Abdulkafi Albirini

Linguistics, Arabic - World Languages and Cultures

Professor, Arabic Language Coordinator, MSLT Program Co-Director

Abdulkafi Albirini

Contact Information

Office Location: Main 202H
Phone: (435) 797-8630
Email: abdulkafi.albirini@usu.edu
Additional Information:

Educational Background

PhD, Linguistics (SLA, Sociolinguistics), University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
PhD, Technologies of Instruction and Media , The Ohio State University, Columbus

First, Second, and Heritage Language Acquisition
Sociolinguistics
Bilingualism
Pragmatics
LING 6010: Research in Second Language Learning
LING 4100: Study of Language
LING 3100: Language in Context
ARBC 4040: Intro to Arabic Culture
ARBC 3030: Intro to Islam

Books:

  • Albirini, A. (2015). Modern Arabic sociolinguistics: Diglossia, variation, codeswitching, attitudes, and identity.London & New York: Routledge.
  • Albirini, A. (2009). Teachers’ attitudes to ICT implementation in schools: The case of Syrian EFL teachers. Germany: VDM Verlag Publishing House.

Select Journal Articles:

  • Albirini, A. (2016). The role of exposure to English in the development of Arabic as a heritage language. Language Acquisition: A Journal of Developmental Linguistics. Online first doi: 10.1080/10489223.2016.1234620.
  • Benmamoun, E. & Albirini, A. (2016). Is learning a standard variety similar to learning a new language? Evidence from heritage speakers of Arabic. Studies in Second Language Acquisition. Online first doi: 10.1017/S0272263116000383.
  • Albirini, A. & Chakrani, B.(2016). Switching codes and registers: An analysis of heritage Arabic speakers' sociolinguistic competence.  International Journal of Bilingualism.  doi:10.1177/1367006915626587
  • Albirini, A. (2015). Factors affecting the acquisition of plural morphology in Jordanian Arabic. Journal of Child Language, 42(4), 734-762.
  • Albirini, A. & Benmamoun, E. (2015). Factors affecting the retention of sentential negation in heritage Egyptian Arabic. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 8(3), 470-489.
  • Albirini, A. & Benmamoun, E. (2014). Concatenative and non-concatenative plural formation in L1, L2, and heritage speakers. Modern Language Journal, 98(3), 854-871.
  • Albirini, A. (2014). The role of the colloquial varieties in the acquisition of the standard variety: the case of Arabic  heritage speakers. Foreign Language Annals, 47 (3), 447-363.
  • Albirini, A. & Benmamoun, E. (2014). Aspects of second language transfer in the oral production of Egyptian and Palestinian heritage speakers. International Journal of Bilingualism, 18(3), 244-273.
  • Albirini, A. (2014). The socio-pragmatics of dialectal codeswitching by the Al-‘Keidaat Bedouin speakers. Intercultural Pragmatics, 11 (1), 121–147.
  • Benmamoun, E., Albirini, A., Montrul, S. and Saadah, E. (2014). Arabic plurals and root and pattern morphology in Palestinian and Egyptian heritage speakers. Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism, 4 (1), 89-123.
  • Albirini, A. (2014). Toward understanding the variability in the language proficiencies of Arabic heritage speakers.   International Journal of Bilingualism. 18(6), 730-765.
  • A., Benmamoun, E., & Chakrani, B. (2013). Gender and number agreement in the oral production of Arabic heritage speakers. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 16 (1), 1-18.
  • Albirini, A. (2011). The sociolinguistic functions of codeswitching between standard Arabic and dialectal Arabic.  Language in Society, 40, 537-562. 
  • Albirini, A., Benmamoun, A., and Saadah, E. (2011). Grammatical features of Egyptian and Palestinian Arabic heritage speakers oral production. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 33, 273– 303.