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Symposium attracts Arabic scholars from around world

Feb. 23, 2006

KALAMAZOO--Western Michigan University will welcome visitors from across the country and around the globe when it serves as host for the 20th annual Symposium on Arabic Linguistics from Friday through Sunday, March 3-5, in the Bernhard Center on the main campus in Kalamazoo.

Although open to the public, the symposium is a highly specialized event, where experts meet to present their latest research on theoretical issues related to Arabic language. This year's symposium is focused on social and formal aspects of Arabic and includes a special session on Sunday for computational linguistics and it applications to Arabic.

Some of the most prominent university figures in Arabic linguistics will be among the 25 scholars who will be presenting papers. These presenters will be from nations such as France, Israel, and the United Arab Emirates as well as such U.S. institutions as Colombia and Stanford universities and the universities of Florida, Maryland and Texas.

Seminars scheduled cover a broad range of topics, including language variation and change in Palestinian Arabic, why there is no history of the Arabic language, issues in the phonology of 'onset-dialects' of Arabic and productivity of verb formation strategies in Maltese.

The symposium is being sponsored by the Arabic Linguistics Society, Michigan State University's Center for Language Education and Research, and WMU's College of Arts and Sciences, College of Education, Department of Foreign Languages, Department of History, Department of Spanish and Diether H. Haenicke Institute for International and Area Studies.

WMU faculty and students may register on site for free. The cost for those not affiliated with the University is $50. For more information, contact Mustafa Mughazy, director of WMU's Arabic program, at mustafa.mughazy@wmich.edu or (269) 387-2933.

Media contact: Jeanne Baron, (269) 387-8400, jeanne.baron@wmich.edu

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