Abbas Benmamoun, Professor of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies

Abbas Benmamoun is the vice provost for faculty advancement, a position responsible for providing intellectual leadership, guidance and oversight of university-wide strategies and programs to enhance faculty excellence. He oversees faculty and leadership development programs, including programs to recruit and hire outstanding and diverse faculty, and partner with schools, departments, and centers to enhance faculty success at Duke and promote an inclusive and equitable learning, research, and work environment.

Prior to joining Duke, Dr. Benmamoun served as vice provost for faculty affairs and academic policies at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign. He additionally served in different leadership roles at the University of Illinois, including as acting director of the Center of Middle Eastern and Asian Studies, head of the Department of Linguistics, director of the School of Literatures, Cultures, and Linguistics, and Associate Provost for Faculty Development.

A native of Morocco, Benmamoun earned his Bachelor of Arts degree from the Mohammed V University in Rabat, Morocco, his master’s degree from University College London, and his Ph.D. from the University of Southern California. Benmamoun’s research focuses on the comparative syntax and morphology of natural language and on heritage languages, particularly on issues of language maintenance and loss within immigrant communities. He is the author of “The Feature Structure of Functional Categories”, co-author of “The Syntax of Arabic”, and co-editor of the “Routledge Handbook of Arabic Linguistics.”

Administrative Assistant: Jan Carico
Pronouns: he/him/his

Contact Info:

Office Location:
Office Phone:	(919) 684-4997
Email Address:

Education:

Ph.D.

University of Southern California

1992

Recent Publications   (More Publications)

1. Benmamoun, E, Heritage Language Research and Theoretical Linguistics, in The Cambridge Handbook of Heritage Languages and Linguistics (January, 2021), pp. 375-398 [doi]  [abs]
2. Benmamoun, E; Albirini, A, Is learning a standard variety similar to learning a new language?: Evidence from heritage speakers of Arabic, Studies in Second Language Acquisition, vol. 40 no. 1 (March, 2018), pp. 31-61, Cambridge University Press (CUP) [doi]  [abs]
3. Benmamoun, E; Bassiouney, R, Introduction (January, 2017), pp. 1-8, Routledge, ISBN 9781138783331 [doi]  [abs]
4. Albirini, A; Benmamoun, E, Factors affecting the retention of sentential negation in heritage Egyptian Arabic, Bilingualism, vol. 18 no. 3 (July, 2015), pp. 470-489, Cambridge University Press (CUP) [doi]  [abs]
5. Albirini, A; Benmamoun, E, Concatenative and nonconcatenative plural formation in L1, L2, and heritage speakers of Arabic, Modern Language Journal, vol. 98 no. 3 (September, 2014), pp. 854-871, WILEY [doi]  [abs]