Children’s Deviation in the Acquisition of Variable Linguistic Gender Patterns

Habib, Rania

doi:10.26478/ja2017.5.6.4

Cited by 5 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 26 publications

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“…These observations indicate that children are acquiring the immediate environment gendered linguistic pattern but are not acquiring the exact frequencies of female and male adults in the community or their caregivers. The observations in Figure 5 are supported by the emergence of gender as a statistically significant predictor for children only (for (o) p=.000; for (o:) p=.000; for (e) p=.009; for (e:) p=.007) (Habib, 2014), but not for adults (for (o) p=.080; for (o:) p=.883; for (e) p=.329; for (e:) p=.260) (Habib, 2017a). The statistically significant difference in the linguistic behavior between girls and boys against the non-significant difference between mothers and fathers indicates that children are exaggerating the gendered linguistic patterns of the vowels in their community and creating a larger gap between boys and girls or a more pronounced differentiated gendered linguistic behavior than that of adults.…”

Section: N Of [Q] % Of [Q] Total Of [Q] and [ʔ]mentioning

confidence: 97%

“…The 72 participants consist of 22 adults (11 married couples ages 29-57) and 50 children (25 males and 25 females) who are divided almost equally into four age groups (6-8, 9-11, 12-14, and 15-18), based on different developmental and school stages in their lives, with an almost equal number from each gender in each age group. The analysis utilizes numerous variationist quantitative and qualitative methods that were applied to the various variables explored in this paper (for more details on data collection and statistical methods, see Habib, 2014Habib, , 2016aHabib, , 2016bHabib, , 2017aHabib, , 2017b. Our main concern in this paper is to compare and contrast the gendered linguistic differences observed in these various studies to show that inconsistencies and multidirectional gendered linguistic behavior may exist within the same tight-knit speech community depending on the type of variable, indexicality and/or functionality of variable, the age of the children, and/or belonging to the older or younger generations.…”

Section: Data Analysis and Comparisonsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Parents use higher percentages of the rural vowels than children, and both men and boys use more rural vowels than women and girls respectively. Interestingly, in the case of the four vowel variables, children go a step further in their gendered linguistic behavior (Habib 2014(Habib , 2017a. Taking the vowel (o) as an example, Figure 4 shows a sizeable difference between boys and girls in the use of the rural variant [o].…”

Section: N Of [Q] % Of [Q] Total Of [Q] and [ʔ]mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The statistically significant gender difference between boys and girls (for (o) p=.000; for (o:) p=.000; for (e) p=.009; for (e:) p=.007) (Habib 2014) in addition to the increase of use of the rural forms with age among boys confirms this reverse change in progress. Furthermore, paired-samples t-tests that include correlation tests showed mostly lack of correlation and statistically significant differences in the use of all vowel variables between children and adults, mothers and daughters, mothers and sons, and fathers and sons (Habib, 2017a). Results are not included to conserve space.…”

Section: N Of [Q] % Of [Q] Total Of [Q] and [ʔ]mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Evidence of Variable Gender Role in Defining Language Change Leadership in Syrian Arabic

Habib¹

2022

IJAES

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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 adults yielded different gendered linguistic behavior. Children show the same dramatic gendered linguistic difference as adults regarding the variable (q), with males using much more rural [q] than urban [ʔ] than females. Regarding the vowel variables, children dramatize their gendered linguistic difference much more than adults; boys show much higher use of the rural vowels than girls compared to the difference between men and women. This pattern is reversed in the discourse variable (yaʕni) ‘that is/I mean’; the gendered linguistic difference is more dramatic among adults than it is among children, and gender effect diminishes in the linguistic distribution of the variable. This multidirectionality in gender effects bears implications for sociolinguistic variationist research. Variables indexed to urban refinement/prestige and social meanings such as femininity/masculinity are more likely to be led by females than males. Conversely, variables that lack these types of social/gender identification indexicality, regardless of whether they are phonological or discursive, do not follow the same pattern of leadership.

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Section: N Of [Q] % Of [Q] Total Of [Q] and [ʔ]mentioning

confidence: 97%

Section: Data Analysis and Comparisonsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: N Of [Q] % Of [Q] Total Of [Q] and [ʔ]mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: N Of [Q] % Of [Q] Total Of [Q] and [ʔ]mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Evidence of Variable Gender Role in Defining Language Change Leadership in Syrian Arabic

Habib¹

2022

IJAES

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“…She notes that accommodation mechanisms are essentially the same for bilingual, monolingual, and bidialectal children (Khattab 2013, p. 469). Habib (2016Habib ( , 2017 finds that variation in the use of rural vs. urban features by rural Syrian children and adolescents is influenced by both age and gender, whereby boys abandon urban features at the age of eight, whereas girls retain them into adolescence. She argues that such patterns result from different associations with these features and that they contribute to the creation of highly differentiated gendered linguistic behaviour, which indicates early development of sociolinguistic competence on the part of those young speakers.…”

Section: Agementioning

confidence: 99%

Accommodation Patterns in the Speech of Arabic-Speaking Children and Adolescents: A Variationist Analysis

Shetewi

2023

Languages

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This paper presents a variationist analysis of patterns of speech accommodation by 40 Arabic-speaking children and adolescents (aged 3–17) experiencing dialect contact in a Bedouin speech community near Damascus, Syria. It examines participants’ use of the phonological variables (θ), (ð), and (q), and the morphophonological feminine suffix (-a) in recorded sociolinguistic interviews and play sessions with two female fieldworkers, a local and an urban speaker, in order to investigate accommodation patterns across different interlocutors. Accommodation patterns were influenced by age, gender, and the linguistic variable under examination. Convergence to the urban interviewer was most evident in the realization of (q), whereas little convergence, and indeed variation, occurred in the realization of (-a), and more convergence occurred in the speech of girls and speakers younger than 15. Divergence and maintenance emerged in the speech of 15–17-year-old male speakers. These patterns are analysed in light of Accommodation Communication Theory and issues of identity and linguistic prestige in Arabic. Accommodative behaviour in the speech of participants exhibits their awareness of the social value of the phonological variables under investigation and demonstrates a high level of sociolinguistic awareness and competence.

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Syrian Arabic negators' structural and social variation: Evidence from a supralocal-negation variety

Habib

2023

Journal of Arabic Sociolinguistics

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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 following structural contexts for each negator; whether certain negators favor certain functions/contexts; and whether generational, sex, and/or age differences exist. The findings show correlation between certain negators and certain functions/contexts. The most frequent negator, maa, occurs most frequently in four contexts, yet shows encroachment on muu’s contexts. The differences in laʔ’s, laa’s, and wa-laa’s functions/contexts, despite some similarities, and ability to operate independently support treating them separately. Sex, age, and/or generational differences emerged as statistically significant regarding the use of some negators. The generational differences of children using more laʔ and adults more laa reflect societal norms that disfavor children giving commands or sounding authoritative yet allow emphatic/assertive negation with the more forcefully sounding laaʔ. The findings have implications for teachers and learners of Arabic regarding implementing these negators in real-life interactions. They also show that negators may have unexpected meanings and functions and may occur favorably in contexts where they are unexpected.

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Children’s Deviation in the Acquisition of Variable Linguistic Gender Patterns

Cited by 5 publications

References 26 publications

Evidence of Variable Gender Role in Defining Language Change Leadership in Syrian Arabic

Evidence of Variable Gender Role in Defining Language Change Leadership in Syrian Arabic

Accommodation Patterns in the Speech of Arabic-Speaking Children and Adolescents: A Variationist Analysis

Syrian Arabic negators' structural and social variation: Evidence from a supralocal-negation variety

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