Personal Information

Full Name: Dr. Muhammad Swaileh Alzaidi

Academic Rank: Associate Professor

Department: English Language Department – College of Language Sciences

University: King Saud University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

Email: malzaidi1@ksu.edu.sa

Areas of Specialization and Expertise

1. Artificial Intelligence and Language Analytics

Machine Learning and Deep Learning for linguistic applications

Linguistic and phonetic data analysis using R and Python

Speech annotation using advanced tools for AI model training

AI-powered language modeling and dialect detection

Theoretical and Applied Linguistic Analysis

2. "Arabic" Linguistic Analysis

Intonation and prosody in Saudi Arabic dialects

Pragmatics, discourse analysis, and context-based meaning

Semantics and sociolinguistic interpretation

Linguistic test design and advanced question development

3. Academic Quality and Accreditation

Expert in aligning academic programs with NCAAA and international standards

Experience in strategic planning, agreement implementation, and learning outcomes assurance

Academic Qualifications

Ph.D. in Linguistics – University of Essex, UK, 2014

M.A. in Linguistics (Distinction) – University of Essex, UK, 2010

B.A. in English Language and Education (Very Good) – Taif University, Saudi Arabia, 2006

Languages

Arabic: Native

English: Full Professional Proficiency (teaching, research, academic writing)

German: Basic Knowledge

Digital and Technical Skills

Data Analysis and Programming

R, RStudio, Python (Pandas, NLTK, Scikit-learn)

SPSS, Advanced Excel

Phonetic and Acoustic Analysis

Praat, ELAN, Audacity

Natural Language Processing (NLP)

NLTK, spaCy, Hugging Face Transformers

LSTM and CNN model design

LabelStudio for speech and text annotation

Academic Publishing and Formatting

LaTeX, Overleaf

Awards and Recognition

2026: Dean’s Award for Excellence in Research Impact and Citations – College of Languages and Their Sciences – King Saud University

2025: Registered Design Certificate – UK Intellectual Property Office (UK IPO) - Design No. 6419112: Voice Recognizing Smart Home Switch Console

2023: Culture and Creativity Award – British Council

2022: Finalist – Culture and Creativity Award – British Council

2012: Academic Excellence Award – Saudi Cultural Mission, UK (PhD Level)

2010: Academic Excellence Award – Saudi Cultural Mission, UK (Master’s Level)

2005: Academic Excellence Award – Taif University (Bachelor’s Level)

Selected Publications

Complete list available on Google Scholar. You can also visit my personal website LINK.

Alzaidi, M.,  Bani Younes, M. A. S, Saaed, S. A., AlAbabnehb, B. (2025). Investigation of Focus in Bedouin Hijazi Arabic. Jordan Journal of Modern Languages & Literatures (Accepted for publication).

Bani Younes, M. A. S., Colantoni, L., & Alzaidi, M. S. A. (2025). Prosodic disambiguation of disjunctive declaratives and disjunctive questions in Jordanian Arabic. Journal of the International Phonetic Association. 

Bani Younes, M. A. S., Hirst, D., Alzaidi, M. S. A., & AlAqlobi, O. (2025). The pitch range of L2 English read by native speakers of Jordanian Arabic compared with that of L1 speakers of English and Arabic. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 157(4), 2505–2516.

Alzaidi, M. S. A., Saaed, S. A., & Bani Younes, M. A. S. (2025). Phonetic realisations of focus in declarative intonation in Iraqi Arabic. Speech Communication, 170, 103203.

Alzaidi, M. S. A. (2024). Syntax, phonology, or both? Jordan Journal of Modern Languages & Literatures, 16(3), 627–650.

Aljadaan, N., Alzaidi, M., & Alnasser, S. M. (2024). Arabic semantic priming for homographs does not result in a boost to all related material. Saudi Journal of Language Studies, 4(2), 106–124.

Alzaidi, M. S. A., Xu, Y., Xu, A., & Szreder, M. (2023). Analysis and computational modelling of Emirati Arabic intonation – A preliminary study. Journal of Phonetics, 98, 101236. Academic Press.

Alzaidi, M. S. (2022). Makkan Arabic does not have post-focus compression: A production and perception study. Phonetica, 79(3), 247–308. De Gruyter.

Alzaidi, M. S. (2022). The phonological ordering constraint of the short-before-long preference tendency in Qassimi Arabic binomial phrases: A quantitative analysis. International Journal of Language and Literary Studies, 4(3), 54–75.

Alzaidi, M. S. A. (2022). Pitch accent distribution and focus structure in Taifi Arabic: A production study. Editorial Board, 12(1), 179.

Alzaidi, M. S. (2021). F0 peak alignment, F0 peak location, and focus perception in Taif Arabic. International Journal of Linguistics, 13(6), 140–162. Macrothink Institute.

Alzaidi, M. S., Xu, Y., & Xu, A. (2019). Prosodic encoding of focus in Hijazi Arabic. Speech Communication, 106, 127–149. 

Alzaidi, M. S. A. (2018). Intonational patterns of focus preposing constructions in Hijazi Arabic. International Journal of Linguistics, Literature and Translation, 1(2), 290160. Al-Kindi Center for Research and Development.

Alzaidi, M. S. A. (2018). An LFG analysis of gapping constructions in Taif Arabic. Advances in Language and Literary Studies, 9(5), 96–99.

Sadler, L., Alotaibi, Y., Alzaidi, M., Camilleri, M., & ElSadek, S. (2013). Psychological predicates and verbal complementation in Arabic. LFG Proceedings. CSLI Publications.

PhD Thesis: Alzaidi, M. S. A. (2014). Information structure and intonation in Hijazi Arabic. PhD Thesis.,University of Essex.

MA Dissertation: Alzaidi, M. S. (2010). Gapping and right node raising: An LFG approach (Master’s dissertation). University of Essex.

Invited Lectures

• 2025: AI Research Tools for the Linguistic Study of Arabic and Its Dialects: Bridging the Gap Between Linguistics and Machine Learning – Department of Arabic Language and Literature, College of Humanities and Social Sciences - King Saud University
• 2025: Designing Speech Corpora for Arabic Dialects: Between Linguistics and Computational Modeling – King Salman Global Academy for Arabic Language
• 2012: Computational Modeling of Intonation – Department of English Language, King Saud University
• 2016: The Relationship Between Pragmatics and Intonation – NYU Abu Dhabi
• 2017: The Interaction of Intonation and Word Order in Saudi Dialects – Prince Sultan University

International Research Collaborations

Prof. Yi Xu – University College London (UK)

Dr. Anqi Xu – University Town of Shenzhen (China)

Dr. Marta Szreder – United Arab Emirates University (UAE)

Dr. Mohammed Abo Younes – Al Albayt University (Jordan)

Prof. Louisa Sadler & Dr. Maris Camilleri – University of Essex (UK)

Media Appearances

BBC Arabic (2023): Arabic Dialects and North African Varieties [Link]

Al Thamina Program (2022): "Why Does Your Dialect Change Outside Home?" [Link]

Ain Al-Estudio (2012): Linguistics: Knowledge or Controversy? [Link]

Linguistics Café Series (2021–Present): Public academic sessions [Link]

Academic Service

Peer Reviewer for: Linguistic Inquiry, Speech Communication, Journal of Phonetics, Scientific Reports, Arabic Linguistics, Journal of Supercomputing, and others

Reviewer for International Conferences: Speech Prosody 2024 (Leiden University)

Administrative and Academic Committees

Current Roles

Chair of Research Center - College of Language Sciences -King Saud University (2025 - now)

Accreditation Reviewer (Certified) - Education and Training Evaluation Commission (ETEC) - Since 27/08/1443 H (April 2022)

Member, Standing Committee for the Joint Supervision Program - King Saud University - Since 23/07/1446 H (May 2025)

Coordinator, Committee for Internal and External Initiatives and Partnerships - College of Language Sciences, King Saud University - Since 28/08/1446 H (June 2025)

Member, Subcommittee for Strategic Plan Drafting - College of Language Sciences, King Saud University - Since 30/07/1446 H (May 2025)

Member, Scientific Research Unit - College of Language Sciences, King Saud University - Since 13/11/1446 H (July 2025)

Previous Roles

Chair, Board of the Saudi Association of Linguistics - King Saud University - 01/05/1439 H – 11/05/1443 H (Jan 2018 – Jan 2022)

Vice Chair, Global Engagement Office - King Saud University - 18/10/1444 H – 28/04/1446 H (May 2023 – Apr 2025)

Chair, Standing Committee for MOU Implementation Follow-up - King Saud University - 10/09/1445 H – 28/04/1446 H (Mar 2024 – Apr 2025)

Liaison Officer with the Ministry of Culture - King Saud University - 10/09/1445 H – 28/04/1446 H (Mar 2024 – Apr 2025)

Managing Editor,  Journal of Arts - College of Humanities and Social Sciences, King Saud University - 22/01/1440 H – 22/01/1441 H (Oct 2018 – Oct 2019)

Head, Learning Resources Unit - College of Humanities and Social Sciences, King Saud University - 10/07/1439 H – 10/07/1442 H (Mar 2018 – Jun 2021)

Member, Research Committee - College of Humanities and Social Sciences, King Saud University - 01/08/1443 H – 01/08/1445 H (Mar 2022 – Mar 2024)

Member, Graduate Studies Committee (MA in Applied Linguistics) - Department of English Language and Literature, College of Language Sciences - 24/06/1440 H – 24/06/1442 H (Jul 2019 – Jul 2021)

Member, Academic Coordination Committee - Department of English Language and Literature, College of Language Sciences - 04/01/1440 H – 04/01/1442 H (Sep 2018 – Aug 2020)

Member, Summer Term Committee - Department of English Language and Literature, College of Language Sciences - 04/01/1440 H – 04/01/1442 H (Sep 2018 – Aug 2020)

Member, French Accreditation Committee (MA in Applied Linguistics) - Department of English Language and Literature, College of Language Sciences - 24/06/1440 H – 24/08/1440 H (Jul 2019 – Aug 2019)

Assistant to the Vice Dean for Quality and Development – European Accreditation - College of Humanities and Social Sciences, King Saud University 24/06/1440 H – 24/08/1440 H (Jul 2019 – Aug 2019)

Member, Academic Development Committee - Department of English Language and Literature, College of Language Sciences - 01/07/1439 H – 01/02/1440 H (Mar 2018 – Oct 2018)

Chair, Academic Advising Committee – Dept. of Foreign Languages - College of Arts, Taif University - 1435 H – 09/05/1438 H (2013 – Feb 2017)

Chair, Part-Time Studies Committee - College of Arts, Taif University - 1435 H – 09/05/1438 H (2013 – Feb 2017)

Member, Scholarship Committee - College of Arts, Taif University - 1435 H – 09/05/1438 H (2013 – Feb 2017)

Founder and Chair, Reading Club - Community Centers, Taif Municipality - 03/02/1436 H – 09/05/1438 H (Nov 2014 – Feb 2017)

Supervision and Academic Evaluation

Supervisor of multiple defended PhD and MA theses at King Saud University

Internal and external examiner for theses in linguistics, ML/Deep Learning and phonetics

Specialized Training (Attended)

Supervised Machine Learning – IBM (20 hrs)

Machine Learning & NLP – Edureka (19 hrs)

Google Data Analytics Specialization (6 months)

SPSS, R, Python for data analysis

Advanced NLP – Hugging Face

NVIVO, LaTeX, EndNote

Training Delivered

Mixed Methods Research – King Saud University (2024)

Workshops: SPSS, R, Python, PRAAT

Academic Writing, LaTeX, EndNote

Skills

1. Linguistic and Analytical Skills

Expertise in phonetics, prosody, and dialectology (with a focus on Saudi Arabic dialects)

Advanced skills in discourse analysis, pragmatics, and semantics

Development of linguistically-informed annotation schemes and data collection frameworks

Design and validation of linguistic tests and assessment tools

Supervisory and editorial experience in academic linguistics and applied language studies

2. Computational and AI Language Skills

Applied machine learning and deep learning for natural language processing

Building and evaluating AI models for dialect detection, sarcasm recognition, and fake news classification

Speech and text annotation for supervised learning tasks

Experience with LSTM, CNN, and transformer-based models (e.g., Hugging Face, OpenAI GPT)

Fine-tuning models for Arabic NLP tasks including classification and error correction

3. Programming and Data Analysis

Proficient in Python, including libraries: pandas, scikit-learn, NLTK, spaCy, matplotlib, transformers

Skilled in R and RStudio for statistical modeling (e.g., linear mixed-effects models)

Competent in SPSS for social science data analysis

Comfortable with SQL-like operations for dataset cleaning and manipulation

Familiar with data labeling platforms such as LabelStudio

4. Speech and Acoustic Analysis

Advanced use of Praat, ELAN, and Audacity for speech segmentation and prosodic feature extraction

Experience in phonetic scripting (e.g., ProsodyPro) and alignment-based segmentation

Design and implementation of sentence segmentation frameworks in spontaneous speech

Expertise in analyzing F0 (pitch), duration, intensity, and excursion size in focus realization studies

5. Academic, Editorial, and Administrative Skills

Academic program review, accreditation (NCAAA), and curriculum quality assurance

Leadership in international research collaborations and scholarly publishing

Fluent academic writing and peer-review experience in English and Arabic

Managing editor and journal reviewer for top-tier journals

Effective communicator in institutional partnerships and government relations

Event planning and coordination in linguistics outreach and scholarly forums

High proficiency in LaTeX, Overleaf, EndNote, and academic document preparation

Contact

Email: malzaidi1@ksu.edu.sa

Google Scholar Profile: Click Here

For a full CV or collaboration requests, please reach out via the above contact.