 Our Work
Please use the links provided below to navigate the CASL directory database.
CASL People | CASL Projects | Publications
Project Details:
Principal Investigators on this project:
Communication and Information Structure in Spoken Arabic
Spoken Arabic June 8-10, 2006, Conference
Project Objective: To advance knowledge of informational structure and pragmatic features of spoken Arabic by hosting a conference and producing a book or special issue of a journal bringing together international scholars in the field of spoken Arabic.
Project Definition:
Informational structure has to do with:
- how a message is structured in such a way that it is presented in an optimally efficient, appropriate, and clear fashion;
- style as much as grammar
Pragmatic features, which go beyond word order and intonation of sentences and words, have to do with:
- establishing the roles and relationships between the participants in a conversation
- establishing the purpose of the communication
Project Importance:
The study of pragmatics and information structure benefits Higher level language users, who need to:
- know how to pronounce words and phrases with the appropriate pitch, intonation, and pauses
- be aware that words can have unusual, pragmatically-determined meanings
- know how and when to use different languages in multilingual Arabic societies
- attain high-level fluency through native-like information structuring
Analysts, who need to:
- be aware of cues for when an information chunk has ended and when to expect a new one to begin
- know how a word is marked in speech as important
- use pragmatic and informational cues to ascertain such things as dialect and even personal attributes of speakers
Project Background: Spoken Arabic has different structures and rules from written Arabic. Most research on spoken Arabic is about grammar, lexicon, and about rules, and is not validated by data from actual usage.
Project Products: Proceedings of the conference will be compiled into a book on information structure in spoken Arabic, which will advance the state of the art and identify new research domains. The book will be submitted for publication in FY 07.
Project Reports:
Project Activities: Conference was held on June 8-10, 2006, at the University of Maryland.
|
