Comparative persuasive styles in Arabic and English: A study of the United Nations General Assembly Debate speeches

This study analyzed persuasive styles and tactics used in the United Nations General Assembly Debate speeches by Arabic and English speaking leaders. Past work has identified three persuasive styles: analogical, presentational, and quasilogical. The literature suggests that Arabs use analogical and presentational styles, while the “West” prefers the quasilogical style. Our results indicate that Arabs used the quasilogical style more often than English speakers. All speakers drew upon most of the tactics identified to strengthen their arguments. Finally, there has been a shift in the usage of some tactics for both sets of speakers over 30 years.     

Reading and spelling error analysis of native

This study was an investigation of reading and spelling errors of dyslexic Arabic readers (n=20) compared with two groups of normal readers: a young readers group, matched with the dyslexics by reading level (n=20) and an age-matched group (n=20). They were tested on reading and spelling of texts, isolated words and pseudowords. Two research questions were the focus of this study: What are the reading and spelling profile errors of dyslexic native Arabic speakers? What is the effect of the Arabic orthography on these types of errors? The results of the reading error analysis revealed a clear contribution of the uniqueness of the Arabic orthography to the types of errors made by the three different groups. In addition, the error profiles of the dyslexic readers were similar to the error profiles made by the younger reading-level-matched group in percentages and in quality. The most prominent types of errors were morphological and semiphonetic, which highlighted the contribution of the Arabic orthography to these types of errors. Consistently, the profile of the spelling errors was similar in percentages and quality among the dyslexics and the reading-level-matched group but different from the age-matched group on the spelling measures. The analysis of the spelling errors revealed that the dominant type of error was mostly phonetic due to the limited orthographic lexicon. In addition, the Arabic orthography also contributed to these types of errors because many spelling mistakes were made due to poor knowledge of the spelling rules. The results of the reading and spelling errors are discussed from a reading development point of view. Further, two models are suggested, one for reading and one for spelling, to illustrate the cognitive processes that underlie the reading and spelling mistakes in this type of orthography.     

Morphological awareness, phonological awareness, and reading in English–Arabic bilingual children

The paper reported an exploratory study that tested (a) the relationship between phonological and morphological awareness in English (L1)–Arabic (L2) bilingual children in Canada (N = 43), and (b) the relevance of these skills to word and pseudoword reading accuracy, and to complex word reading fluency. The results showed a significant correlation between phonological awareness in English and in Arabic. However, morphological awareness in the two languages was not correlated. Phonological awareness predicted reading cross-linguistically, but only Arabic morphological awareness predicted word reading in English. Moreover, while both phonological and morphological awareness in English predicted independent unique variance in English word reading, only phonological awareness in Arabic predicted Arabic word reading. Complex-word reading fluency was predicted by morphological awareness within both languages. Similarly, in both languages, phonological awareness was the single factor predicting pseudoword decoding accuracy. The results are discussed in terms of cross-linguistic differences between English and Arabic in orthographic depth and in morphological structure and transparency.     

人类文明第一次大融合的结晶:阿拉伯—伊斯兰文化

人类在不同的地域创造了不同的文化,构成了不同的文明区域。古埃及文明、两河流域文明、印度文明、中华文明基本上是以地域为核心的独立文明。希腊—罗马文明虽然直接或间接地吸收了其他文明的一些成果而发展为欧洲文明的基石,但这是一种有限的综合文明。人类文明第一次真正的大融合是在阿拉伯帝国时期出现,并在融合中发展出一种独特的不是纯宗教和民族的阿拉伯—伊斯兰文明。论文对阿拉伯帝国时期人类文明的大交汇大融合作简要阐述,以此凸现阿拉伯—伊斯兰文明的吸收性和包容性,这在文明冲突的今天有一定的现实意义。     

中文科技论文中顿号的使用问题

在科技编辑界,并列的阿拉伯数字之间和并列的外文字符之间的停顿用逗号而不用顿号,已成为一种约定俗成的规则。但这种用法可能引起3个问题：不符合中文标点符号使用规则,句子层次混乱甚至造成歧义,句中对应成分标点符号不对应。     

学术期刊的数字用法及有关书写规则

在出版物里数字使用的频率很高，为避免使用混乱，国家有关部门于1995年颁发了GB／T15835-1995标准，对数字用法作了统一规定，这对书报刊中数字使用的规范化起到十分重要的作用．但许多同志对此不熟悉。文稿中数字使用混乱的局面还较普遍．根据国家标准及有关文献对如何正确使用数字作一介绍，供作者参考，以期提高学报的标准化、规范化程度．     

Is there Lingua Franca in informal scientific communication? Evidence from language distribution of scientific tweets

Language distribution in scientific communication reflects the influence of different languages on science in global perspective. The study, based on over 450 thousand scientific tweets of all publications indexed by Scopus in June 2015, reveals the language distribution in informal scientific communication. Moreover, this result is compared with the language distribution in formal scientific communication reflected in scientific publications. Results show: (1) The language of scientific tweets is concentrated in English (91%), Japanese (2.4%) and Spanish (1.7%), while the language of scientific publications is concentrated in English (90.6%), Chinese (5%) and German (1.1%). (2) Both scientific tweets and scientific publications present disciplinary differences in language distribution, reflecting the different amount of attention that authors of different languages have on certain disciplines. (3) Except Saudi Arabia, investigated countries all over the world, regardless of whether their native language is English or not, all have English scientific tweets in the dominant position. For the vast majority of these countries, the native language scientific tweets only rank the second position. (4) Overall, 26% of tweeters use more than one language to tweet scientific products, while 49% of scientific tweeters tweet everything in English only. The results indicate that English has undoubtedly become the lingua franca in informal scientific communication.     

Correlates of Reading Fluency in Arabic: Diglossic and Orthographic Factors

Arabic native speaking children are born into a unique linguistic context called diglossia (Ferguson, word, 14, 47–56, [1959]). In this context, children grow up speaking a Spoken Arabic Vernacular (SAV), which is an exclusively spoken language, but later learn to read another linguistically related form, Modern Standard Arabic (MSA). Forty-two first-grade Arabic native speaking children were given five measures of basic reading processes: two cognitive (rapid automatized naming and short-term working memory), two phonological (phoneme discrimination and phoneme isolation), and one orthographic (letter recoding speed). In addition, the study produced independent measures of phonological processing for MSA phonemes (phonemes that are not within the spoken vernacular of children) and SAV phonemes (phonemes that are familiar to children from their oral vernacular). The relevance of these skills to MSA pseudoword reading fluency (words correct per minute) in vowelized Arabic was tested. The results showed that all predictor measures, except phoneme discrimination, correlated with pseudoword reading fluency. Although phonological processing (phoneme isolation and discrimination) for MSA phonemes was more challenging than that for SAV phonemes, phonological skills were not found to affect reading fluency directly. Stepwise regression analysis showed that the strongest predictor of reading fluency in vowelized Arabic was letter recoding speed. Letter recoding speed was predicted by memory, rapid naming, and phoneme isolation. The results are discussed in light of Arabic diglossia and the shallow orthography of vowelized Arabic.     

英语数字在学术出版中的规范用法

为促使英语数字在学术出版物中的规范使用,按照相关细则,归纳了英语拼写数词和阿拉伯数字使用的具体场合,提出了相应的解决对策。     

行政机关公文成文日期应改用阿拉伯数字标识

现行关于数字使用的国家标准要求按公历记载的年月日用阿拉伯数字标识,而现行行政机关公文处理规定却要求行政公文成文日期用汉字标识。用阿拉伯数字标识成文日期也能达到准确,而行政公文成文日期用汉字标识与国家关于数字使用的专门标准和多数人选用数字类型习惯矛盾,与党、人大系统公文成文日期选用数字规定不一致,造成工作麻烦,应改用阿拉伯数字标识。