Variable use of intensifiers in Ottawa English.

This research paper investigates the variable use of intensifiers in Ottawa English. Following the key tenets of the variationist approach, we analysed data from Ottawa English Corpus in order to check the correlation between a number of social (age & gender) and linguistic (syntactic position, semantic class, positive/negative and emotional/non-emotional values of the intensified adjectives) factors and the choice of intensifiers. The findings reveal that "really," "so," "very," and "pretty" are the most commonly used intensifiers in this English variety, demonstrating specific associations with certain types of adjectives. These patterns show that such intensifiers are delexicalized. and the frequency of intensifier usage, with women and younger speakers utilizing intensifiers more frequently than men and older speakers, respectively. the research highlights a connection between the diachronic recycling and renewal of intensifiers and their frequency over time.

Production of Arabic Geminates by English Speakers.

This study investigates the production of Arabic intervocalic geminate obstruents as produced by American L2 learners of Arabic. The participants of the study were 24 Arabic learners (12 advanced, 12 beginners) at North Georgia University and 12 native speakers of Jordanian Arabic (the control group). An examination of the results reveals that native speakers of Arabic and advanced Arabic learners pattern similarly while the beginner Arabic learners show a different pattern. Native speakers as well as advanced L2 learners of Arabic maintain a contrast between geminate and singleton consonants in terms of consonant duration while beginner L2 leaners do not. Unlike the case of the beginner L2 learners, the duration of the preceding vowel is found to be shorter before a geminate in native speakers and advanced L2 learners. However, the duration of vowels following a geminate is not affected across all proficiency levels. Further, the results suggest that the place and manner of articulation have no effect on the production of geminate consonants for both native and advanced L2 learners. Finally, voicing of geminates is found to have a significant effect on the duration of geminates, in favor of voiceless geminates, among native speakers and beginner L2 learners.

No Adjective Ordering Preferences in Jordanian Arabic Grammar.

This article offers evidence, which is based on acceptability judgement tasks, in favour of the absence of unmarked linear serializations of stacked, non-coordinated adjectives in Jordanian Arabic (JA). Results from 16 experiments of acceptability judgements from 197 native speakers of JA point to the fact that JA places no adjective ordering. However, two factors are found to be significant. The first factor pertains to the number of stacked, non-coordinated adjectives. All possible word order patterns of different stacked adjectives are (fully) acceptable with two stacked adjectives. However, constructions with three or more stacked adjectives are significantly degraded. This is universally held, regardless of the type of the stacked adjectives (size, color, shape, etc.). We ascribe this to the third-factor effects (Chomsky in Linguist Inq 36(1):1-22, 2005) (particularly with reference to working memory and processing load) in restricting the possible number of adjectives in a given construction. A second factor relates to the syntactic position of the adjectives (attributive vs. predicative). The results reveal that attributive adjectives are significantly more acceptable than predicative adjectives (which can also be freely stacked in JA). This is also attributed to the effects of these factors favoring minimal computations. We follow O'Grady (Front Psychol 12:660296, 2021) in that the processing of across-clausal phenomena (as is the case with predicative adjectives) is more demanding than intra-clausal ones (as is the case with attributive adjectives).

Engagement strategies in English and Arabic newspaper editorials.

This study explores the use and functions of engagement strategies in English and Arabic newspaper editorials. To this end, the study analyses 80 editorials collected from two popular newspapers (40 from each): The Guardian which publishes in English and appears in the UK and Addustour which publishes in Arabic and appears in Jordan. Following Paltridge's (2020) taxonomy, the study utilises a mixed-method approach to assess whether differences in the use of engagement strategies between the two corpora are statistically significant and to identify the functions of the strategies used in the two sets of data. The findings show that there are statistically significant differences between the two languages in the use of some engagement strategies. In particular, Arabic editorials included more reader pronouns and less personal asides than did English ones. In addition, although questioning as an engagement strategy was absent in the Arabic corpus, it was used in the English one to transmit information and circulate knowledge. The findings enrich our understanding of how the editorial genre is constructed, and how editorialists engage with their readers in the two languages.

Emphatic variation of the labio-velar /w/ in two Jordanian Arabic dialects.

Much work on emphatic segments in Arabic dialects has focused on primary emphasis. However, secondary emphasis has been less of a target of study. Our research investigates the emphatic variation of the secondarily emphatic labio-velar /w/ between males and females in two Jordanian Arabic sub-dialects: Rural Jordanian Arabic and Urban Jordanian Arabic. Twenty-four native speakers from the two dialects (equally stratified according to their gender and dialect) were asked to read a carrier phrase that included fifteen tri-syllabic words having the sound /w/ in medial position. Our research confirmed that there is a variation in the degree of emphasis based on gender and dialect. More particularly, males produced stronger emphatic segments than females did, and Urban speakers produced weaker empathic segments than Rural speakers did. Results also revealed that the secondarily emphatic /w/ caused the neighboring vowels to have lowered F2 and raised F1 and F3. These findings suggest that emphasis, whether primary or secondary, tend to have the same acoustic correlates. In closing, the theoretical implications of these finding are discussed.

Narrow-syntax and post-spellout movements: evidence from the syntax of idiomatic expressions in Arabic varieties.

This research paper investigates the syntax of idiomatic expressions consisting of the verb and the object/accompanying adjunct (VP idiomatic expressions, henceforth) in two Arabic varieties: Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) and Jordanian Arabic (JA). It shows that in order for VP idiomatic expressions to obtain their idiomatic reading, the predominate pattern of the word order in each variety (i.e., the VSO word order in MSA, but the SVO word order in JA) should be used; otherwise idiomaticity is not possible (with few exceptional cases discussed in the paper). We offer evidence that this restriction on the idiomaticity of VP idiomatic expressions in Arabic varieties follows from a proposed condition that the subject (even if it is not part of the idiomatic expression) and the verb (in addition to the object) should maintain a structurally local relation with each other in the narrow syntax, i.e. they should be included in the vP phase before the spell-out point. The paper shows that the movement of the verb to T0 in MSA and JA or lack thereof does not break idiomaticity, nor does the movement of the subject to Spec,TP in JA. These facts are taken as an indication that a distinction between narrow-syntax and post-spellout movements should be made. This provides evidence for proposals that distinguish between pre- and post-spellout movements (cf. Chomsky 2001, among others).