{"title":"Principles of variation in the use of diacritics (taškīl) in Arabic books","authors":"Andreas Hallberg","doi":"10.1016/j.langsci.2022.101482","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>The Arabic script has a set of optional diacritics (<em>taškīl</em>) that primarily indicate short vowels. These diacritics are used to varying extents, giving a form of orthographic variation potentially affecting every word in a text and various aspects of the reading process. This study is the first empirical investigation into the variation in how Arabic diacritics are used. It employs quantitative corpus linguistic methods to explore diacritization in a 72-million-word corpus consisting of book-length texts of various genres. Children’s literature and poetry were found to vary considerably in the number of diacritics used, while books of normal prose fall within a narrow range of limited use of diacritics. Furthermore, the different diacritics, subdivided by function, were found to follow a hierarchical order of priority that is largely consistent across genres. These findings call into question common descriptions of the Arabic writing system as binarily diacritized or undiacritized. Further lines of research based on these findings are suggested.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":51592,"journal":{"name":"Language Sciences","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.7000,"publicationDate":"2022-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0388000122000225/pdfft?md5=8c8907b04359e58c4da15507149e937e&pid=1-s2.0-S0388000122000225-main.pdf","citationCount":"4","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Language Sciences","FirstCategoryId":"98","ListUrlMain":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0388000122000225","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"EDUCATION & EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 4
Abstract
The Arabic script has a set of optional diacritics (taškīl) that primarily indicate short vowels. These diacritics are used to varying extents, giving a form of orthographic variation potentially affecting every word in a text and various aspects of the reading process. This study is the first empirical investigation into the variation in how Arabic diacritics are used. It employs quantitative corpus linguistic methods to explore diacritization in a 72-million-word corpus consisting of book-length texts of various genres. Children’s literature and poetry were found to vary considerably in the number of diacritics used, while books of normal prose fall within a narrow range of limited use of diacritics. Furthermore, the different diacritics, subdivided by function, were found to follow a hierarchical order of priority that is largely consistent across genres. These findings call into question common descriptions of the Arabic writing system as binarily diacritized or undiacritized. Further lines of research based on these findings are suggested.
期刊介绍:
Language Sciences is a forum for debate, conducted so as to be of interest to the widest possible audience, on conceptual and theoretical issues in the various branches of general linguistics. The journal is also concerned with bringing to linguists attention current thinking about language within disciplines other than linguistics itself; relevant contributions from anthropologists, philosophers, psychologists and sociologists, among others, will be warmly received. In addition, the Editor is particularly keen to encourage the submission of essays on topics in the history and philosophy of language studies, and review articles discussing the import of significant recent works on language and linguistics.