Overview
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
Current Appointments & Affiliations
Recent Publications
Wh-questions in the grammar of heritage Egyptian speakers
Journal Article International Journal of Bilingualism · January 1, 2024 Aims and objectives: Despite the growth in research on heritage grammars, very few studies focused on heritage speakers’ knowledge of the syntax of wh-questions. This paper examines heritage Egyptian speakers’ knowledge of wh-questions in their L1 with par ... Full text CiteHeritage Language Research and Theoretical Linguistics
Chapter · January 1, 2021 Our understanding of the syntax of natural language and syntactic aspects that obtain across languages and other aspects that display variation has greatly benefited from research on a large number of languages representing a diversity of language families ... Full text CiteIs learning a standard variety similar to learning a new language?: Evidence from heritage speakers of Arabic
Journal Article Studies in Second Language Acquisition · March 1, 2018 This study examines heritage speakers' knowledge of Standard Arabic (SA) and compares their patterns of SA acquisition to those of learners of SA as second/foreign language (L2). In addition, the study examines the influence of previously acquired language ... Full text CiteRecent Grants
Provost's Initiative on Free Inquiry, Pluralism & Belonging
Institutional SupportPrincipal Investigator · Awarded by Duke Endowment · 2024 - 2028Ivy+Faculty Advancement Network(FAN)
Institutional SupportPrincipal Investigator · Awarded by University of Chicago · 2023 - 2026Faculty Leadership Development Initiative
Institutional SupportPrincipal Investigator · Awarded by Duke Endowment · 2018 - 2022View All Grants