllabic shortening in Modern Standard Arabic

Abstract 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.

Oral-diadochokinetic rate for healthy young Jordanian adults

ABSTRACT We used a sequential motion rate (SMR) oral-diadochokinetic (oral-DDK) rate task to examine speech motor performance in healthy young adults. The goals of this study were to: (1) establish SMR oral-DDK rate values for healthy young adult Jordanians, (2) examine the effect of gender on oral-DDK rate, and (3) examine the trial-to-trial variability of mean oral-DDK rate in consecutive trials. One hundred and six healthy young adults (53 males and 53 females, age range 18–26) participated in this study. One hundred and six healthy young adults (53 males and 53 females, age range 18–26) participated in this study. Participants repeated the trisyllable /pataka/ as fast as they could in three consecutive trials. For each participant and group, (a) the number of syllables per second were examined and analyzed, and (b) the oral-DDK rate values were compared across the three trials in order to examine trial-to-trial variability. The results of the study indicated that: (1) SMR oral-DDK mean rate for the participants in the study was 6.57 syllables/s (SD = 0.84); (2) There were no significant differences between gender groups in oral-DDK rate; (3) Mean oral-DDK rate for repetitions was comparable across the three trials for participants. Gender does not seem to affect oral-DDK rate in healthy young adult Jordanian speakers. Also, performance is stable in consecutive trials of SMR oral-DDK rate tasks. Implications of these findings are presented and discussed.

STRUCTURAL ANALYSIS OF CODE-MIXING AMONG JORDANIANS ON FACEBOOK

The main issue of the present aims at investigating the most frequent English categories that Jordanian students tend to use within Arabic discourse on Facebook. Furthermore, the study tries to examine the validity of Polack’s universal constraint ‘size of constituent' and whether Jordanian students tend to mix small constituents like nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs, or they tend to mix large English constituents like clauses and phrases. To this end, a research design involves both quantitative and qualitative approaches was used. The quantitative analysis collected numeric information and used frequency distribution technique. On the other hand, the qualitative analysis collected qualitative data and used thematic analysis technique. The quantitative analysis revealed that Jordanian speakers generally insert both small and large English constituents in their speech; 70% of the inserted English constituents were small while large constituents constituted 29% of the constituents. That means, Jordanians tend to use small English constituents more than large ones. Particularly, nouns are the most frequently used mixed English constituents with (30 %), followed by adjectives which constituted 13% of the mixed English constituents. Accordingly, Poplack's universal constraint of size of constituent is violated. On the other side, the qualitative analysis of the data obtained showed that the size of the inserted English constituents has no effect on Arabic sentence structure and word order, that is, speakers form the sentence according to Arabic language and use constituents that have very limited grammatical restrictions. As a conclusion, Jordanian students use English nouns as the most frequently used English categories. Furthermore, the study provides a theoretical implication that is directed to the Arabic Language Academies in the Arab World. In fact, Arabic Academic are responsible to coin appropriate Arabic categories that meet the need of using English categories. That is, coining new Arabic categories will limit using English categories within Arabic discourse, save Arabic purity, and enrich Arabic language with new terms. Thus, Arabic language have to have new lexicon to develop and stay alive.

Quantifying Nasality in Arabic Speakers: Preliminary Data

This paper aimed to establish preliminary normative data scores of nasalance value for the Arab Emirati speakers, and to compare them to other Arabic speakers, particularly the Saudi, Jordanian and Egyptian speakers. Design was a cross-sectional study where nasality scores (nasalance percentages) were obtained under oral and vowel passage tasks. Participants were 104 Emirati individuals (54 males, age range 18-27, and 50 females, age range 18-27). Each participant was asked to extend the /a:/ vowel and read a passage in Arabic. A nasometer model II, 6450 (KayPentax, Canada) was utilized for nasalance scores computation. The ANOVA revealed no significant differences between the female and male Emirati speakers’ nasalance scores in both the vowel (males= 26.35, females= 23.3) and the oral passage tasks (males= 15, females= 15.1). The Emirati speakers had higher nasalance scores than the Saudi speakers in both tasks, and in the /a:/vowel task compared to the Egyptian and Jordanian speakers. Language and dialect are two important variables in determining the nasalance normative scores..

Preliminary Speech Rate Normative Data in Adult Jordanian Speakers

Studies conducted to establish normative data on speech rate; including speaking and articulation rate, for the Jordanian Arabic dialect are scarce. Aim: to establish preliminary normative data on speaking and articulation rate for the adult male and female Jordanian Arabic speakers. Methodology: The sample of the study comprised 51 participants (23 males and 28 females), age (18-25 yrs, mean 20.82 yrs ±1.52). Spontaneous speech and reading samples were collected from participants. Results: Means of articulation rates during the tasks of spontaneous speech and reading passage were (140.07 w/m, 161.83 w/m, respectively), while the means of speaking rates during the tasks of spontaneous speech and reading passage were (124.51w/m, 141.36w/m, respectively). The ANOVA showed no significant differences (p=0.237) attributed to the effect gender on the articulation or the speaking rates in both tasks of spontaneous speech and reading passage. Pearson-r test showed moderate-strong positive correlations between articulation and speaking rates during both the reading passage and the spontaneous speech tasks (p<0.01, r = 0.416; p <0.001, r = 0.962, respectively). Conclusion: this study can be of a clinical significance in the evaluation and treatment of fluency, articulation and motor speech disorders.

The influence of emphatic /dˁ/ on Modern Standard Arabic vowels: An acoustic analysis

Abstract This study is part of a larger project on the influence of Arabic emphatics /tˁ, dˁ, δˁ, sˁ/ on adjacent Arabic vowels by considering three factors: vowel quality, vowel duration and directionality of emphasis spread. This paper investigates the influence of the voiced alveolar emphatic /dˁ/ on the six Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) monophthongs /ɐ – ɪ – ʊ – a: – i: – u:/ as produced by ten Jordanian speakers. The monophthongs in the adjacency of /dˁ/ are compared to those adjacent to the non-emphatic alveolar voiced stop /d/. Results indicate that in the emphatic context, the vowels are clearly retracted in the vowel space and that the extent of the emphatic influence in ‘preceding’ or ‘following’ contexts is not significantly different.

A Deeper Look into Requests: Insight from Jordanian Speakers of Arabic Vis-À-Vis American English Speaker

This study sought to investigate the differences between the request strategies used by Jordanian and American speakers. Data for this study were collected via a Discourse Completion Task (DCT) questionnaire, incorporating 16 real-life scenarios in the form of short descriptive statements. In accordance with the Cross-Cultural Speech Act Realization Patterns, participants' responses (n= 30) divided into three groups (Jordanian Non-English Majors, Jordanian English Majors and American participants). The data were analyzed and further classified into three types based on their level of directness: (i) direct (D), (ii) conventional indirect (ID), and (iii) non-conventional indirect requests (NID).The results of this study indicate that the act of requesting is performed differently by the three groups of participants. The results also showed that strategy (Reference to Preparatory Cond.) was ranked the highest in percent (87.5%, 67.5%) for the two groups American and Jordanian “Male”) respectively, and (86.3%, 76.3%) %) for the two groups American and Jordanian “Female”) respectively. Also, results showed that the strategy (Locution Deliverable) was ranked the lowest by the Jordanian females sample, just (1.9%).

Normal Patterns of Nasometric Values in Adult Jordanian Speakers of Arabic.

The study sought to establish normative nasometric values for adult Jordanian speakers of Arabic. Gender-related differences and intraspeaker variability of nasalance scores were investigated. A total of 113 adult speakers of Jordanian Arabic (56 men and 57 women) without speech-language and hearing impairments or craniofacial anomalies ranging in age between 18 and 55 participated in the study. Nasometer II, Model 6400 was used to obtain nasalance scores as speakers produced 3 recitations for each of the 3 standardized passages consisting of an oral passage, an oronasal passage, and nasal sentences. Descriptive statistics of nasalance scores for each passage were obtained and gender-related differences were determined by ANOVA. Standard deviation for the 3 repetitions for each passage was considered an index for intraspeaker variability. Average nasalance for each passage was (11.23%) for the oral passage, (25.48%) for the oronasal passage, and (51.92%) for the nasal sentence. There was no gender effect on nasalance on the oral passage, however women exhibited higher nasalance scores than men on the both oronasal passage (P = 0.002) and nasal sentences (P = 0.017). Intraspeaker variability for all speakers fell below 4.5% with repeated readings. The study provides normative nasometric data for Arabic speaking Jordanian adults to serve as references for the assessment of velopharyngeal dysfunction in craniofacial clinics. Arabic speakers demonstrated different nasalance scores than speakers of other languages. Gender differences can be attributed to variations in anatomical structure and velopharyngeal function between men and women.

The Effects of 'Face' on Listening Comprehension: Evidence from Advanced Jordanian Speakers of English.

This empirical study examines the extent to which 'face', i.e. (audio visual dialogues), affects the listening comprehension of advanced Jordanian EFL learners in a TOFEL-like test, as opposed to its absence (i.e. a purely audio test) which is the current norm in many English language proficiency tests, including but not limited to TOFEL iBT, TOEIC and academic IELTS. Through an online experiment, 60 Jordanian postgraduate linguistics and English literature students (advanced EFL learners) at the University of Jordan sit for two listening tests (simulating English proficiency tests); namely, one which is purely audio [i.e. without any face (including any visuals such as motion, as well as still pictures)], and one which is audiovisual/video. The results clearly show that the inclusion of visuals enhances subjects' performance in listening tests. It is concluded that since the aim of English proficiency tests such as TOEFL iBT is to qualify or disqualify subjects to work and study in western English-speaking countries, the exclusion of visuals is unfounded. In actuality, most natural interaction includes visibility of the interlocutors involved, and hence test takers who sit purely audio proficiency tests in English or any other language are placed at a disadvantage.

Acoustic Analysis of Modern Standard Arabic Vowels by Jordanian Speakers

In this study the Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) vowels produced by ten Jordanian males are acoustically analyzed and described. In line with previous studies on MSA produced by speakers from different parts of the Arab world, this study shows that the inventory of MSA vowels consists of six monophthongs and two diphthongs. Moreover, the long monophthongs of MSA are found to be more than double the duration of their short counterparts. In comparison with studies on MSA vowels produced by Palestinian, Saudi, Sudanese and Egyptian speakers, the MSA monophthongs produced by the Jordanian speakers here are found to be significantly shorter than those in the latter studies. Moreover, this study proposes the use of different IPA symbols for the MSA vowels which have been for long inaccurately transcribed as /a:, i:, u:, a, i, u, aj, aw/. This is justified by the finding that long and short MSA monophthongs are significantly different not only in duration but also in vowel quality. This latter finding has been corroborated by many previous studies on MSA vowels..

Validity of test stimuli for nasalance measurement in speakers of Jordanian Arabic

Objective: The objective of the study was to establish the validity of passages for measuring nasalance of Jordanian speakers of Arabic.Design: Two Arabic text passages were constructed; the Spring Passage is devoid of nasal consonants and the Home Passage contains both oral and nasal consonants. Nasalance was measured for participants while reciting each passage three times. Perceptual ratings of hypernasality were also obtained for each participant on each passage using a 5-point equal-appearing rating scale.Participants: Forty-seven children and adults ranging in age between 9 and 26 years participated in the study. Twenty-three participants had no history of communication disorders, and 24 had repaired cleft palate.Results: Correlation coefficient between ratings of hypernasality and the nasalance scores was significant for the Spring Passage (r = 0.88, p > 0.001) and for the Home Passage (r = 0.78, p > .001). Using cutoff scores of 17% and 36% of nasalance for the Spring and the Home Passages, respectively, and a threshold score of 1.5 for hypernasality, sensitivity for the Spring Passage was 88% and the Home Passage was 78%.Conclusions: Results showed the validity of the Spring Passage and the Home Passage in measuring nasalance scores as proved by their high sensitivity and strong correlation with perceptual rating of hypernasality.

A Conversation Analysis of self-initiated repair structures in Jordanian Spoken Arabic

This article studies the Conversation Analysis (CA) of self-initiated repair structures in everyday conversations in Jordanian Spoken Arabic (JSA). It aims to cast light on self-initiated repairs practised by Jordanians. The data were collected in 2010; 18 dyadic-videotaped conversations totalling about nine hours, mixed and single-sex, were conducted at Yarmouk University, Irbid, Jordan. The data analysed include 1595 self-initiated repairs. The CA approach is employed as a theoretical framework for this study. The findings of this research indicate that Jordanian speakers practise 10 self-initiated repair structures, namely, expansion, hesitation, replacement, repetition, abort and restart, abort and abandon, insertion, deletion, meta-repair and modify order.

On Congratulating, Thanking, and Apologizing in Jordanian Arabic and American English

A mounting body of evidence suggests that despite the existence of shared underlying elements, politeness is realized differently across cultures. This study examines the politeness strategies used by 50 Jordanian native speakers of Arabic and 50 American native speakers of English. A 9-item Discourse-Completion Task was used to collect the data for the purpose of identifying potential similarities and differences in the use of (and response to) politeness strategies between Jordanian speakers of Arabic and American speakers of English. The two sample groups were found to employ similar politeness strategies with varying frequencies and realizations.

Native Speakers' Perception of Non - Native English Speech

This study is aimed at investigating the rating and intelligibility of different non-native varieties of English, namely French English, Japanese English and Jordanian English by native English speakers and their attitudes towards these foreign accents. To achieve the goals of this study, the researchers used a web-based questionnaire which targeted native speakers of English. The materials for this study were a questionnaire for respondents to fill out and tape recordings of six different short stories, each of which was recorded by a non native speaker of English. The first short story was tape- recorded by a male French speaker and the second by a female French speaker. Similarly, the other four short stories were tape-recorded by male and female Japanese and Jordanian speakers respectively. The respondents or raters consisted of 110 native speakers of English (78 females and 32 females); the majority of them from the USA, but there were others from Britain, Canada, and Australia. They were requested to surf the webpage www. englishforeignaccent .com, especially designed by the researchers, fill out the questionnaire and rate the non-native varieties under investigation, and four months later the number of respondents reached one hundred and ten which constituted the sample of the study. Data obtained indicated that the Jordanian accent was considered as the most intelligible, followed by the French then the Japanese English accent. The native speakers also showed significantly more positive attitudes towards Jordanian English than French and Japanese English. Finally, the positive attitude towards Jordanian English was affirmed by the respondents who assigned the Jordanian English speakers to the most prestigious professions such as medicine and teaching.

Genetic supervised classification of Standard Arabic fricative sounds

The purpose of this paper is the application of the Genetic Algorithms (GAs) to the supervised classification level, in order to recognize Standard Arabic (SA) fricative consonants of continuous, naturally spoken, speech. We have used GAs because of their advantages in resolving complicated optimization problems where analytic methods fail. For that, we have analyzed a corpus that contains several sentences composed of the thirteen types of fricative consonants in the initial, medium and final positions, recorded by several male Jordanian speakers. Nearly all the world’s languages contain at least one fricative sound. The SA language occupies a rather exceptional position in that nearly half of its consonants are fricatives and nearly half of fricative inventory is situated far back in the uvular, pharyngeal and glottal areas. We have used Mel-Frequency Cepstral analysis method to extract vocal tract coefficients from the speech signal. Among a set of classifiers like Bayesian, likelihood and distance classifier, we have used the distance one. It is based on the classification measure criterion. So, we formulate the supervised classification as a function optimization problem and we have used the decision rule Mahalanobis distance as the fitness function for the GA evaluation. We report promising results with a classification recognition accuracy of 82%.

A Videofluoroscopic Study of the Emphatic Consonants in Jordanian Arabic

In order to identify the nature of the emphatic consonants and the articulatory features accompanying their production, 384 videofluoroscopic images of 2 male and 2 female Jordanian speakers were analyzed. Analysis focused on the differences between nonemphatic and emphatic consonants in the pharyngeal length and width, the hyoid bone elevation and larynx raising. Results show that males and females produce emphatics as pharyngealized sounds with the tongue root retracting into the oropharynx and the hyoid bone elevating and the larynx raising as a result.