Acronyms in English and Arabic

Hamdan, Jihad M.; Fareh, Shehdeh

doi:10.2139/ssrn.3061196

Cited by 6 publications

(16 citation statements)

References 4 publications

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“…The linguistic analysis provided focuses on the phonology of the acronyms, explaining how they are formed using autosegmental phonology (McCarthy, 1981). Similar to other languages, for example, English (see Hamdan & Fareh, 2003), the phonological analysis also demonstrates how acronyms in Arabic are permissible phonological words formed through inserting vowel sounds between consonants or making use of already existing vowel sounds in the components of the acronym. The semantic analysis shows that acronyms, on the first level, are usually homophonous to existing words (see Hijazi, 2001).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 65%

“…This corpus is very suitable to achieve the goals of the current study, as the majority of Arabic acronyms are names of organizations and political parties (see section "The Pragmatic Features of Acronyms"). To find acronyms in the arabicorpus, I used keywords which I collected from the relevant literature on acronyms in Arabic (e.g., Hamdan & Fareh, 2003) and from other sources, for example, newspapers. However, arabicorpus does not have a clear timeline, that is, the data were collected from several newspapers from different years.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…These websites were also employed to locate recent acronyms, whose organizations were established in late 2011 onward. I also refer to some data that have already been discussed in the relevant literature (e.g., Abu Humeid & Altai, 2013;Hamdan & Fareh, 2003;Hijazi, 2001). I was able to collect 20 examples to provide a detailed description and analysis of the linguistic features of acronyms in contemporary Arabic, paying special attention to their establishment, that is, first use.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This movement was established in 1959 by professional Palestinians whose leader was Yasser Arafat. Interestingly, the acronym is formed in a reversed order, in the sense that the direction of the initial letters started from the last word of the whole phrase (Hamdan & Fareh, 2003). Normally, acronyms, in transliterated form, are formed left to right in a unidirectional way.…”

Section: Early Establishment Of Acronyms In Arabicmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The Linguistic Features of Acronyms in Arabic

Altakhaineh

2017

Sage Open

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This study investigates the phonological, semantic, and pragmatic features of acronyms in Arabic. Acronyms in Arabic have appeared quite recently as a result of globalization and exposure to or contact with, mainly, English via radio stations and TV channels, which are broadcasting in English and in some countries, for example, Morocco in both English and French. Through in-depth analysis, it has been observed that acronyms in Arabic are subject to different restrictions: (a) The phonological combinations are formed on the basis of Arabic templates; hence, should be compatible with Arabic phonotactics, for example, consonant clusters should be broken up by vowels; (b) the connotation of the acronyms should not be negative; and (c) in conformity with relevance theory, when the acronyms are homophonous to existing words, the former maximize contextual effects with minimum processing effort. The fact that they appear in certain contexts also reduces the processing effort. It has also become evident that the period between the establishment of the movement or party and the first use of the acronym decreases over time, provided that the acronyms are frequently mentioned in the media. The examination of acronyms in different languages shows that acronymization is quite pervasive cross-linguistically; this may suggest that not any word-formation process can easily spread; it needs to be prevalent and potentially universal.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 65%

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Early Establishment Of Acronyms In Arabicmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The Linguistic Features of Acronyms in Arabic

Altakhaineh

2017

Sage Open

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“…They may be joint together in the same order as they are in the origin and pronounced as a word. In English, they are always taken left to right, but in Arabic, they could be taken from right to left or vice versa (Akmajian, et al, 1984: p.69;Hamdan & Fareh, 2003).…”

Section: Acronymmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Comparative Analysis of the Similar Word-formation Processes in English and Arabic

Al-Hamidi

Abbasova

Mammadov

2020

KJHSS

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This paper sets out on a comparative analysis of similar word-formation processes in English and Arabic. In doing so, it hopes to emerge and serve as subsequent and reliable, albeit partial, reference material for English and Arabic linguistics, especially in reference to linguistic structures. The framework herein for the study and analysis of word-formation processes in both languages may also be applied in future studies and other genres, corpora, and texts. This study enriches the research findings and meta-theory in the field of linguistics, contributing to the current linguistic intellectualism trends. The specific processes discussed are acronyms, antonomasia, backformation, blending, borrowing, compounding, and derivation.

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The Pragmatic Functions of wa in Jordanian Arabic: A Corpus-based Study

Hamdan,

Hamdan

et al. 2023

Psycholing.

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Purpose. This paper examines the pragmatic functions of wa, the most frequently used discourse marker in the daily interactions of speakers of Jordanian Arabic (JA). Procedure. The principal researcher built with the help of a research assistant a small-size corpus from conversations and talks presented by Jordanian TV and Radio Jordan in JA. The recordings ran for 194 minutes and covered multiple aspects of Jordanian life and culture such as traffic and safety, water and agriculture, education, tourism and environment, health, mountaineering and social topics. The recordings were transcribed for analysis by two of the four researchers and verified by the other two. The transcripts comprised 20660 words with 1229 instances of wa. To identify the pragmatic functions of wa, the researchers worked in groups of two and screened and examined independently a different 50 percent of the transcribed data and proposed their own list of identified functions along with at least two illustrative examples for each pragmatic function. Once done, they held a number of successive meetings to review the outcome with a view to reaching consensus judgments on the identified functions and examples. They were able to agree on eight of the 12 suggested labels. For the remaining four, they invited a focus group of 10 postgraduate students of linguistics whose native language was JA to examine and discuss the disputed material. This intensive and laborious work had reduced the list of functions to 11. Results. The findings of the study show that wa has 11 pragmatic functions. It is mainly used for expressing addition, indicating resumption, swearing an oath, concluding a premise, elaborating on the antecedent sentence, restating, mocking, showing simultaneity, extending congratulations, linking alternative contrasts, and avoiding complete and explicit listing. Conclusions. The paper identified 11 pragmatic functions of wa in Jordanian Arabic. However, the paper has made no claims that these functions are conclusive as the corpus is small and is collected from officially channeled media that had to pass censorship before being released. Another thing of importance is the extent to which the proposed labels for the functions is agreed by the readers of this paper, including academic colleagues. Once again, we cannot argue that the given names of the functions are unequivocally sound and acceptable. A reader may suggest another label here and there and this temptation cannot be easily suppressed.

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Acronyms in English and Arabic

Cited by 6 publications

References 4 publications

The Linguistic Features of Acronyms in Arabic

The Linguistic Features of Acronyms in Arabic

A Comparative Analysis of the Similar Word-formation Processes in English and Arabic

The Pragmatic Functions of wa in Jordanian Arabic: A Corpus-based Study

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