In 1968 Margaret K. Omar (Nydell) spent four months in a small Egyptian village called Sheikh Mubarak. Located in Middle Egypt near Al-Minya, residents of Sheik Mubarak speak in a dialect closer to Sa'eedi, not the dialect spoken in Cairo. Omar spent time there conducting interviews, examinations, and taping sessions with children and families to study primary language acquisition in non-Western languages. Based on her fieldwork, Omar describes the physical and social environment in which the native language was learned, the development of early communication and speech, and when and how children learn the phonology, vocabulary, morphology, and syntactical patterns of Egyptian Arabic. Omar makes comparisons with aspects of language acquisition of other languages, primarily English, and explores implications for the theory of language acquisition. Originally published in 1973, this book is the most thorough and complete analysis of the stages in which children learn Arabic as a first language. The Arabic in this book is presented in transcription, making the information accessible to all linguists interested in language acquisition.

The crosslinguistic studies of the early developmental stages of number, case, and gender in twelve typologically different languages with eight genetic affiliations follow a functional-constructivist approach. Some issues addressed are mean size of paradigms, percentage of base forms, and productivity. One of the main findings is that the typological characteristics of the language acquired influence the process of inflectional development.

Table of contents

"In 1968 Margaret K. Omar (Nydell) spent four months in a small Egyptian village called Sheikh Mubarak. Located in Middle Egypt near Al-Minya, residents of Sheik Mubarak speak in a dialect closer to Sa'eedi, not the dialect spoken in Cairo. Omar spent time there conducting interviews, examinations, and taping sessions with children and families to study primary language acquisition in non-Western languages. Based on her fieldwork, Omar describes the physical and social environment in which the native language was learned, the development of early communication and speech, and when and how children learn the phonology, vocabulary, morphology, and syntactical patterns of Egyptian Arabic. Omar makes comparisons with aspects of language acquisition of other languages, primarily English, and explores implications for the theory of language acquisition. Originally published in 1973, this book is the most thorough and complete analysis of the stages in which children learn Arabic as a first language. The Arabic in this book is presented in transcription, making the information accessible to all linguists interested in language acquisition."--Publisher's description.

Drawing on the collective expertise of language scholars and educators in a variety of subdisciplines, the Handbook for Arabic Language Teaching Professionals in the 21st Century, Volume II, provides a comprehensive treatment of teaching and research in Arabic as a second and foreign language worldwide. Keeping a balance among theory, research and practice, the content is organized around 12 themes: Trends and Recent Issues in Teaching and Learning Arabic Social, Political and Educational Contexts of Arabic Language Teaching and Learning Identifying Core Issues in Practice Language Variation, Communicative Competence and Using Frames in Arabic Language Teaching and Learning Arabic Programs: Goals, Design and Curriculum Teaching and Learning Approaches: Content-Based Instruction and Curriculum Arabic Teaching and Learning: Classroom Language Materials and Language Corpora Assessment, Testing and Evaluation Methodology of Teaching Arabic: Skills and Components Teacher Education and Professional Development Technology-Mediated Teaching and Learning Future Directions The field faces new challenges since the publication of Volume I, including increasing and diverse demands, motives and needs for learning Arabic across various contexts of use; a need for accountability and academic research given the growing recognition of the complexity and diverse contexts of teaching Arabic; and an increasing shortage of and need for quality of instruction. Volume II addresses these challenges. It is designed to generate a dialogue—continued from Volume I—among professionals in the field leading to improved practice, and to facilitate interactions, not only among individuals but also among educational institutions within a single country and across different countries.

Foreword / by Robert K. Ritner -- Introduction -- R'r-R?', the Two-Headed mother snake -- The Semitic spells and their Egyptian context -- Old Egyptian phonology -- Conclusions.

The vast majority of work in theoretical linguistics from a generative perspective is based on first language acquisition and performance. The vast majority of work on second language acquisition is carried out by scholars and educators working within approaches other than that of generative linguistics. In this volume, this gap is bridged as leading generative linguists apply their intellectual and disciplinary skills to issues in second language acquisition. The results will be of interest to all those who study second language acquisition, regardless of their theoretical perspective, and all generative linguists, regardless of the topics on which they work.

An authoritative overview of research into heritage language acquisition, covering key terminological and empirical issues, theoretical approaches, and research methodologies.

This book investigates selected aspects of the grammatical development of Emirati Arabic, the variety of Gulf Arabic spoken in the United Arab Emirates and closely related to the varieties spoken in the rest of the Gulf States. While the acquisition of Arabic as a second language has been widely studied, first language acquisition of different Arabic dialects has received much less attention. Ntelitheos addresses this disparity by presenting a number of systematic studies on the acquisition of Emirati Arabic grammar based on a two-year longitudinal corpus of six children. He discusses the acquisition of the nominal domain, including definiteness and possession; the acquisition of verbal functional structure and agreement; and the acquisition of word order and negation in the syntactic domain. In addition, he defines several developmental stages for Emirati Arabic, based on established diagnostic tests. The discussion is framed within a general survey of the relevant literature in Arabic acquisition studies and combines new empirical data with rigorous discussion of several long-standing theoretical problems in the broader field of child language development.

The Handbooks of Applied Linguistics series is based on an understanding of Applied Linguistics as an inter- and transdisciplinary field of academic enquiry. Applied Linguistics deals with the theoretical and empirical investigation of real-world problems in which language and communication are a central issue. The Handbooks of Applied Linguistics provide a state-of-the-art description of established and emerging areas of Applied Linguistics. Each volume gives an overview of the field, identifies most important traditions and their findings, identifies the gaps in current research, and gives perspectives for future directions.