An Agglomeration Benefits of Oil and Gas Firms: An Exploratory Study Through Industrial Cluster

The research investigates the agglomeration pattern of seven national, international oil and gas extraction and production companies through an exploration of oil and gas cluster components and subcomponents. For this exploratory study, data is collected through primary sources via in-depth interviews from managers of national and international oil and gas MNCs working in Sindh, Pakistan and through secondary sources of business reports. The content analysis is adopted to analyze the data. Results of this study reveal that there is strong existence of exploration and production companies which results in agglomeration, however, other components of oil and gas cluster like refineries, marketing companies, supporting institutes, media and government poorly exist in Sindh province of Pakistan. Findings also highlight that the Sindh as a resource-rich region is still underdeveloped due to poor management of resources or because of the absence of ideal oil and gas cluster components and coordination among them in the region.

A Constraint-Based Analysis of Syllable Based Processes in Mahbashi Yemeni Arabic

This thesis deals with the phonology of Maḥbashi Yemeni Arabic (MYA).It is the first descriptive analysis of the phonology of MYA. It provides a normative analysis data for the syllable based processes of MYA demonstrating that the dialect under investigation have similar but not identical phonological environments of the syllable based processes: syncope, epenthesis and vowel shortening. The analysis is presented in terms of Optimality Theory (Prince & Smolensky ,1993). As for the methodology and data collection, the researcher made use of data collected from a set of people who are native speakers of Mahbashi Arabic. The researcher recorded their conversations taking place in official, social, cultural, religious and domestic contexts. The recorded data covered different types of words:monosyllabic, disyllabic, tri-syllabic and quadri-syllabic. The findings confirm that MYA shares some the syllable structures with Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) and it differs in other syllable structures. By closely examining a wide range of data, the study proved that MYA exhibits ten syllable structures; CV, CVC, CVV, CVVC, CCV, CCVV, CCVCC, CCVC, CVCC and CCVVC. As far as syllable structure of consonant cluster is concerned, the faithfulness constraints MAX-IO>DEP prevails over the markedness constraints *σ[CC, *CC]σ . The syllable related processes:syncope, epenthesis and vowel shortening were examined through the interaction of different constraints. As far syncope is concerned, the study proves that the constraint i,u]σ is active in MYA and is ranked high in the constraint hierarchy.The study accounted for epenthesis and asserted that the constraints * σ [CCC is active in MYA. The study has shown that vowel epenthesis is governed by the relative ranking of the CONTIGUITY family constraints; D-CONTIG and J-CONTIG where D-CONTIG dominates J-CONTIG in MYA. With regard to vowel shortening, the study revealed that the constraints *3 μ and MAX IO (μ) were in conflict. therefore, opacity constraint and lexical phonology and morphology (LPM) were able to account for vowel shortening when the long vowel of the verb is suffixed by either a subject or an object morpheme. This thesis concludes that OT provides the means to effectively account for the syllable structure and its processes in MYA. The study shows that the superiority of OT was evidenced in solving and providing the reasons for the occurrence of these processes rather than merely stating the rules in a rule-based theory fashion. This has been proved and indicated in the universality of the constraints and is reflected in the dialect specific ranking of the constraints.