SACM - United States of America
Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://drepo.sdl.edu.sa/handle/20.500.14154/9668
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Item Restricted Exploring the Experience of Arab Mothers Raising Children in South Texas: Maintaining Arabic Heritage Language and Cultural Identity(Texas A&M University - Kingsville, 2024-08-09) Almuhlafi, Amal; Guzman, Norma A.In the United States, language maintenance among minority populations often faced significant challenges, particularly in linguistically and culturally diverse environments like South Texas. This qualitative study explored the experiences of Arab mothers in South Texas as they endeavored to maintain the Arabic language and Arab culture within their families. Utilizing semi-structured interviews conducted via Zoom, this research delved into the personal efforts, strategies, and challenges faced by these mothers in transmitting their heritage language and cultural values to their children. Despite the dominance of English and the absence of substantial institutional support, these mothers demonstrated remarkable dedication and ingenuity in fostering an environment conducive to language and cultural retention. The findings highlighted the central role of the home setting and religious practices in language maintenance, and the profound impact of personal commitment and community support in overcoming the multicultural challenges (Fishman, 2001). This study contributed to the understanding of language maintenance in minority communities and underscored the importance of family dynamics and cultural practices in the intergenerational transmission of minority languages.37 0Item Restricted Loanword Adaptation in Najdi Arabic(2023) Alhomidan, Majid Suliman; Wiltshire, CarolineThe interest in studying loanword adaptation has been accompanied by a long- standing debate on how to approach such phenomena. Various phonological and phonetic approaches have been proposed to account for such phenomena (Paradis & LaCharité 1997; Uffmann 2001; Steriade 2001; Peperkamp & Dupoux 2003; Silverman 1992, and Yip 1993), among others. Therefore, the goal of this study is to contribute generally to the field of loanword phonology and to the phonology of the Najdi Arabic dialect in particular. The study investigates the adaptations of English consonantal and syllabic structures into Najdi Arabic. Moreover, it examines whether the adaptations employed by Najdi speakers are phonologically or phonetically grounded. Therefore, 1,234 tokens were elicited from 12 Najdi participants divided in two groups: 6 monolingual and 6 bilingual Najdi speakers. Optimality Theory (OT) (Prince and Smolensky 1993/2004) is implemented as an analytical tool in this study. The primary results of this dissertation show that no deletion is applied in Najdi Arabic consonantal adaptation since four English consonants are adapted by substituting them with native Najdi consonants and two English consonants are imported. With respect to syllabic adaptation, the results reveal that NA speakers adapted illicit clusters by epenthesis, i.e., inserting a vowel to break up clusters and without any instance of deletion. Both consonantal and syllabic adaptations in NA show that they are phonologically guided. In conclusion, this study favors the phonological approach (Paradis & LaCharité 1997) over the phonetic approach (Peperkamp & Dupoux 2003).24 0