Inflectional Change Patterns in Arabic

• Authors: Maisoun Abu Joudeh , Sabri Al-Shboul
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

Most approaches to inflectional morphology propose a single-default representation. This research on Jordanian Arabic offers an analysis having more than one default inflection. This is accomplished by showing that unlike previous morphological accounts like the single-mechanism model, dual-mechanism model, and the schema model (cf. Pinker, 1990; Rumelhart & McClelland, 1986; and Bybee, 1985), the current research relies upon the ‘openness’ mechanism to define defaultness. Openness is thus defined as the ability of the inflectional process to accept new forms into a language. The corpus used in this research contains diminutives, verbal nouns, derivatives, and loan words used in JA. Other defining factors are modified in this research, such as regularity (rule-based mechanism) and productivity (type frequency). The findings of this research indicate that there are two possible defaults in Jordanian Arabic ordered in terms of openness: the sound feminine plural and the iambic broken plural. The findings have the implication that a language’s grammar can have a multi-default system.

Keywords

EN

Arabic language; inflection; grammar; language patterns

• Publisher: Sciendo
• Journal: Psychology of Language and Communication
• Year: 2013
• Volume: 17
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 203-227

Dates

published

2013-09-01

online

2013-09-06

Contributors

author

Maisoun Abu Joudeh

• Hashemite University, Zarqa

author

Sabri Al-Shboul

• Department of English Language and Literature, Hashemite University, P.O. Box 150459, Zarqa 13115, Jordan

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Identifiers

DOI

10.2478/plc-2013-0013