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International group of scholars to meet at Illinois to consider Arabic linguistics
Andrea
Lynn, Humanities Editor
217-333-2177; andreal@illinois.edu
3/24/2005
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Scholars from 10 countries will gather at the University of Illinois
at Urbana-Champaign in April for a symposium on Arabic linguistics.
The 19th annual Symposium
on Arabic Linguistics will be held April 1-3 (Friday through Sunday)
in the Foreign Languages Building, 707 S. Mathews Ave., Urbana, and
in the Illini Union, 1401 W. Green St., Urbana.
The U. of I. also hosted the symposium in 1999.
According to Elabbas Benmamoun, who is the conference organizer and
the head of Illinois’ department of linguistics, the U. of I.
“is considered a major center for the study of Arabic language
and linguistics. We have
one of the fastest growing Arabic language programs in the country and
we lead in research on Arabic.”
In addition to the dozens of Arabic and Arabic-related courses offered
throughout the academic year, Illinois also offers intensive beginning
Arabic to the public during May Term, the three-week period between
the end of the spring semester and the beginning of summer school.
This year’s symposium, which has attracted scholars from Canada,
the Czech Republic, Egypt, France, Kuwait, Morocco, Tunisia, the United
Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom and the United States, “has
a strong focus on experimental and computational linguistics,”
Benmamoun said.
Described as an “open forum for scholars interested in the application
of current linguistic theories and analysis to Arabic,” the symposium
is sponsored by the U. of I. department of linguistics, the Arabic Linguistics
Society and several other units at Illinois.
Symposium topics include grammatical analysis, syntax, sociolinguistics,
psycholinguistics, discourse analysis, phonetics, phonology, and computational
linguistics.
In addition to the main session, two special sessions will be held on
Arabic in local and global contexts and on developing and using Arabic
computer corpora (an annotated electronic text or format, or the use
of computers to access and study Arabic texts).
A half-day training workshop on “Using Corpora in Teaching and
Research” also will be offered, to be conducted by Tim Buckwalter
of the University of Pennsylvania, and Richard Sproat, linguistics and electrical and computer engineering,
U. of I.
Keynote speakers are Buckwalter and Sproat, and Salem Ghazali, Institut
Superieur des Langues, Tunisia; Niloofar Haeiri, Johns Hopkins University;
John McCarthy, University of Massachusetts at Amherst; and Fatima Sadiqi,
University of Fez, Morocco.
Presentations include Jessica Weinberg, University of Arizona, “Ideology
and Practice of Arabic Language Use Among Jewish and Palestinian Women
Peace Activities in Israel”; Sadiqi, “The Gendered Use of
Standard Arabic in Morocco”; Sandiway Fong, University of Arizona,
“Arabic Pappi: A Principles and Parameters Parser”; and
Khawla Aljenaie, Kuwait University, Kuwait, “The Comprehension
of Topic-Comment Word Order in Early Kuwaiti Arabic Child Language.”
