The study of Arabic dialects has been an important and rich area of research over the past thirty-five years or so, with significant implications for modern linguistic analysis. The current volume builds on this tradition with ten scholarly contributions that provide novel data and analyses in multiple areas of Arabic linguistics: Syntax and its interfaces; regional and sociolinguistic variation; and first language acquisition. The linguistic facts in the volume are drawn from the various Arabic dialects spoken in North Africa, Egypt, the Arabian Peninsula, the Levant, and Standard Arabic, and the analyses proposed reflect current approaches in linguistic theory. The volume, therefore, should be of interest to formal linguists, sociolinguists, historical linguists, dialectologists, as well as researchers on first language acquisition. It is our hope that the papers in this volume will spur more interest in and research on further aspects of Arabic linguistics.

This volume provides a unique collection of studies representing diversity and innovation in Arabic linguistics. The volume includes several groundbreaking papers authored by leaders in the field organized around key aspects of Arabic morphosyntax, semantics, phonology, and sociolinguistics, as well as language acquisition and neurolinguistics. Balancing depth and width of coverage, the volume integrates a variety of papers associated with inherent dialectal and diglossic variation, innovative questions, data, and approaches, as well as innovative reexaminations of existing theoretical frameworks, making a meaningful contribution to the understanding of Arabic linguistic structure and human language representation/processing throughout all papers. The volume is intended to highlight the potential contribution of Arabic linguistics and to endorse further contributions to the sparse knowledge of language representation and processing in Arabic to further develop our understanding of innate linguistic knowledge. It draws special attention to the potential contribution of studies of diversity in Arabic dialects and between the two language varieties of Arabic, for the broader study of human language.

The papers in this volume approach the study of Arabic, its structure and use, from different linguistic and sociolinguistic perspectives. The book is divided into three sections: Section I Morphological and Phonological Perspectives; Section II Semantic Perspectives; Section III Sociolinguistic Perspectives.

This volume makes important contributions to the growing body of descriptive and theoretical studies in Arabic linguistics. It focuses on the rich linguistic work being done on Arabic dialects. The papers on individual dialects draw attention to the micro-variation that exists, emphasize that they do not comprise a uniform group, and reveal the implications of dialectal variation for linguistic theory. The chapters are distributed over three parts: phonetics and phonology, syntax, and sociolinguistics. They address first and second language acquisition, historical linguistics, phonetics, aspects of negation, light verb constructions, raising verbs, and sociolinguistic variation. The book is indispensable reading for those working in dialect description, the analysis of Arabic and the Semitic languages, and linguistic theory more generally.

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The papers in this volume are a selection from papers presented at the Annual Symposia on Arabic Linguistics, held in 2003 (Alexandria) and 2004 (Oklahoma). They tackle a broad range of issues in current linguistic research, particularly in the areas of phonology, morphology/lexicon, sociolinguistics, and L1 and L2 acquisition. They are distinguished for the depth of coverage and the types of data considered.

This volume brings together ten peer-reviewed articles on Arabic linguistics. The articles are distributed over three parts: phonetics and phonology, sociolinguistics and pragmatics, and language acquisition. Including data from North African, Levantine, and Gulf varieties of Arabic, as well as Arabic varieties spoken in diaspora, these articles address issues that range from phonetic neutralization and diminutive formation to diglossia, dialect contact, and language acquisition in heritage speakers. The book is valuable reading for linguists in general and for those working on descriptive and theoretical aspects of Arabic linguistics in particular.