General papers by jonathan owens
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Review of Abdelkader Fessi Fehri, Constucting feminine to mean, 2019
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Arabic as a Minority Language, 2000
1. Introduction
2. Making a fish of a friend: Waris, the secret language of Arabic koranic school... more 1. Introduction
2. Making a fish of a friend: Waris, the secret language of Arabic koranic school students in Borno; co-author: Jidda Hassan
3. Loanwords in Nigerian Arabic: A quantitative approach
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Linguistics, 2017
Idioms have generally played a supporting rather than a leading role in research on figurative la... more Idioms have generally played a supporting rather than a leading role in research on figurative language. In Cognitive Linguistics for instance idioms have been understood against how they are embedded in conceptual metaphors (Lakoff 1987; Clausner and Croft 1997) while in the experimental psycholinguistic tradition their role has been to challenge the basis of conceptual metaphor in " priming " figurative language (Glucksberg et al. 1993; McGlone 2007). It is, moreover, broadly assumed that criteria defining grammatical properties of idioms are limited to their morphological and syntactic behavior (Nunberg et al. 1994). While the pragmatic properties of idioms have been described informally (Glucksberg 2001), there are few studies which systematically contrast the behavior of nouns in literal vs. idiomatic expressions in discourse. Using a battery of criteria which has been developed to study discourse properties of subjects in spoken Arabic (Owens et al. 2013), we show that keyword nouns in Nigerian Arabic are significantly different according to whether they are idiomatic or literal. The basis of the conclusion is the statistical analysis of 1403 tokens derived from a large corpus of natural Nigerian Arabic texts. Nouns in idiomatic expressions are opaque to discourse in a way those in literal ones are not. To explain the statistical results we argue that idioms partake in a 'semantic mapping' which incorporates the noun and its collocate in the idiom into a word-like unit, rendering it largely invisible to subsequent discourse. Since Nigerian Arabic idiomatic nouns, as is shown, display no clause-internal syntactic constraints, exhibit no cross-clausal syntactic dependencies, and show no significant interactions with possessive pronouns which ostensibly appear to mark the discourse argument of the keyword they are suffixed to, it is concluded that the mapping is of semantic nature. Other than exemplifying basic facts obtained via elicitation, the entire argument hinges on an examination of nouns in actual spoken discourse. The article establishes that large corpora coupled with multivariate statistical treatment contribute directly to understanding semantic factors difficult to evaluate via direct elicitation or examination of individual examples, in this case the sensitivity of cross-clausal referentiality to idiomatic contextualization. 1 The problem 1 In Nigerian Arabic there is a class of nouns in the configuration, [Pssd N-Pssr] with Pssr = N or possessor pronoun, which display contrasting referential properties clause internally as opposed to inter-clausal behavior. Clause internally any reference to a Pssd N in the unit [Pssd N-Pssr] must be to the possessed head N. The possessor may occur in situ, or be extraposed to another clausal function, usually a topic, leaving behind a pronoun possessor trace. In (1) below, naas (> naaz via assimilation) is extraposed to Topic function, and its possessor position is marked by the possessor pronoun trace –hǝm (> tǝm via assimilation) on iid (> iit * 1 Abbreviations and phonetic symbols are standard ones, except DEF = 'definite', ID = 'ideophone', and /ď/ = voiced emphatic implosive stop. In the transcription no attempt is made to separate out epenthetic vowels. They are parsed with the following morpheme. Examples from texts are identified by a key which can be used to find the audio and transcript at the online data base resource listed in the bibliography.
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Language Sciences, Jul 2016
In recent work, idioms have in many traditions been assimilated to the study of metaphor. An idio... more In recent work, idioms have in many traditions been assimilated to the study of metaphor. An idiom such as 'spill the beans' is understood against the conceptual metaphors, THE MIND IS A CONTAINER and IDEAS ARE ENTITIES for instance. Such a treatment implies that idioms are processed online, calling up in their production the conceptual metaphors which support them. In this article an alternative treatment is put forward whereby idioms are lexical in nature. The argument has two parts. First, the constituent collocates of idioms share a number of key grammatical properties with non-idiomatic lexemes. Even in their idiomatic usage they must in some sense be normal lexemes. Secondly, at the same time, idioms are shown to be distinctive in terms of their discourse properties, in particular the fact of idiomaticity restricting the referentiality of idiomatic nouns. Drawing broadly on ideas developed within psycholinguistic treatments of idiomaticity, a model of idioms is developed whereby idioms are seen as lexically compositional against a rich polysemy of their stipulated, constituent lexemes. While, it may be inferred, metonymic and meta-phoric associations led to the lexical polysemy of the constituent collocates, metonymy and metaphor play no necessary role in their online production and processing. The argument is developed on the basis of a detailed discussion of idioms in Nigerian Arabic. The data derives from a large, oral corpus (400,000 words), in which the conventional nature of idiomaticity is underscored by the quantitative preponderance of idiomatic meanings among basic body part nouns such as ṛaas 'head' and gaḷb 'heart'.
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Anthropological Linguistics, 2015
(Note: pre-publication version) This article contributes to the debate between monosemic and
poly... more (Note: pre-publication version) This article contributes to the debate between monosemic and
polysemic approaches to linguistic semantics by a close examination of Nigerian
Arabic idiomatic expressions involving the keyword ‘head’. Three broad categories
of constraints on polysemy can be identified, which limit polysemy, but
not to the extent that a fully monosemic account can be motivated. An inherent,
stipulative polysemy resides in idioms and in their constitutive lexemes. The
attempt to motivate a monosemic account highlights factors constraining polysemy,
sets limits to their effects, suggests a taxonomy which brings together
essential structural and semantic aspects of idioms, and simultaneously elucidates
the rich, multifaceted world of a simple lexeme.
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Linguistics, 2014
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In, Language diversity endangered. ed. by Matthias Brenzinger, 2006. Berlin, pp. 263-277.
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In: Arabic as a Minority Language, ed. by J. Owens, 2000
with apologies for previous version
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Between Resistance and Expansion: Explorations of Local Vitality in Africa, ed. by Peter Probst and Gerd Spittler, 2004
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Language Sciences, 1998
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Language Variation and Change, 14, 2002
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Language Sciences, 1995
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Kees Versteegh et alii eds. Encyclopedia of Arabic Language and Linguistics. Leiden: Brill, 708-71, 2008
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Proceedings of the 16th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, 2010
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Encyclopedia of Arabic Language and Linguistics (EALL), Vol. 3, ed. by Kees Versteegh, Mushira Eid, Alaa Elgibali, Manfred Woidich, Andrzej Zaborski, 541-546., 2008
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Kees Versteegh et alii eds. Encyclopedia of Arabic Language and Linguistics. Leiden: Brill, 541-46., 2007
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Glavda, a central Chadic language, has two types of verbal predicates based on a common
root. One... more Glavda, a central Chadic language, has two types of verbal predicates based on a common
root. One, the personal verb, occurs only in predicative position and hence displays a oneto-
one relation between morphological and syntactic finiteness, whereas the gerund, of
which there are four kinds, occurs equally in predicative and argument position. As a
predicate, the personal verb is the basic past or perfect marker and the gerund the
incompletive. Syntactically there are no restrictions relative to main or dependent clause
as to when a personal verb or a gerund can occur, since the two types together define the
tense-aspect system. Still, in actual discourse among the four types of gerund there is a
marked difference in their frequency of occurrence in predicative and argument position,
such that some gerunds are all but restricted to predicate position, while others have a
high frequency as arguments. No syntactic conditions define this difference. This study
documents this contrast with basic statistics, and offers an explanation for why the gerunds
differ markedly among themselves distributionally. The explanation hinges on the
observation that the different gerunds share morphemes with either the personal, finiteonly
verb or with non-gerund nominals. This produces a statistically graded finiteness
among gerunds. Looking at the categorical distribution of gerunds alone would fail to
uncover the systematicity behind the differences in their distributional frequencies.
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by Bello Buba and Jonathan Owens, in Alan Kaye ed. Morphologies of Asia and Africa, 2007
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General papers by jonathan owens
2. Making a fish of a friend: Waris, the secret language of Arabic koranic school students in Borno; co-author: Jidda Hassan
3. Loanwords in Nigerian Arabic: A quantitative approach
polysemic approaches to linguistic semantics by a close examination of Nigerian
Arabic idiomatic expressions involving the keyword ‘head’. Three broad categories
of constraints on polysemy can be identified, which limit polysemy, but
not to the extent that a fully monosemic account can be motivated. An inherent,
stipulative polysemy resides in idioms and in their constitutive lexemes. The
attempt to motivate a monosemic account highlights factors constraining polysemy,
sets limits to their effects, suggests a taxonomy which brings together
essential structural and semantic aspects of idioms, and simultaneously elucidates
the rich, multifaceted world of a simple lexeme.
root. One, the personal verb, occurs only in predicative position and hence displays a oneto-
one relation between morphological and syntactic finiteness, whereas the gerund, of
which there are four kinds, occurs equally in predicative and argument position. As a
predicate, the personal verb is the basic past or perfect marker and the gerund the
incompletive. Syntactically there are no restrictions relative to main or dependent clause
as to when a personal verb or a gerund can occur, since the two types together define the
tense-aspect system. Still, in actual discourse among the four types of gerund there is a
marked difference in their frequency of occurrence in predicative and argument position,
such that some gerunds are all but restricted to predicate position, while others have a
high frequency as arguments. No syntactic conditions define this difference. This study
documents this contrast with basic statistics, and offers an explanation for why the gerunds
differ markedly among themselves distributionally. The explanation hinges on the
observation that the different gerunds share morphemes with either the personal, finiteonly
verb or with non-gerund nominals. This produces a statistically graded finiteness
among gerunds. Looking at the categorical distribution of gerunds alone would fail to
uncover the systematicity behind the differences in their distributional frequencies.
2. Making a fish of a friend: Waris, the secret language of Arabic koranic school students in Borno; co-author: Jidda Hassan
3. Loanwords in Nigerian Arabic: A quantitative approach
polysemic approaches to linguistic semantics by a close examination of Nigerian
Arabic idiomatic expressions involving the keyword ‘head’. Three broad categories
of constraints on polysemy can be identified, which limit polysemy, but
not to the extent that a fully monosemic account can be motivated. An inherent,
stipulative polysemy resides in idioms and in their constitutive lexemes. The
attempt to motivate a monosemic account highlights factors constraining polysemy,
sets limits to their effects, suggests a taxonomy which brings together
essential structural and semantic aspects of idioms, and simultaneously elucidates
the rich, multifaceted world of a simple lexeme.
root. One, the personal verb, occurs only in predicative position and hence displays a oneto-
one relation between morphological and syntactic finiteness, whereas the gerund, of
which there are four kinds, occurs equally in predicative and argument position. As a
predicate, the personal verb is the basic past or perfect marker and the gerund the
incompletive. Syntactically there are no restrictions relative to main or dependent clause
as to when a personal verb or a gerund can occur, since the two types together define the
tense-aspect system. Still, in actual discourse among the four types of gerund there is a
marked difference in their frequency of occurrence in predicative and argument position,
such that some gerunds are all but restricted to predicate position, while others have a
high frequency as arguments. No syntactic conditions define this difference. This study
documents this contrast with basic statistics, and offers an explanation for why the gerunds
differ markedly among themselves distributionally. The explanation hinges on the
observation that the different gerunds share morphemes with either the personal, finiteonly
verb or with non-gerund nominals. This produces a statistically graded finiteness
among gerunds. Looking at the categorical distribution of gerunds alone would fail to
uncover the systematicity behind the differences in their distributional frequencies.
one Egyptian, show a massive expansion, both quantitative and structural-
functional, of the demonstrative in Nigerian Arabic. Contact with other lan-
guages of the Lake Chad area, into which Arabic speakers began to move
1215 CE, explains the innovations in the use of the Nigerian Arabic demonstrative. Straightforward comparison of corpora offers lucid insights into basic historical linguistic questions such as contact-based vs. internal change, the relation between contact and simplification, and how contact-induced changes integrate into inherited systems. Because of its extensive linguistic history and wide dispersion, Arabic is particularly well suited to such investigations.
The importance of idioms for linguistic theories of different kinds has thus been recognized, even if they tend not to take center stage in them. In this paper we would like to expand the significance of idioms one step further in asking what idioms tell us about historical linguistics. The data will come from three Arabic dialects, Nigerian Arabic, southern Tunisian and Egyptian.
scribed here. Quantifying variables from a corpus tends to give results that differ from traditional methods. While they will frequently confirm what the analysis of a corpus by inspection yields, equally they often contradict, correct and elaborate on assumptions about how discourse is thought to function. In all cases the statistical
analysis of a corpus yields more robust results than non-quantified data, and allows the relative effects of one independent variable to be gauged against another. A major challenge to the more widespread use of corpora in discourse analysis are the constraints imposed by coding and sample size.
2. Explaining 0 and overt subjects in spoken Arabic, pp. 20-60
co-authors: Robin Dodsworth, William Young, Trent Rockwood, David Mehal
3. Conversation markers in Arabic-Hausa codeswitching: saliency and language hierarchies, pp. 207-242
co-author: Jidda Hassan
of variation based on significantly different groups: the prestige norm of a
particular class or network-based lects are reflexes of this focus. In this
paper data is presented from the spoken Arabic of Maiduguri, Nigeria,
which is more prominent for the lack of predictable grouping parameters
than for their presence. This pattern is related to its status as a minority
language and to the sociodemographic characteristics of its speakers. In a
brief comparative section it is suggested that a lack of linguistic focus may
be relatively common among urban varieties.
مرّ النحو العربي بعدّة منحنيات وتحديات وأنماط؛ حتى بلغ مرحلة التقعيد والكمال الوضوح في دراسته مع بداية القرن الرابع الهجري. وقد حاول البروفيسور أوينز دراسة التفكير النحوي العربي في مرحلة مبكرة، متشاكسة أو غير مستقرة من تاريخ النحو العربي قبل أن تهمين عليه مدرستا البصرة والكوفة. وتكمن أهمية هذا البحث في الكشف العلمي والتتبع الدقيق لهذه الفترة الزمنية المبكرة، مما كشف أنها كانت فترة تحمل عدم تجانس لغوي؛ حيث كان النحْويون متحررين نسبيًا في مزج الأفكار والمصطلحات من مصادر مختلفة، ثم مهدت هذه الفترة الزمنية الطريق إلى فترة شهدت تجانسًا واتحادًا كبر، فبلغت ذروتها في كتاب ابن السراج "الأصول في النحو"، الذي استطاع خلال هذا العمل تقعيد النحو العربي بشكل فعال، مما يدعم الرأي القائل إن المدارس اللغوية كالبصرة والكوفة لم تكن موجودة في الفترة المبكرة، وإن فكرة ظهورها ككيان علمي كامل مستقل في أواخر القرن الثالث الهجري كان انعكاسًا لهذا التقعيد؛ لمعرفة تنوع الأفكار والمصطلحات والمعايير التي شهدتها الفترة المبكرة، ولم يتضمنها هذا التقعيد كما كان عند مدرسة الكوفة
The most fundamental concept in the conceptualization of early Arabic grammatical theory (c. 175-320/790-920) is that of the Basra and Kufa linguistic schools, constructs that go back at least to the 4th/10th century. Weil (1913) and Carter (1973) have called into question the historical validity of the schools. However, what is the historical reality of early Arabic grammatical thinking was, if it was not dominated by the two schools. It is argued that the earliest period was one of linguistic heterogeneity, where linguists were relatively free to mix ideas and terminology from different sources. This period gave way to one of greater homogeneity, culminating in al-Sarraj al-Usul fi al-Nahw, a work, which effectively standardized Arabic grammar. The Emergence of the linguistic schools in the late 3rd/9th and early 4th/10th centuries can be understood as a reflex of this standardization, allowing linguistcs to recognize the diversity of the earlier period by assigning ideas and terminology, which did not become standard to a subordinate Kufa position.
After 40 years of research. the theoretical sophistication of the Arabic linguistic tradition (ALT) is now well appreciated in western scholarship. This evaluation encompasses not only the core domains of phonetics/phonology. morphology and syntax. but also discourse analysis. pragmatics and meta-theoretical reflection. By the
same token. rather than view this body of thinking as a self-contained tradition. its very sophistication invites integration into contemporary thinking. From this perspective. it becomes necessary to delineate not only where the traditions coincide. but also where they diverge and to explore the implications of both the similarities and the differences. This contribution will develop the implications of this comparative. critical perspective.