MASHAEL A . ALRAJHI | Princess Nora University (original) (raw)

Uploads

Papers by MASHAEL A . ALRAJHI

Loanword adaptation contributes to a better understanding of how phonology functions universally ... more Loanword adaptation contributes to a better understanding of how phonology functions universally and cross-linguistically. The present study sheds light on the consonantal adaptation of English loanwords into Hasawi Arabic. It specifically investigates the occurrence of emphatic consonants in the adapted Hasawi forms. Although /tˤ/ and /sˤ/ are not part of the source (English) language inventory, it is an interesting phenomenon that they have emerged in the adapted forms of English loanwords by Hasawi speakers. The results revealed that the
adjacency of a back vowel to the consonants /s/ or /t/ in the adapted forms triggered the emphasis of these consonants to their emphatic counterparts. The emphasis effect surfaced whether the vowel in the English loanword was a back vowel already and just triggered the emphasis effect, or the vowel was not attested in Hasawi Arabic vowel inventory and was mapped to a back vowel which, in turn, triggered the emphasis effect.

The present study inspects the semantic and pragmatic meanings of ʔlħin, which is one of the most... more The present study inspects the semantic and pragmatic meanings of ʔlħin, which is one of the most frequently used discourse markers in informal Arabic. Studies on the discourse marker ‘now’, which is the equivalent of ʔlħin in English, discuss its use as a temporal adverb and a coherence marker. Similarly, the meanings and functions of ʔlħin are examined in this paper. A dataset from Twitter, which is one of the most popular platforms that are rich with millions of conversations between users in all languages, was used to examine temporal and coherence meanings of ʔlħin within different contexts, and whether it works as a constraint on relevance. The analysis showed that ʔlħin conveyed a semantic meaning ‘now’ when used as a temporal adverb to refer to the present time, and was indicative of a pragmatic meaning when used as a discourse marker that has a coherence function. Similar to Schiffrin’s analysis of ‘now’ as a discourse marker, the functions of ʔlħin as a coherence marker in...

Arab World English Journal, 2017

International Journal of Language & Linguistics, 2019

International Journal of Language and Literary Studies, 2020

Thematization serves to focus the readers’ attention to the focal aspects of a text in order to d... more Thematization serves to focus the readers’ attention to the focal aspects of a text in order to deliver its intended interpretation. The cohesion of texts relies on the structure of messages. Consequently, the way in which messages are constructed as the text unfolds contributes to its cohesion. Since the probability of making mistakes in writing is higher in nonnative texts as their writers are not using their mother tongue, a comparison between medical articles written by native and nonnative writers is drawn in the present study to shed light on the similarities and differences among them. Due to the scientific nature of medical texts, writers might face difficulties in the interconnectedness of ideas within the text. Therefore, the medical field texts are inspected to check their correspondence with texts in other fields. The Hallidayan systemic-functional approach (SFL) was utilized to conduct the analysis. The results show that there is a consistency in the distribution of The...

Thematization serves to focus the readers’ attention to the focal aspects of a text in order to d... more Thematization serves to focus the readers’ attention to the focal aspects of a text in order to deliver its intended interpretation. The cohesion of texts relies on the structure of messages. Consequently, the way in which messages are constructed as the text unfolds contributes to its cohesion. Since the probability of making mistakes in writing is higher in nonnative texts as their writers are not using their mother tongue, a comparison between medical articles written by native and nonnative writers is drawn in the present study to shed light on the similarities and differences among them. Due to the scientific nature of medical texts, writers might face difficulties in the interconnectedness of ideas
within the text. Therefore, the medical field texts are inspected to check their correspondence with texts in other fields. The Hallidayan systemic-functional approach (SFL) was utilized to conduct the analysis. The results show that there is a consistency in the distribution of Theme types and Thematic progression patterns among native and nonnative writers. In addition, the findings that relate to the dominance of the topical Theme and the constant Theme pattern in
medical texts are in alignment with the results of studies in other fields such a academia.

Semantic prosody is the co-occurrence of words with other words that belong to a particular seman... more Semantic prosody is the co-occurrence of words with other words that belong to a particular semantic set. A related concept is semantic preference, which is the relation, not between individual words, but between a lemma or word-form and a set of semantically related words. Previous interlinguistic studies on semantic prosody show that EFL learners often make semantic prosodic errors in communication as they rarely notice the semantic prosody of the items they learn. The study investigates the semantic prosody and semantic preference found in EFL Saudi students' writings in relation to the use of four maximizers: completely, entirely, totally, and utterly.The results are compared to findings obtained from a study by Partington (2004) in which the same maximizers were investigated utilizing data obtained from the Cobuild corpus. Results regarding semantic prosody show a significant difference. In Partington's study, utterly had an unfavorable implication whereas the other three maximizers appeared to have an even balance between favorable and unfavorable items. All the four maximizers used in the students' writings had a favorable prosody. In relation to semantic preference, many items found in the students' writings belong to a semantic set related to emotions and states of mind, which is not the case with the results in Partington's study. Another difference is that all the four maximizers exhibited a tendency to occur in the corpus with words related to absence, whereas the data collected from students' writings shows that students barely used words that relate to absence with maximizers. The similarities in collocational behavior include using the maximizers with collocations related to change, dependency and independency.

Using Infographics in the Teaching of Linguistics, 2017

Information graphics (infographics) are visualizations of ideas & information in a type of pictur... more Information graphics (infographics) are visualizations of ideas & information in a type of picture. Infographics combine data with design in order to communicate information to an audience in a
comprehensible manner. This study is motivated by the lack of resources that directly study the influence of infographics on linguistics. It aims to investigate the impact of using information graphics in the teaching of linguistics on Saudi students. The researchers seek to answer the following questions: (i) What is the Saudi female EFL students' perception of using infographics as a tool for learning linguistics and semantics? (ii) What are the advantages & disadvantages of using infographics as a tool for learning linguistics and semantics? To this end, 186 Saudi female college students from the Department of Translation at the College of Languages in Princess Nourah bint Abdulrahman University (PNU) took part in this study. They designed infographics as a project in two linguistic courses: Introduction to Linguistics and Introduction to Semantics. They were provided a 26-item questionnaire. The questionnaire was analyzed by using the
Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS). The participants’ responses were analyzed according to quantitative data analysis procedures. The findings show the students’ positive
attitude towards using infographics even though the majority were not familiar with them. While creating infographics, the participants found practicing various skills such as higher thinking skills beneficial. However, issues such as technical problems were perceived as a hindrance. A number of implications and suggestions are presented based on the results of this research.

Mashael Alrajhi, 2019

The present study inspects the semantic and pragmatic meanings of ʔlħin, which is one of the most... more The present study inspects the semantic and pragmatic meanings of ʔlħin, which is one of the most frequently used discourse markers in informal Arabic. Studies on the discourse marker 'now', which is the equivalent of ʔlħin in English, discuss its use as a temporal adverb and a coherence marker. Similarly, the meanings and functions of ʔlħin are examined in this paper. A dataset from Twitter, which is one of the most popular platforms that are rich with millions of conversations between users in all languages, was used to examine temporal and coherence meanings of ʔlħin within different contexts, and whether it works as a constraint on relevance. The analysis showed that ʔlħin conveyed a semantic meaning 'now' when used as a temporal adverb to refer to the present time, and was indicative of a pragmatic meaning when used as a discourse marker that has a coherence function. Similar to Schiffrin's analysis of 'now' as a discourse marker, the functions of ʔlħin as a coherence marker include ideational shifting, raising the possibility of disagreement, marking of a reason, engaging in negotiations, and orientation shifts. In relation to relevance, the analysis showed that ʔlħin facilitates the recovery of the most relevant pragmatic interpretation by constraining the addressee's search for the required interpretation in different contexts.

Arab World English Journal, 2017

International Journal of Language & Linguistics, 2019

International Journal of Language and Literary Studies, 2020

Thematization serves to focus the readers’ attention to the focal aspects of a text in order to d... more Thematization serves to focus the readers’ attention to the focal aspects of a text in order to deliver its intended interpretation. The cohesion of texts relies on the structure of messages. Consequently, the way in which messages are constructed as the text unfolds contributes to its cohesion. Since the probability of making mistakes in writing is higher in nonnative texts as their writers are not using their mother tongue, a comparison between medical articles written by native and nonnative writers is drawn in the present study to shed light on the similarities and differences among them. Due to the scientific nature of medical texts, writers might face difficulties in the interconnectedness of ideas
within the text. Therefore, the medical field texts are inspected to check their correspondence with texts in other fields. The Hallidayan systemic-functional approach (SFL) was utilized to conduct the analysis. The results show that there is a consistency in the distribution of Theme types and Thematic progression patterns among native and nonnative writers. In addition, the findings that relate to the dominance of the topical Theme and the constant Theme pattern in
medical texts are in alignment with the results of studies in other fields such a academia.

Using Infographics in the Teaching of Linguistics, 2017

Mashael Alrajhi, 2019

The present study inspects the semantic and pragmatic meanings of ʔlħin, which is one of the most... more The present study inspects the semantic and pragmatic meanings of ʔlħin, which is one of the most frequently used discourse markers in informal Arabic. Studies on the discourse marker 'now', which is the equivalent of ʔlħin in English, discuss its use as a temporal adverb and a coherence marker. Similarly, the meanings and functions of ʔlħin are examined in this paper. A dataset from Twitter, which is one of the most popular platforms that are rich with millions of conversations between users in all languages, was used to examine temporal and coherence meanings of ʔlħin within different contexts, and whether it works as a constraint on relevance. The analysis showed that ʔlħin conveyed a semantic meaning 'now' when used as a temporal adverb to refer to the present time, and was indicative of a pragmatic meaning when used as a discourse marker that has a coherence function. Similar to Schiffrin's analysis of 'now' as a discourse marker, the functions of ʔlħin as a coherence marker include ideational shifting, raising the possibility of disagreement, marking of a reason, engaging in negotiations, and orientation shifts. In relation to relevance, the analysis showed that ʔlħin facilitates the recovery of the most relevant pragmatic interpretation by constraining the addressee's search for the required interpretation in different contexts.