Rania Habib

Syracuse University | SU · Department of Languages, Literatures, and Linguistics

This study empirically investigates the structural and social variation of five negators, maa ‘not’, muu ‘not’, laʔ ‘no’, laa ‘no/imperative not’, and wa-laa ‘(and) no/not/imperative not’, in the naturally occurring Syrian Arabic speech of 72 speakers. It quantitatively analyzes the frequency of all possible grammatical/pragmatic functions and/or f...

The COVID-19 pandemic has elevated focus on educational technologies (Elaish, et al., 2021). One area of sustained controversy in this domain centers around machine translation (MT), where language teachers and students have historically disagreed (Lee, 2020). While research has demonstrated the benefits of MT (e.g. Benda, 2013; Chon et al. 2021; C...

Like other literary genres, songs can be a successful outlet for achieving certain goals. Using a qualitative and descriptive approach utilizing the stancetaking framework, this study examines the development and use of more than 50 Arabic songs as a vehicle to not only inform the public about COVID-19, but also take affective stances that connect...

This study explores metathesis in Syrian Arabic (SyA). The data reveal two types of metatheses. Type-I is phonologically conditioned, involving at least one of the four root consonants, ʒ, f, ʕ and ћ with the fricatives (z, s), liquids (l, r) or gutturals (q/ʔ) in specific positions within the root regardless of word derivation. Type-II is morpho-p...

The COVID-19 pandemic has elevated focus on educational technologies (Elaish, et al., 2021). One area of sustained controversy in this domain centers around machine translation (MT), where language teachers and students have historically disagreed (Lee, 2020). While research has demonstrated the benefits of MT (e.g. Benda, 2013; Chon et al. 2021; C...

This study aims to present evidence of gender variability among leaders of language change across different sociolinguistic variables, five phonological variables (a consonant and four vowels) and a discourse variable in Syrian Arabic, within the same speech community. Employing a sociolinguistic variationist approach and comparing children to adul...

Using quantitative, traditional variationist sociolinguistic methods, this study examines the social and linguistic distribution of the interchangeable Syrian Arabic discourse markers yaʕni and ʔinnu: 'I mean' in the speech of 72 speakers from the village Oyoun Al-Wadi in Syria. Children and adult data are compared. Age and gender among four groups...

This study examines lexical borrowings from Standard Arabic containing the voiceless uvular stop [q] sound in the speech of 52 Christian rural migrant speakers to the city of Hims in Syria. The study shows that both older and younger males use more lexical borrowings than older and younger females respectively. This gender difference is attributed...

This study examines lexical borrowings from Standard Arabic containing the voiceless uvular stop [q] sound in the speech of 52 Christian rural migrant speakers to the city of Hims in Syria. The study shows that both older and younger males use more lexical borrowings than older and younger females respectively. This gender difference is attributed...

This study examines the influence of TV and internal/local and external/urban contact on the use of (q) (realized as rural [q] or urban [ʔ]) in the speech of 50 children ages 6-18 from the village of Oyoun Al-Wadi, Syria. The influence of TV is measured by the number of hours spent watching TV programs/serials in Syrian (Damascene) Arabic (DA). The...

This study examines the acquisition of variation from the vernacular Syrian Arabic input of 22 parents in the output of their 21 children in the village of Oyoun Al-Wadi in Syria, using the four rural vowel variables (o), (o:), (e), and (e:). Each variable has two realizations: rural [o, o:, e, e:] respectively and urban [a, a:, a, a:] respectively...

This study compares the use of the variable (q), which is realized as rural [q] and urban [ʔ], in the speech of twenty-two parents and their twenty-one children from the village of Oyoun Al-Wadi in Syria. The study shows that children acquire the general gendered linguistic pattern of the community but do not replicate the linguistic frequencies th...

Through ethnographic investigation, this study shows that the different linguistic behavior of girls and boys in the village of Oyoun Al-Wadi in Syria is due to gendered linguistic ideologies and attitudes that are utilized in different ways to project gendered (feminine or masculine) and spatial (local or supralocal) identities. Social meanings ar...

Investigating the spread of the urban feature the glottal stop (?) in place of the rural voiceless uvular stop [q] in the speech of rural children and adolescents in the Syrian village, Oyoun Al-Wadi, a bidirectional linguistic change is observed. Girls retain their mothers' urban feature in preadolescence and adolescence; boys who initially acquir...

Four vowel variables are investigated in the speech of 50 rural, nonmigrant children and adolescents aged 6 to 18 years in the Syrian village Oyoun Al-Wadi. Contrary to previous studies, the children initially acquire the urban and later the rural forms of these vowels. This process of acquisition shows the following. First, children show reversal...

This study investigates two concurrent phenomena - 'imala and rounding - in the Arabic variety spoken in the Syrian village of Oyoun Al-Wadi. 'Imala refers to the use of [e] and [e:] in place of the urban vowels [a] and [a:] respectively; rounding refers to the use of [o] and [o:] in place of the urban vowels [a] and [a:] respectively. The use of t...

The change of the Standard Arabic interdentals, [θ] > [t] and [s], and [ð] > [d] and [z], in some Egyptian and Levantine Arabic dialects was traditionally explained in terms of two historical changes. The first change was a complete merger of [θ] with [t] and [ð] with [d]. The second change, i.e. [θ] > [s] and [ð] > [z], began with borrowing words...

This study investigates the spread of two urban features used in Syrian urban centers such as Damascus and Hims to the vernacular Arabic of non-migrant, rural children and adolescents who are residing in the Syrian village of Oyoun Al-Wadi. The first of the two features is the spread of the urban glottal stop in place of the rural voiceless uvular...

I present a new model for analyzing sociolinguistic variation, proposing and incorporating a set of social constraints into Optimality Theory and the Gradual Learning Algorithm. Incorporating social constraints with linguistic constrains is essential to provide explanation of the grammar differences among speakers belonging to the same or different...

I present a new model for bilingual minds in sociolinguistic variation situations, proposing and incorporating a set of social constraints into Optimality Theory and the Gradual Learning Algorithm. Incorporating social constraints with linguistic constrains is essential to provide explanation of the grammar differences among speakers belonging to t...

This chapter presents the sequential development in sociolinguistic methodology. It touches on quantitative, qualitative, and formal models of data analyses. The chapter shows that in the past sociolinguistic methodology mainly correlated linguistic variants with social factors regardless of whether quantitative or qualitative methods of data analy...

One purpose of this paper is discovering the socioeconomic indicators that determine social class identification in Arabic-speaking Communities. Another purpose is investigating whether those socioeconomic indicators have the same influence as social class on linguistic variation. The study focuses on a community of fifty-two Christian rural migran...

This study deals with the variable use of the voiceless uvular stop, [q], and the glottal stop, [ʔ], in the Colloquial Arabic of Christian rural migrants to the city of Hims in Syria. This variation results from their attempt to adopt the urban form [ʔ] to appear urbanite. The study explores the roles of age, gender, residential area, and social cl...

The study explores the role of word frequency in the process of acquisition of the urban prestigious form [ʔ] in place of [q] in the vocabulary of the colloquial Arabic of Christian rural migrants to the city of Hims in Syria. The original corpus of words was derived from the naturally occurring speech of fifty-two participants, paying special atte...

In this study, I present a new model for analyzing sociolinguistic variation within the framework of Optimality Theory (OT) and the Gradual Learning Algorithm (GLA). This model contributes to the advancement of sociolinguistic methodology as well as to OT and the GLA, unifying both linguistic and social factors. I propose a number of social constra...

In this study, disagreement and humor intertwine to enrich pragmatic and cultural knowledge and display personal identity among near-native users of English in cross-cultural communication. The study adopts ethnography of communication approach to data collection and analysis. My original data consist of three hours of audio-taped interactions amon...

The present study explores the variable use of [q] and [ʔ] in the Colloquial Arabic of rural migrant families residing in two neighbourhoods of the city of Hims, Syria. Principally, the roles of social factors (sex, age, area of residence, and social class), lexical borrowing and speech accommodation are analyzed. A quantitative study was carried o...