Papers by Prof. Yasser Al Tamimi Al Tamimi
A Multiple-Trace-Based Proposal for Linguistically Unconditioned Variability
International journal of Arabic-English studies, Dec 31, 2004
In his study of the casual speech of some East London English (ELE) speakers, Tamimi (2002) finds... more In his study of the casual speech of some East London English (ELE) speakers, Tamimi (2002) finds unconditioned variability in the phonetic behavior of ‘h’ under a number of linguistic conditions, including a) different lexical functions (content vs. functional words), b) different stress conditions (stressed vs. unstressed), c) different positions in the utterance/word, and d) different phonetic environments (among other conditions). He also observes the same type of variability in unstressed non-initial function words appearing in the casual speech of some speakers of Southern British Standard (SBS). This paper introduces a Multiple-Trace-Based-Proposal to account for such variability, after revealing some explanatory inadequacies in a number of available phonological theories, including a) Coexistent Phonemic systems, b) Standard Generative Phonology, c) Variable Rules, d) Bailey’s Polylectal Grammar, e) Lexical Diffusion, f) Articulatory phonology and g) Optimality Theory. Unlike these, the proposal, based on the multiple-trace theory and some views already available in the literature, appears to be bale to explain the unconditioned variability of the glottal fricative in ELE.
Curriculum Development in Jordan: Continuous Improvement towards Excellence
Yasser A. S Al Tamimi, 2023
Beyond its traditional function, phonology has been demonstrated to play a significant role in th... more Beyond its traditional function, phonology has been demonstrated to play a significant role in the gender marking of given names in some Germanic languages. However, this significance has not been investigated for Semitic languages, including Arabic. Therefore, irrespective of the classical gender-identification approaches (i.e., familiarity, morphology, semantics, and pragmatics), the present study examines whether the phonological structures of Saudi first names may solely reveal the gender of that name. The first names of Saudi males (N= 237) and Saudi females (N=419) drawn from the registrar of a Saudi university in Riyadh were analyzed according to various phonological variables, including the number of phonemes, the number of syllables, the distinction between open vs closed syllables, the manner of articulation of name-initial and name-final sounds, stress position, in addition to the state of the glottis. The quantitative study finds that compared to male names, female names have fewer phonemes, tend to begin with an open syllable, are more likely to be stressed in the second position, are more likely to end with a vowel or a voiceless consonant, are more likely, to begin with, a glottal stop and a trill, and are more likely to end with a vowel or a glottal fricative.
Yasser A. S. Al Tamimi, 2023
Beyond its traditional function, phonology has been demonstrated to play a significant role in th... more Beyond its traditional function, phonology has been demonstrated to play a significant role in the gender marking of given names in some Germanic languages. However, this significance has not been investigated for Semitic languages, including Arabic. Therefore, irrespective of the classical gender-identification approaches (i.e., familiarity, morphology, semantics, and pragmatics), the present study examines whether the phonological structures of Saudi first names may solely reveal the gender of that name. The first names of Saudi males (N= 237) and Saudi females (N=419) drawn from the registrar of a Saudi university in Riyadh were analyzed according to various phonological variables, including the number of phonemes, the number of syllables, the distinction between open vs closed syllables, the manner of articulation of name-initial and name-final sounds, stress position, in addition to the state of the glottis. The quantitative study finds that compared to male names, female names have fewer phonemes, tend to begin with an open syllable, are more likely to be stressed in the second position, are more likely to end with a vowel or a voiceless consonant, are more likely, to begin with, a glottal stop and a trill, and are more likely to end with a vowel or a glottal fricative.
International Journal of Linguistics, Literature and Translation
This article outlines the most important trends in subtitling research in the Arab World. Despite... more This article outlines the most important trends in subtitling research in the Arab World. Despite its importance, immediacy of reception and the broad audience subtitles reach, academia has lagged for decades and failed to cope with the growing subtitling industry, missing great opportunities for research, practice as well as the teaching of subtitling in institutions of higher education. However, a good number of subtitling practitioners and academics have realized this wide gap in the research and started to carry out serious projects to investigate this area. This article reviews the current body of literature that spans the past twenty years and highlights the major areas of research as well as the gaps that still exist. This review has found out that the major areas that have been covered so far include technical aspects of subtitling; linguistic difficulties (lexical, syntactic, semantic, pragmatic, etc.); rhetorical aspects (such as euphemism, humor and word play); and cultur...
?- Variation in Northern Jordanian Arabic: Manifestations of Standard Origin
The study investigates the phonetic behavior of the glottal stop in different inword – positions ... more The study investigates the phonetic behavior of the glottal stop in different inword – positions (initial, medial, final) and across word-boundary in Northern Jordanian Arabic (NJA), and attempts to examine its convergence to that behavior described for classical Arabic in standard references. The study provides detailed quantitative data about ?variation in NJA, and concludes that NJA is essentially similar to the standard model in demonstrating the sound's different variants, viz., fullyarticulated ?, weak glottal constriction, substitution and deletion under similar phonetic conditioning. The study also finds some slight deviations from the standard possibly attributed to differences in the linguistic practice in both varieties, and reveals some innovations, especially in the substitution process.
Binomials in Iraqi and Jordanian Arabic
jllonline.co.uk
Page 1. Journal of Language and Linguistics Vol. 4 No. 2 2005 ISSN 1475 - 8989 135 Binomials in I... more Page 1. Journal of Language and Linguistics Vol. 4 No. 2 2005 ISSN 1475 - 8989 135 Binomials in Iraqi and Jordanian Arabic Dinha T. Gorgis and Yaser Al-Tamimi The Hashemite University, Jordan Abstract Binomials, or contrastive ...
Romanised Jordanian Arabic E-messages
... Palfreyman & al Khalil 2003: 15): ... of whole clauses from one code to a... more ... Palfreyman & al Khalil 2003: 15): ... of whole clauses from one code to another, eg samples 18 and 62, or using English as a code but expressing content in Arabic, eg believe me, you'll the fun at the end when you get married and why are you mad at haitham
walik yel3an ...
Asian Social Science, 2013
Phonemic awareness (PA), the consciousness of the sounds of the language, plays an instrumental r... more Phonemic awareness (PA), the consciousness of the sounds of the language, plays an instrumental role in reading development; research confirms that individuals with difficulty in detecting or manipulating sounds in words will struggle with learning to read. In spite of the plethora of instruments assessing PA of other languages, there is a dearth of research addressing PA in Arabic, the mother tongue of no less than 400 million people. Benefitting from previous research in the field, this paper is the first to develop and administer an instrument towards this end. Our proposed instrument, which includes 24 carefully selected words based on the standards of familiarity and feature analysis with a reliability coefficient of 0.93 was administered to 100 participants. The tool categorizes participants into three categories, highlights the role of KG, and reports on words the learners found easy and those difficult to segment. The paper calls for more research to investigate the role of Arabic PA in empowering Arab children's reading ability.
The Buckingham Journal of Language and Linguistics, 2017
Building on Tamimi and Rababah (2007), the present study is an investigation of the effectiveness... more Building on Tamimi and Rababah (2007), the present study is an investigation of the effectiveness of explicit phonological awareness intervention in contrast with formal classroom instruction on developing phonological awareness skills for Jordanian EFL second-graders in a governmental school. Based on some views (Adams, 1990; Yopp, 1992; Stanovich, 1994; and Chard and Dickson, 1999) a phonological training program was designed with focus on five phonological awareness skills, viz., segmentation, isolation, deletion, substitution and blending, and their respective sub-skills. On measures of Robertson and Salter's (1997) Phonological Awareness Test (PAT), the experimental group that had undergone 15 40-minute phonological awareness sessions outperformed in deletion, substitution and blending skills the control group which continued to receive formal classroom instruction based on Action Pack 2. The findings corroborate previous research conclusions favoring explicit phonological ...
Journal of King Saud University - Languages and Translation, 2013
The study investigates the phonotactics of coda consonant clusters in Modern Standard Arabic CVCC... more The study investigates the phonotactics of coda consonant clusters in Modern Standard Arabic CVCC syllable from the perspective of the Sonority Sequencing Principle (SSP). Based on around 500 CVCC lexical items listed in The Hans Wehr Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic, and on Hogg and McCully's (1987) sonority scale, the study provides an exhaustive quantitative account of all possible coda manifestations which have been found in this study to fall into three major categories: conformity (42%), sonority reversals (49%), and sonority plateaus (9%). The study specifies and thoroughly exemplifies the patterns and subpatterns under each, and concludes, given the 58% of violation, that SSP is not a reliable phonological predictor for the sequencing of the consonant clusters in Modern Standard Arabic CVCC coda, contrary to long standing phonological assumptions that put much weight on the explanatory adequacy of this principle.
The Relationship between Phonological Awareness and Early Reading for First Grade Korean Language Learners with Reading Difficulties
Asia Pacific Education Review, 2007
International Journal of English Linguistics
In his analysis of /dˤ/-variation in Saudi Arabian newscasting, Al-Tamimi (2020) finds unpredicat... more In his analysis of /dˤ/-variation in Saudi Arabian newscasting, Al-Tamimi (2020) finds unpredicatble variability between the standard variant [dˤ] and the non-standard variant [ðˤ] in different in-words positions, in different phonetic environments, and in semantically ‘content’ and suprasegmentally ‘stressed’ lexical itmes assumed to favor the standard variant. He even finds in many of these lexical items an unusual realizational flucatuation between the two variants. The present exploratory and ‘theory-testing’ study aims to find a reasonable account for these findings through examining the explanatory adequacy of a number of available phonological theories, notions, models and proposals that have made different attempts to accommodate variation, and this includes Coexistent Phonemic Systems, Standard Generative Phonology, Lexical Diffusion, Variable Rules, Poly-Lectal Grammar, Articulatory Phonology, different versions of the Optimality Theory, in addition to the Multiple-Trace-M...
Tamimi, Y & Khalil, H. (2016). The French Language in Saudi Arabia: A Sociolinguistic Overview. L’Harmattan, Paris
Romanised Jordanian Arabic is a newly emerging code of electronic communication extensively used
... more Romanised Jordanian Arabic is a newly emerging code of electronic communication extensively used
by first generation e-message senders, which might be described as a hybrid lingua franca or even a
pidgin. This study, based on 1098 e-mail messages sent by 257 undergraduate students, and on 1400
chat turns exchanged between nick-named senders, as well as on an A4 eight-page conversation run
by seven participants, all of whom having a workable knowledge of English, reveals that notational
formalism representing consonants is 37% systematically employed while the rest is variably represented;
for one Arabic character there can be up to 6 corresponding symbols, mainly Roman, and
Arabic numerals whose selection finds justification on pictorial and pronunciation basis. Vowels, on
the other hand, are found less systematic where different sounds are assigned the same vowel character.
Since all of the messages seem to have been exchanged between university students and/or
graduates, code-switching is too obvious. It has been found out that 60% of the messages involve
switching from English into Romanised Jordanian Arab. The majority of switches mainly involve nouns
(61.84%), a conclusion which moderately supports previous sociolinguistic findings. Where a switch
happens to be clausal, code-switching turns out to be ‘code-mixing’, the function of which is at best
rhetorical. When switching is intra-sentential, the grammars of English and Arabic match each other
but with noticeable word-order reversal.
Building on Tamimi and Rababah (2007), the present study investigates the efficiency of explicit ... more Building on Tamimi and Rababah (2007), the present study investigates the efficiency of explicit phonological awareness intervention in contrast with formal classroom instruction on developing phonological awareness skills for Jordanian EFL second-graders in a governmental school. Based on some views (Adams 1990, Yopp 1992, Stanovich 1994, and Chard and Dickson 1999), a phonological training program was designed with focus on five phonological awareness skills: segmentation, isolation, deletion, substitution and blending, and on their respective sub-skills. On measures of Robertson and Salter's (1997) Phonological Awareness Test (PAT), the experimental group that had undergone 15 40-minute phonological awareness sessions outperformed in deletion, substitution and blending skills the control group which continued to receive formal classroom instruction based on Action Pack 2. The findings corroborate previous research conclusions favoring explicit phonological awareness interventions, and thus call for integrating phonological awareness interventions in Jordanian basic stages' curricula.
In his study of the casual speech of some East London English (ELE) speakers, Tamimi (2002) finds... more In his study of the casual speech of some East London English (ELE) speakers, Tamimi (2002) finds unconditioned variability in the phonetic behavior of ‘h’ under a number of linguistic conditions, including a) different lexical functions (content vs. functional words), b) different stress conditions (stressed vs. unstressed), c) different positions in the utterance/word, and d) different phonetic environments (among other conditions). He also observes the same type of variability in unstressed non-initial function words appearing in the casual speech of some speakers of Southern British Standard (SBS). This paper introduces a Multiple-Trace-Based-Proposal to account for such variability, after revealing some explanatory inadequacies in a number of available phonological theories, including a) Coexistent Phonemic systems, b) Standard Generative Phonology, c) Variable Rules, d) Bailey’s Polylectal Grammar, e) Lexical Diffusion, f) Articulatory phonology and g) Optimality Theory. Unlike these, the proposal, based on the multiple-trace theory and some views already available in the literature, appears to be bale to explain the unconditioned variability of the glottal fricative in ELE.
The study investigates the phonetic behavior of the glottal stop in different in- word –
position... more The study investigates the phonetic behavior of the glottal stop in different in- word –
positions (initial, medial, final) and across word-boundary in Northern Jordanian
Arabic (NJA), and attempts to examine its convergence to that behavior described for
classical Arabic in standard references. The study provides detailed quantitative data
about ?- variation in NJA, and concludes that NJA is essentially similar to the
standard model in demonstrating the sound's different variants, viz., fully- articulated
?, weak glottal constriction, substitution and deletion under similar phonetic
conditioning. The study also finds some slight deviations from the standard possibly
attributed to differences in the linguistic practice in both varieties, and reveals some
innovations, especially in the substitution process
Binomials, or contrastive lexical couples, in both Iraqi and Jordanian Arabic colloquials, are
fo... more Binomials, or contrastive lexical couples, in both Iraqi and Jordanian Arabic colloquials, are
formulaic expressions comprising of two lexical items, A and B, whereby the presence of
'and' is optional in some cases and obligatory in the majority of the 150 collected binomials.
A and B belong to the same grammatical category. The most frequent grammatical pattern is
found out to be a noun plus a noun (75.33%). Contrary to the claim made by Bakir (1999),
formal principles pertaining to syllabic structure are not seen to govern word order
preferences. Rather, pragmatic, and to a lesser degree semantic, constraints determine order.
An in-depth analysis has revealed that direction of fit, viz. word-to-world, provides the most
viable explanation for why item A ought to be ordered before item B. This we call
'naturalness' condition or a 'replica' which, in addition to accounting for natural sequences,
including spatio-temporality phenomenon, can resolve some ordering paradoxes. Semantic
criteria, e.g. positiveness, proximity, oppositeness, etc. are not given much credit. Only
'markedness' is semantically capable of accounting for ordering A before B, especially in
case of neutralization, i.e. the more A spreads along a scale, the more unmarked it is.
Differences between Iraqi Arabic and Jordanian Arabic are mainly formal. Cultural harmony
is crystal clear. The only difference is manifest in the availability of a restricted set of
binomials peculiar to each sub-culture. This conclusion does not lend support to Sapir-Whorf
hypothesis, but the question whether Arabic grammar determines our worldview remains
debatable. Equally so, Cooper and Ross's (1975) 'ME - First Orientation Principle' cannot be
generalized; for if we did apply it, the Arabs would be described as a people who take more
than they give, for example, because 'take' has precedence over 'give' in Arabic
Phonemic awareness (PA), the consciousness of the sounds of the language, plays an instrumental r... more Phonemic awareness (PA), the consciousness of the sounds of the language, plays an instrumental role in reading
development; research confirms that individuals with difficulty in detecting or manipulating sounds in words
will struggle with learning to read. In spite of the plethora of instruments assessing PA of other languages, there
is a dearth of research addressing PA in Arabic, the mother tongue of no less than 400 million people. Benefitting
from previous research in the field, this paper is the first to develop and administer an instrument towards this
end. Our proposed instrument, which includes 24 carefully selected words based on the standards of familiarity
and feature analysis with a reliability coefficient of 0.93 was administered to 100 participants. The tool
categorizes participants into three categories, highlights the role of KG, and reports on words the learners found
easy and those difficult to segment. The paper calls for more research to investigate the role of Arabic PA in
empowering Arab children’s reading ability.
Keywords: Arabic, speakers of Arabic, phonemic awareness, phonological awareness, reading
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Papers by Prof. Yasser Al Tamimi Al Tamimi
by first generation e-message senders, which might be described as a hybrid lingua franca or even a
pidgin. This study, based on 1098 e-mail messages sent by 257 undergraduate students, and on 1400
chat turns exchanged between nick-named senders, as well as on an A4 eight-page conversation run
by seven participants, all of whom having a workable knowledge of English, reveals that notational
formalism representing consonants is 37% systematically employed while the rest is variably represented;
for one Arabic character there can be up to 6 corresponding symbols, mainly Roman, and
Arabic numerals whose selection finds justification on pictorial and pronunciation basis. Vowels, on
the other hand, are found less systematic where different sounds are assigned the same vowel character.
Since all of the messages seem to have been exchanged between university students and/or
graduates, code-switching is too obvious. It has been found out that 60% of the messages involve
switching from English into Romanised Jordanian Arab. The majority of switches mainly involve nouns
(61.84%), a conclusion which moderately supports previous sociolinguistic findings. Where a switch
happens to be clausal, code-switching turns out to be ‘code-mixing’, the function of which is at best
rhetorical. When switching is intra-sentential, the grammars of English and Arabic match each other
but with noticeable word-order reversal.
positions (initial, medial, final) and across word-boundary in Northern Jordanian
Arabic (NJA), and attempts to examine its convergence to that behavior described for
classical Arabic in standard references. The study provides detailed quantitative data
about ?- variation in NJA, and concludes that NJA is essentially similar to the
standard model in demonstrating the sound's different variants, viz., fully- articulated
?, weak glottal constriction, substitution and deletion under similar phonetic
conditioning. The study also finds some slight deviations from the standard possibly
attributed to differences in the linguistic practice in both varieties, and reveals some
innovations, especially in the substitution process
formulaic expressions comprising of two lexical items, A and B, whereby the presence of
'and' is optional in some cases and obligatory in the majority of the 150 collected binomials.
A and B belong to the same grammatical category. The most frequent grammatical pattern is
found out to be a noun plus a noun (75.33%). Contrary to the claim made by Bakir (1999),
formal principles pertaining to syllabic structure are not seen to govern word order
preferences. Rather, pragmatic, and to a lesser degree semantic, constraints determine order.
An in-depth analysis has revealed that direction of fit, viz. word-to-world, provides the most
viable explanation for why item A ought to be ordered before item B. This we call
'naturalness' condition or a 'replica' which, in addition to accounting for natural sequences,
including spatio-temporality phenomenon, can resolve some ordering paradoxes. Semantic
criteria, e.g. positiveness, proximity, oppositeness, etc. are not given much credit. Only
'markedness' is semantically capable of accounting for ordering A before B, especially in
case of neutralization, i.e. the more A spreads along a scale, the more unmarked it is.
Differences between Iraqi Arabic and Jordanian Arabic are mainly formal. Cultural harmony
is crystal clear. The only difference is manifest in the availability of a restricted set of
binomials peculiar to each sub-culture. This conclusion does not lend support to Sapir-Whorf
hypothesis, but the question whether Arabic grammar determines our worldview remains
debatable. Equally so, Cooper and Ross's (1975) 'ME - First Orientation Principle' cannot be
generalized; for if we did apply it, the Arabs would be described as a people who take more
than they give, for example, because 'take' has precedence over 'give' in Arabic
development; research confirms that individuals with difficulty in detecting or manipulating sounds in words
will struggle with learning to read. In spite of the plethora of instruments assessing PA of other languages, there
is a dearth of research addressing PA in Arabic, the mother tongue of no less than 400 million people. Benefitting
from previous research in the field, this paper is the first to develop and administer an instrument towards this
end. Our proposed instrument, which includes 24 carefully selected words based on the standards of familiarity
and feature analysis with a reliability coefficient of 0.93 was administered to 100 participants. The tool
categorizes participants into three categories, highlights the role of KG, and reports on words the learners found
easy and those difficult to segment. The paper calls for more research to investigate the role of Arabic PA in
empowering Arab children’s reading ability.
Keywords: Arabic, speakers of Arabic, phonemic awareness, phonological awareness, reading