Tense and Gender production in Arabic-Speaking Aphasics

Author(s):  
Adam Hisham
Keyword(s):  
2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 355-372
Author(s):  
Rachel Karniol

Abstract The purpose of the current research was to examine strategies of persuasion used by Arabic-speaking and Hebrew-speaking boys and girls to determine the relative contributions of culture and gender in determining communication styles. Children were asked to write a letter to a male or female peer asking for a gender-stereotyped or a gender-neutral gift. Four meta-categories were identified: formality, self-focus, other-focus, and gift-focus. For each meta-category except gift-focus, there were significant main effects and interactions. Language group was significant for formality and other-focus but not for self-focus. Importantly, there were several interactions between participant gender, target gender, and gender-stereotypy of gift, but these did not interact with language group. The results were discussed in the context of children’s socialization to the ethos of musayara and dugri in Arabic-speaking and Hebrew-speaking culture.


Author(s):  
Deanna Ferree Womack

The Ottoman Syrians - residents of modern Syria and Lebanon during the Ottoman Empire - formed the first Arabic-speaking Evangelical Church in the region. Protestants, Gender and the Arab Renaissance in Late Ottoman Syria offers a fresh narrative of the encounters of this minority Protestant community with American Presbyterian missionaries, Eastern churches and Muslims at the height of the Nahda (or Arab renaissance), from 1860 to 1915. Drawing on rare Arabic publications, the book challenges histories that focus on Western male actors. Instead it shows that Syrian Protestant women and men were agents of their own history who sought the salvation and modernization of Syria while adapting and challenging missionary teachings. These pioneers included scholars, poets, novelists, activists, school teachers, Protestant pastors, evangelistic preachers, Biblewomen, and public speakers. Such Syrian Protestants established a critical link between evangelical religiosity and the socio-cultural currents of the Nahda, making possible the literary and educational achievements of the American Syria Mission and transforming Syrian society in ways that still endure today. Locating Syrian Protestant narratives within American, Ottoman, and global histories, this book brings Middle Eastern Studies into conversation with the field of World Christianity and explores questions of American-Arab relations and gender roles in the Islamic world.


This study of speech acts offers deep insights into the social structure and gender differences of any speech community. Most relevant research on online speech acts has shed much light on Western speech communities, neglecting the speech act behavior of Arabic speaking communities. This study aimed to examine the influence of gender differences and the Jordanian cultural norms on the use of speech acts in Facebook Status Updates (FSUs). A total of 1718 FSUs were collected over a period of 2 months. Then, they were categorized according to Searle’s speech acts taxonomy. Results showed that women made an average of 6 updates to their Facebook status, while men averaged four. In addition, the results revealed that females and males differ in their linguistic repertoires. Male participants were inclined to use more assertive speech acts, whereas females were more likely to use expressive speech acts. Islam and tribalism are factors that were found to play an important role in defining the cultural norms of the Jordanian speech community.


Author(s):  
Bouchra Qorchi ◽  
Abdelaziz Bouchara

This paper includes the participation of six Moroccan Arabic-speaking aphasics (four with Broca’s aphasia, one with Wernicke’s aphasia and one with global aphasia). In our work, we turn to a particular under-resourced Arabic Dialect, Moroccan Darija or Moroccan Arabic (MA), which is an agglutinative language; that is, a fairly large number of affixes may be added to the root. Negation, tense, aspect, person, number and gender are all expressed by affixes attached to the verb. The speech corpora were taken from samples collected from patients who have attended speech and language therapy sessions. The patients were presented with picture description, repetition and grammaticality judgement tasks in order to examine the extent of impairment on the phonological, lexical, semantic and morpho-syntactic levels. Although agrammatic production is usually described as impaired in all aspects of grammar and in all types of inflection, it was found out that the use of verbal and nominal bound morphemes was spared in the output of the subjects understudy. All the three groups in this study used appropriate verbal and nominal morphology, which does not support the traditional view of agrammatism as being amorphological.Keywords: Moroccan Arabic, Aphasia, Broca, Wernicke, Agrammatism, Bound morphemes-Substitution, Deletion 


Author(s):  
Klimentina Krstanoska-Blazeska ◽  
Russell Thomson ◽  
Shameran Slewa-Younan

Evidence suggests that Arabic-speaking refugees in Australia seek help from informal sources, including religious and community leaders, when experiencing mental health issues. Despite their significant influence, there is scarce research exploring attitudes of Arabic-speaking leaders toward mental illness. The current exploratory study explored mental illness stigma and various factors among Arabic-speaking religious and community leaders. This study uses a subset of data from an evaluation trial of mental health literacy training for Arabic-speaking religious and community leaders. Our dataset contains the pre-intervention survey responses for 52 Arabic-speaking leaders (69.2% female; mean age = 47.1, SD = 15.3) on the ability to recognise a mental disorder, beliefs about causes for developing mental illness, and two stigma measures, personal stigma, and social distance. Being female was associated with a decrease in personal stigma. An increase in age was associated with an increase in personal stigma. Correct recognition of a mental disorder was associated with decreased personal stigma, and after adjusting for age and gender, significance was retained for the I-would-not-tell-anyone subscale. Endorsing the cause “being a person of weak character” was associated with an increase in personal stigma. There is an urgent need for future research to elucidate stigma to develop effective educational initiatives for stigma reduction among Arabic-speaking leaders.


2020 ◽  
Vol 63 (11) ◽  
pp. 3700-3713
Author(s):  
Saleh Shaalan

Purpose This study examined the performance of Gulf Arabic–speaking children with developmental language disorder (DLD) on a Gulf Arabic nonword repetition (GA-NWR) test and compared it to their age- and language-matched groups. We also investigated the role of syllable length, wordlikeness, and phonological complexity in light of NWR theories. Method A new GA-NWR test was conducted with three groups of Gulf Arabic–speaking children: school-age children with DLD, language-matched controls (LCs), and age-matched controls (ACs). The test consisted of two- and three-syllable words that either had no clusters, medial clusters, final clusters, or medial + final clusters. Results The GA-NWR distinguished between the performance of children with DLD and the LC and AC groups. Results showed significant syllable length, wordlikeness, and phonological complexity effects. Differences between the DLD and typically developing groups were seen in two- and three-syllable nonwords; however, when compared on nonwords with no clusters, children with DLD were not significantly different from the LC group. Conclusions The GA-NWR test differentiated between children with DLD and their ACs and LCs. Findings, therefore, support its clinical utility in this variety of Arabic. Results showed that phonological processing factors, such as phonological complexity, may have stronger effects when compared to syllable length effects. Supplemental Material https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.12996812


2020 ◽  
Vol 29 (4) ◽  
pp. 2097-2108
Author(s):  
Robyn L. Croft ◽  
Courtney T. Byrd

Purpose The purpose of this study was to identify levels of self-compassion in adults who do and do not stutter and to determine whether self-compassion predicts the impact of stuttering on quality of life in adults who stutter. Method Participants included 140 adults who do and do not stutter matched for age and gender. All participants completed the Self-Compassion Scale. Adults who stutter also completed the Overall Assessment of the Speaker's Experience of Stuttering. Data were analyzed for self-compassion differences between and within adults who do and do not stutter and to predict self-compassion on quality of life in adults who stutter. Results Adults who do and do not stutter exhibited no significant differences in total self-compassion, regardless of participant gender. A simple linear regression of the total self-compassion score and total Overall Assessment of the Speaker's Experience of Stuttering score showed a significant, negative linear relationship of self-compassion predicting the impact of stuttering on quality of life. Conclusions Data suggest that higher levels of self-kindness, mindfulness, and social connectedness (i.e., self-compassion) are related to reduced negative reactions to stuttering, an increased participation in daily communication situations, and an improved overall quality of life. Future research should replicate current findings and identify moderators of the self-compassion–quality of life relationship.


2019 ◽  
Vol 62 (11) ◽  
pp. 4001-4014
Author(s):  
Melanie Weirich ◽  
Adrian Simpson

Purpose The study sets out to investigate inter- and intraspeaker variation in German infant-directed speech (IDS) and considers the potential impact that the factors gender, parental involvement, and speech material (read vs. spontaneous speech) may have. In addition, we analyze data from 3 time points prior to and after the birth of the child to examine potential changes in the features of IDS and, particularly also, of adult-directed speech (ADS). Here, the gender identity of a speaker is considered as an additional factor. Method IDS and ADS data from 34 participants (15 mothers, 19 fathers) is gathered by means of a reading and a picture description task. For IDS, 2 recordings were made when the baby was approximately 6 and 9 months old, respectively. For ADS, an additional recording was made before the baby was born. Phonetic analyses comprise mean fundamental frequency (f0), variation in f0, the 1st 2 formants measured in /i: ɛ a u:/, and the vowel space size. Moreover, social and behavioral data were gathered regarding parental involvement and gender identity. Results German IDS is characterized by an increase in mean f0, a larger variation in f0, vowel- and formant-specific differences, and a larger acoustic vowel space. No effect of gender or parental involvement was found. Also, the phonetic features of IDS were found in both spontaneous and read speech. Regarding ADS, changes in vowel space size in some of the fathers and in mean f0 in mothers were found. Conclusion Phonetic features of German IDS are robust with respect to the factors gender, parental involvement, speech material (read vs. spontaneous speech), and time. Some phonetic features of ADS changed within the child's first year depending on gender and parental involvement/gender identity. Thus, further research on IDS needs to address also potential changes in ADS.


2020 ◽  
Vol 63 (7) ◽  
pp. 2054-2069
Author(s):  
Brandon Merritt ◽  
Tessa Bent

Purpose The purpose of this study was to investigate how speech naturalness relates to masculinity–femininity and gender identification (accuracy and reaction time) for cisgender male and female speakers as well as transmasculine and transfeminine speakers. Method Stimuli included spontaneous speech samples from 20 speakers who are transgender (10 transmasculine and 10 transfeminine) and 20 speakers who are cisgender (10 male and 10 female). Fifty-two listeners completed three tasks: a two-alternative forced-choice gender identification task, a speech naturalness rating task, and a masculinity/femininity rating task. Results Transfeminine and transmasculine speakers were rated as significantly less natural sounding than cisgender speakers. Speakers rated as less natural took longer to identify and were identified less accurately in the gender identification task; furthermore, they were rated as less prototypically masculine/feminine. Conclusions Perceptual speech naturalness for both transfeminine and transmasculine speakers is strongly associated with gender cues in spontaneous speech. Training to align a speaker's voice with their gender identity may concurrently improve perceptual speech naturalness. Supplemental Material https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.12543158


ASHA Leader ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 4-4
Keyword(s):  

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