Overview
This book explores speakers’ intentions, and the structural and pragmatic resources they employ, in spoken Arabic – which is different in many essential respects from literary Arabic. Based on new empirical findings from across the Arabic world this book elucidates the many ways in which context and the goals and intentions of the speaker inform and constrain linguistic structure in spoken Arabic. This is the first book to provide an in-depth analysis of information structure in spoken Arabic, which is based on language as it is actually used, not on normatively-given grammar. Written by leading experts in Arabic linguistics, the studies evaluate the ways in which relevant parts of a message in spoken Arabic are encoded, highlighted or obscured. It covers a broad range of issues from across the Arabic-speaking world, including the discourse-sensitive properties of word order variation, the use of intonation for information focussing, the differential role of native Arabic and second languages to encode information in a codeswitching context, and the need for cultural contextualization to understand the role of ""disinformation"" structure. The studies combine a strong empirical basis with methodological and theoretical issues drawn from a number of different perspectives including pragmatic theory, language contact, instrumental prosodic analysis and (de-)grammaticalization theory. The introductory chapter embeds the project within the deeper Arabic grammatical tradition, as elaborated by the eleventh century grammarian Abdul Qahir al-Jurjani. This book provides an invaluable comprehensive introduction to an important, yet understudied, component of spoken Arabic.
Full Product Details
Author: Jonathan Owens (University of Maryland, USA) ,
Alaa Elgibali (University of Maryland, USA)
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd
Imprint: Routledge
Weight: 0.530kg
ISBN: 9780415845113
ISBN 10: 0415845114
Pages: 270
Publication Date: 15 February 2013
Audience:
College/higher education
,
Professional and scholarly
,
Tertiary & Higher Education
,
Professional & Vocational
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active
Availability: In Print
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Reviews
By and large, the studies in this ground-breaking volume have opened a new vista on the significant subject of information structure, and will be of immense value to all students of Arabic and comparative linguistics who are interested in intercultural interaction of pragmatic ideas in modern linguistic scholarship. - Amidu Olalekan Sanni, Lagos; Zeitschrift fuer Arabische Linguistik (Journal of Arabic Linguistics), 57, 2013, pp. 91-94 (2013).
Author Information
Jonathan Owens is Professor of Arabic Linguistics at Bayreuth University, Germany. He has published extensively on many aspects of Arabic linguistics; his most recent publications include Arabic as a Minority Language and A Linguistic History of Arabic. Alaa Elgibali is Professor of Arabic and Linguistics at the University of Maryland, USA. He is the author of several seminal publications, including Arabic as a First Language: A study in language acquisition and development, and is associate editor of the four-volume Encyclopedia of Arabic Language and Linguistics.
