Thesis (Ph.D.)--Georgetown University, 2009. / Includes bibliographical references.

After studying this linguistic dictionary in manuscript: Al-Tahḏīb by Ibn Manẓūr, I realised the importance of studying and editing the manuscript. This research on Tahḏīb and the development of lexical studies and linguistics led me to note the strong relationships between classical and modern studies especially in Arabic linguistics. Here we can follow the developments of texts and the ideas behind them, both in dictionaries of different schools and in general linguistic works, from the beginnings of the study of the Arabic language, tracing the influence of Arabic studies on that of some eastern and western languages in the mediaeval period. Arabic grammar was developed by treating problems in spoken language. People were in need of rules to help them acquire correct style, to be able to understand the meaning of Qur'ān and Ḥadīth. The scholars, whose work has influenced present-day Arab linguistics and grammatical theory, based their studies on Qur'ānic texts and quotations taken from early poetry. The method of study was generally inductive. Moving from the particular to the general, the scholars discussed various language phenomena in booklets and books concerned with texts, listing words which they had heard from Arabs employing their own local usages and dialects. These indexes became the data of the lexicons and linguistic books. From the first study of Arabic, the linguists dealt with Al-Laḥn, the phenomena affecting the pronunciation of Arabic, observing the errors in the speech of the ordinary people, of the educated people, and even of the scholars. Al-Durrah by Al-Ḥarīrī was one of the most famous works in Arabic linguistics. To treat the scholars' errors rather than those of the ordinary people, it follows no system or method in its structure. Ibn Manẓūr had to classify its lexical items and to arrange them on his Lisān Al-Arab system, with a special critical approach. Some books written before Al-Durrah had the same aim to note Al-Laḥn. In Al-Durrah we can follow the train of those books, which dealt with linguistic materials, especially Adab Al-Kātib by Ibn Qutaiba which we consider an ancient precursor of Al-Durrah and on the other hand of Al- Tahḏīb, the dictionary which we are here editing for the first time.

Deux problématiques se croisent dans nos travaux de recherches, ils ne font pas parties du même domaine: la première est issue du TAL (Traitement Automatique des Langues), la seconde est relié au domaine de l'ALAO (Apprentissage des Langues Assisté par Ordinateur).La première partie de nos travaux de recherches rentre dans le cadre de l'analyse morphologique des textes arabes. Pour la création d'un analyseur morphologique, nous avons commencé par la réalisation de toutes les ressources nécessaires (Dictionnaires pour la langue arabe, Matrices de compatibilités, Règles, Corpus d'apprentissage, Modèle de langage, etc.). Nous avons utilisé une approche statistique basée sur les Modèles de Markov Cachés (MMC) qui adhère à des principes de bonne pratique bien établis dans le domaine de l'analyse morphologique. Cette méthodologie a donné naissance à @rab-Morph : un analyseur morphologique robuste et performant pour l'arabe.La deuxième partie des travaux menés se situe dans le cadre de l'ALAO, où l'objectif principal est d'apporter des éléments de réponse à la question suivante ; comment peut-on profiter des outils issues du TAL arabe pour apporter des solutions aux plateformes d'apprentissage de l'arabe langue étrangère? Pour y parvenir et montrer l'intérêt d'avoir recours à des procédures, solutions et outils TAL pour l'apprentissage des langues, nous avons développé un prototype pour l'apprentissage de l'arabe baptisé @rab-Learn. Cet environnement utilise des outils issues du TAL, principalement notre analyseur morphologique @rab-Morph, pour créer des activités pédagogiques variés et automatiser d'avantage le traitement de la langue dans ces plateformes. / L'auteur n'a pas fourni de résumé en anglais

This thesis documents the use of Natural Language Processing (NLP) in Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL) and its contribution to the learning experience of students studying Arabic as a foreign language. The goal of this project is to build an Intelligent Computer Assisted Language Learning (ICALL) system that provides computational assistance to learners of Arabic by teaching grammar, producing homework and issuing students with immediate feedback. To produce this system we use the Parasite system, which produces morphological, syntactic and semantic analysis of textual input, and extend it to provide error detection and diagnosis. The methodology we adopt involves relaxing constraints on unification so that correct information contained in a badly formed sentence may still be used to obtain a coherent overall analysis. We look at a range of errors, drawn from experience with learners at various levels, covering word internal problems (addition of inappropriate affixes, failure to apply morphotactic rules properly) and problems with relations between words (local constraints on features, and word order problems). As feedback is an important factor in learning, we look into different types of feedback that can be used to evaluate which is the most appropriate for the aim of our system.

Cette recherche identifie et analyse les différentes erreurs, intervenant dans le cadre de la relativisation, commises par des apprenants arabophones saoudiens. L’étude se fonde sur un corpus de 1670 relatives. Constitué dans un cadre institutionnel, ce corpus réunit des productions écrites obtenues dans des emplois contraints, semi-contraints et plus spontanés. Les résultats confirment le fait que la relativisation en français relève d’une complexité linguistique et représente une incontestable difficulté dans le parcours d’un apprenant de FLE. Quelle que soit la fonction relativisée (sujet < OD < syntagme prépositionnel : où < dont < F. Comp.), quelle que soit la forme attendue (quiSU < où < dont < F.comp. < que < qu’) les erreurs sont nombreuses. Les principales difficultés, situées à la jonction de la matrice et de la relative, concernent le choix de la forme requise et l’extraction de la préposition. Si la hiérarchie d’accessibilité de Keenan et Comrie (1977) est globalement respectée (les relativisations les plus basses suscitant plus d’erreurs), certaines données cependant la remettent en cause : la relativisation d’un oblique semble parfois plus accessible que la relativisation d’un objet indirect (où OBL parait plus accessible que dont OI ou que l’emploi d’une forme amalgamée OI ou oblique OI). Il s’avère, en outre, que l’écart entre les langues en contact occasionne des erreurs, dues à des transferts négatifs et, notamment, à une indifférenciation entre stratégie du joncteur (arabe standard moderne) et stratégie du pronom relatif (français) et à la reconduction de modalités de sélection du relativiseur propre à l’arabe standard moderne. On note également un recours à un complémenteur universel (transfert de l’arabe dialectal ?) parfois associé à un pronom résomptif. / This research identifies and analyzes the various errors made by Saudi Arabian-speaking learners in the context of relativization. The study is based on a corpus of 1670 relative. Constituted in an institutional framework, this corpus combines written productions obtained in constrained, semi-constrained and more spontaneous uses. The results confirm the fact that relativisation in French is linguistically complex and represents an undeniable difficulty in the course of a learner. Regardless of the relativized function (sujet < OD < syntagme prépositionnel: où < dont < F. Comp), whatever the expected form (quiSU < où < dont < F.comp. < que < qu’) mistakes are numerous. The main difficulties, located at the junction of the matrix and the relative, concern the choice of the required form and the extraction of the preposition. Although the hierarchy of accessibility of Keenan and Comrie (1977) is generally respected (the lowest relativities causing more errors), some data, however, call it into question: the relativization of an oblique seems sometimes more accessible than the relativisation of an indirect object (où OBL appears more accessible than dont OI or the use of an amalgamated form OI or oblique OI). Moreover, the gap between the languages in contact causes errors, due to negative transfers and, in particular, to an indifference between the strategy of the junctor (modern standard Arabic) and the relative pronoun (French) strategy and to the renewal of modalities for selecting the relativiser of modern standard Arabic. We also note a recourse to a universal complementor (transfer of dialectal Arabic?) Sometimes associated with a resumptive pronoun.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the nature of code switching between Tamazight and Arabic in light of Myers-Scotton's Matrix Frame Model (MLF) (Myers- Scotton, 1993), and the 4-M model of code switching (Myers-Scotton & Jake, 2000). Data come from the very first Libyan Tamazight news broadcast in Libya on May 2, 2011, during the uprising against the Gaddafi regime. I analyzed the broadcast in an attempt to understand the nature and implications of the switching between the two languages in the utterances of the speakers in the video. I also argued that in many ways what many might think of as code switching is actually borrowing. During the Gaddafi era, the government banned the use of Tamazight in formal settings such as the media, work place, and schools. Since the fall of Gaddafi and his regime, the Imazighen (or Berbers) in Libya have sought to present themselves, their language, and their culture as an important part of Libyan culture. Libya's Imazighen are bilingual speakers, a fact that set up the conditions for the switching between Tamazight and Arabic analyzed in this study. Their bilingualism, along with Libyan language policies under Gaddafi, help account for the nature of code switching in the data. This study documents contact phenomena among different languages in Libya. It also facilitates understanding of some of the sociolinguistic changes occurring there as a result of the political changes in the wake of so-called "Arab Spring."

The historical nature of language contact between French and Arabic in Algeria has created a sociolinguistic situation in which French is permeated throughout Algerian society. The prevalence and use of spoken French in Algeria by native speakers of Spoken Algerian Arabic has been a topic of interest to researchers of codeswitching since the 1970s. Studies have been conducted on codeswitching in Algerian media such as television, radio, and music. The hip hop scene has been active in Algeria since the 1980s. Algerian hip hop lyrics contain a multitude of switches into French. This study explores the structural makeup of the codeswitching between French and Spoken Algerian Arabic in Algerian hip hop. These are pattern that have gone heretofore unstudied. The purpose of this study was to utilize Myers-Scotton's MLF and 4-M models in order to analyze the codeswitching between Spoken Algerian Arabic and French found in the lyrics to the hip hop album Kobay by popular Algerian hip hop artist Lotfi Double Kanon. This study had two goals: the first was to document the structural patterns of the codeswitching found in the data. The second goal was to test Myers-Scotton's models and determine whether the patterns found in the data could be predicted by the MLF and 4-M models. In order to accomplish these goals, the lyrics to the album were transcribed, translated, coded and analyzed at the level of the complementizer phrase. The principles of the MLF and 4-M models were used as central tool for analysis. This study demonstrates that the codeswitching found in the lyrics to Kobay follow the principles of the MLF and 4-M models to a great extent. However, three examples of problematic data are presented. This is followed by a discussion on the social and structural implications of these findings.

The impact and dynamics of Internet-based resources for Arabic-speaking users is increasing in significance, depth and breadth at highest pace than ever, and thus requires updated mechanisms for computational processing of Arabic texts. Arabic is a complex language and as such requires in depth investigation for analysis and improvement of available automatic processing techniques such as root extraction methods or text classification techniques, and for developing text collections that are already labeled, whether with single or multiple labels. This thesis proposes new ideas and methods to improve available automatic processing techniques for Arabic texts. Any automatic processing technique would require data in order to be used and critically reviewed and assessed, and here an attempt to develop a labeled Arabic corpus is also proposed. This thesis is composed of three parts: 1- Arabic corpus development, 2- proposing, improving and implementing root extraction techniques, and 3- proposing and investigating the effect of different pre-processing methods on single-labeled text classification methods for Arabic. This thesis first develops an Arabic corpus that is prepared to be used here for testing root extraction methods as well as single-label text classification techniques. It also enhances a rule-based root extraction method by handling irregular cases (that appear in about 34% of texts). It proposes and implements two expanded algorithms as well as an adjustment for a weight-based method. It also includes the algorithm that handles irregular cases to all and compares the performances of these proposed methods with original ones. This thesis thus develops a root extraction system that handles foreign Arabized words by constructing a list of about 7,000 foreign words. The outcome of the technique with best accuracy results in extracting the correct stem and root for respective words in texts, which is an enhanced rule-based method, is used in the third part of this thesis. This thesis finally proposes and implements a variant term frequency inverse document frequency weighting method, and investigates the effect of using different choices of features in document representation on single-label text classification performance (words, stems or roots as well as including to these choices their respective phrases). This thesis applies forty seven classifiers on all proposed representations and compares their performances. One challenge for researchers in Arabic text processing is that reported root extraction techniques in literature are either not accessible or require a long time to be reproduced while labeled benchmark Arabic text corpus is not fully available online. Also, by now few machine learning techniques were investigated on Arabic where usual preprocessing steps before classification were chosen. Such challenges are addressed in this thesis by developing a new labeled Arabic text corpus for extended applications of computational techniques. Results of investigated issues here show that proposing and implementing an algorithm that handles irregular words in Arabic did improve the performance of all implemented root extraction techniques. The performance of the algorithm that handles such irregular cases is evaluated in terms of accuracy improvement and execution time. Its efficiency is investigated with different document lengths and empirically is found to be linear in time for document lengths less than about 8,000. The rule-based technique is improved the highest among implemented root extraction methods when including the irregular cases handling algorithm. This thesis validates that choosing roots or stems instead of words in documents representations indeed improves single-label classification performance significantly for most used classifiers. However, the effect of extending such representations with their respective phrases on single-label text classification performance shows that it has no significant improvement. Many classifiers were not yet tested for Arabic such as the ripple-down rule classifier. The outcome of comparing the classifiers' performances concludes that the Bayesian network classifier performance is significantly the best in terms of accuracy, training time, and root mean square error values for all proposed and implemented representations. / Petra University, Amman (Jordan)

Note:

Based on the examiners’ reports of the University of Cambridge on the shortcomings of the students of form V (school certificate level) in Arabic language in the international examinations of year 2008 and 2009 and on the proposals and recommendations therein, the researcher started this research work to address the difficulties faced by students in Arabic language in the grammatical rules when writing essays and in translation from Arabic to English and vice versa in form V (school certificate level) and chose Doha Academy (secondary department) in Mauritius as model. The research work in fact confirmed the errors of students in the grammatical rules after analyzing the examination scripts of the mock examinations run at the school during the year 2009 and 2010 and the researcher came to know about the causes of errors which were also confirmed by means of a questionnaire distributed to the students at this level. The researcher’s interviews with the male and female teachers of Arabic language at School certificate level on the issue were of great benefits and they in fact made mention of the grammatical errors which the researcher came across in the mock examinations’ scripts after close study and analysis. The researcher also considered the importance of the contrastive analysis between Arabic and English due to its effect in learning Arabic as a second language. ط After analysis of the questionnaire and interviews, the researcher came across a number of important issues which he mentioned in details among the results which he concluded. The researcher concluded that most of the errors in grammar are due to the influence of the English language on the Arabic language through linguistic interference, transfer of experience, generalization, as well as errors related to the target language itself like hypercorrection and intralingual phenomenon etc. And that the errors found in translation are caused mainly because of lack of Arabic vocabularies as well as literal translation and a lack of fluency and confidence in using Arabic structures and grammar. Finally, the researcher mentioned a number of recommendations and suggestions which he considers to be a priority and should be executed if we really wish to eliminate difficulties and problems in the process of teaching and learning of the Arabic language at this level and to see the progress of this language in this island. / على (university of Cambridge) بناء على ما قدمّت جامعة كمبرج قصور الطلبة في اللغة العربية في امتحانات كمبرج الدولية للصف الخامس الثانوية للعامين 8002 8002 م، ومن اقتراحات وتوصيات انطلق الباحث في هذا البحث ليتناول الصعوبات التي – يواجهها طلاب اللغة العربية فيما يتعلق بالقواعد عند كتابة المقالات وفي الترجمة من العربية إلى الانجليزية والعكس وذلك في الصف الخامس الثانوي في جمهورية موريشيوس م اختيار أكاديمية الدوحة في موريشيوس نموذجا. لقد أشار البحث فعلا إلى أخطاء الطلاب والطالبات بعد تحليل أوراق إجابات لامتحانين 8000 م كما - في اللغة العربية أُجرِيا في الأكاديمية في العامين 8002 (mock exams) تجريبيين تعرّف الباحث على أسباب الأخطاء التي أكّدها الاستبيان الموزّع على طلاب هذا المستوى. وكانت لمقابلات الباحث م مدرسي ومدرسات هذا المستوى حول القضية ثمراتها حيث أكّدت كذلك ما وجدها الباحث من الأخطاء في النحو والصرف في أوراق إجابات الأمتحان بعد الدراسة والتحليل. رأى الباحث كذلك أهمية التحليل التقابلي بين العربية والانجليزية لتأثير هذه الأخيرة في تعلّم الطلبة اللغة العربية كلغة ثانية. بعد تحليل الاستبيان والمقابلات وصل الباحث إلى عدد من القضايا المهمة وذكرها بالتفصيل في النتائج في آخر البحث. وصل الباحث إلى أن اكثر الأخطاء ترج إلى تأثير اللغة الانجليزية على اللغة العربية تتمثل في التداخل اللغوي ونقل الخبرة والتعميم السلبي كما أن هناك أخطاء تتعلق باللغة اهمدف كالمبالغة في التصويب وتداخل اللغة نفسها. وترج الأخطاء في الترجمة أساسا إلى النقص في المفردات العربية، فضلا عن الترجمة الحرفية وعدم الطلاقة والثقة في استخدام التراكيب العربية والتدقيق النحوي. وأخيرا ذكر الباحث عددا من التوصيات والاقتراحات التي يعتبرها من الأولويات والضروريات ا ولتي يوصي بتنفيذها إذا أُريد بالفعل القضاء على الصعوبات والمشكلات في تعليم اللغة العربية وتعلمه وتقدم هذه اللغة في هذه الجزيرة. / Religious Sudies & Arabic / D.Litt. et Phil. (Arabic)