Moha Ennaji
Introduction

Emmanuel Nicholas Abakah
The Tonology of Compounds in Akan

Samira Farwaneh
Surface Effects in Arabic Morphology

Samir Diouny
Disassociation of Action and Object naming in Four Moroccan Arabic-Speaking Broca's Agrammatic Subjects

Ahmad Khalaf Sakarna
The Englo-Arabic Language of Young Urban Jordanians: The Influence of the Internet, Mobile Phones, and TV Satellites

Modupe M. Alimi and Joyce T. Mathangwane
The Acquisition of English Vocabulry and Spelling by Botswana Students

Reddad Erguig and Hssein Khtou
The New Reform in Higher Education in Morocco: A Shift from Terminal to Continuous Assessment

Yahya Ibn Ahmed Mehdi Arishi
Samples of Variation and Metathesis in the Holy Qur'an: A Phonological and Semantic Study (in Arabic)
 

Abstract

    This issue of Languages and Linguistics encompasses a number of articles dealing with different topics in phonology, morphology, syntax and applied linguistics. It is divided into two parts: part one is devoted to the phonology, morphology and syntax of Arabic and Akan, an African language spoken in Ghana. Part two is concerned with code-mixing among Jordanian youth, the learning of English as a foreign language in Morocco and Botswana, notably the difficulties encountered by learners regarding evaluation, writing ability and orthography use.

     The central role of the consonantal root in Arabic has been defended in numerous works, prompted by the observation that only root consonants are visible to transpositional processes attested in language games (McCarthy (1981)) and aphasic speech (Prunet et al.( 2000)), and hypocoristic formation (Davis and Zawaydeh (1999, 2001)). But the status of the root was put to further examination in works on modern Arabic (Ratcliffe (1997), Benmamoun (2003)) and Hebrew morphology (Bat-El (1994), Ussishkin (1999, 2005)), guided by the observation that outputs may preserve some non-root elements from the input. This observation cannot be handled adequately in a theory that limits its reference to the root, and necessitates instead an analysis whereby words are derived from other words. In this short article, I present three types of morphological processes in support of the latter view. These processes challenge the primacy of the root and point instead to the significant role of surface forms and correspondence relations in deriving the optimal output.  

    Comparisons of noun and verb processing have taken on an increased importance in behavioral studies of lexical access in brain-injured patients. Neuropsychological studies have demonstrated that the production of nouns and verbs can be dissociated in aphasia. Some non-fluent patients show a disproportionate deficit for verbs; while some fluent aphasics show a greater deficit for nouns. For some, noun/verb dissociations generate evidence for a special component of the lexicon that encodes grammatical class. This study presents results from spontaneous speech, picture description, and action and object naming tasks with 4 Moroccan Arabic-speaking agrammatic aphasics and 4 gender and age-matched control subjects examining verb and noun naming. For all the tasks, we found that the aphasics achieved high correctness scores for object naming, while action naming was severely impaired. To account for the observed verb-noun disassociation, we suggest that the Moroccan Arabic-speaking agrammatic aphasics suffer from a processing disorder that affects their ability to produce verbs, given their complex syntactic and morphological structure.

    Vocabulary and spelling are aspects of language teaching that are usually taken for granted with little or no attention devoted to them in the language syllabus in spite of the fact that lexical competence is an important component of communicative competence. This article discusses, through an examination of essays collected over a period of four years, some of the factors that influence students’ acquisition of the English vocabulary and spelling at the University of Botswana. Findings indicate that three major factors affect their English vocabulary and spelling: the phonology of the L1, the semantic system of the L1 and learners’ misapplication and confusion of English morphological rules. Data show a close relationship between the occurrence of English misspelled words and the Setswana/Ikalanga phonological systems. In addition, learners’ superficial knowledge of the derivational and inflectional characteristics of some English words contributes to the occurrence of wrongly spelled words. It was also observed that students’ semantic mapping in L2 reflects the structure of L1 resulting in word confusion and wrong lexical choice. The authors recommend extensive and intensive programmes in the teaching of vocabulary and spelling particularly at the secondary school to prepare learners for higher academic learning. While the extensive programmes would expose them to the most frequent and useful words, and alert them to the differences between the linguistic systems of L1 and L2, intensive instructions would focus on network skills and aid the development of learners’ sensitivity to English lexical relations.

     The aim of this paper is to contribute to the on-going debate about the recent reform in Higher Education in Morocco. Emphasis is laid on the shift from Terminal to Continuous Assessment. Through the use of questionnaires, we elicited the attitudes of students and teachers towards both Terminal and Continuous Assessment in order to assess the degree of success of the recent change in the assessment system in Higher Education. The respondents were chosen from the Department of English Studies in the Faculty of Letters in El Jadida. The results obtained show that although students and teachers had negative attitudes towards Terminal Assessment and supported the introduction of Continuous Assessment, students did not argue for a total eradication of Terminal Assessment. These results suggest that Terminal Assessment should be maintained along with Continuous Assessment and that the parties concerned have to learn from the experience of Terminal Assessment for an appropriate implementation of Continuous Assessment.

    Yahya Ibn Ahmed Mehdi Arishi provides a phonological and semantic study of the phonological variants of twenty six words cited in the holy Qur’an. The article reveals that the prosodic and phonological aspects of these words show the existence of phonological compatibility and harmony between pairs of words and synonyms. These variants have an important function in the text, particularly metathesis and lexical variation.