The Semantics of Form in Arabic in the Mirror of European Languages PDF Download
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Author: David Justice
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9027230161
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 437
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Book Description
Justice's first aim in this volume is to demystify the Arabic language, which is widely perceived as difficult to learn, and has been characterised as ambiguous and confusingly polysemous. The central concern of this three-dimensional portrait of Classical Arabic is a version of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis that language is a determinant of other aspects of culture. But rather than focusing on the possible influences of language on thought, Justice is intersted in connections between language and language use or langue and parole. Among the topics treated are: the difficulty of Arabic; morphosyntax and Whorfian semantics; the role of duality in Arabic; iconicity; a population profile of vocabulary; the syntactic cut' of Arabic; and the relation between causatives and verbs that ascribe qualities to an object. This erudite and thought-provoking volume will be of interest not only to Arabists but to linguistic anthropologists in general.
Author: David Justice
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9027230161
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 437
Get Book Here
Book Description
Justice's first aim in this volume is to demystify the Arabic language, which is widely perceived as difficult to learn, and has been characterised as ambiguous and confusingly polysemous. The central concern of this three-dimensional portrait of Classical Arabic is a version of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis that language is a determinant of other aspects of culture. But rather than focusing on the possible influences of language on thought, Justice is intersted in connections between language and language use or langue and parole. Among the topics treated are: the difficulty of Arabic; morphosyntax and Whorfian semantics; the role of duality in Arabic; iconicity; a population profile of vocabulary; the syntactic cut' of Arabic; and the relation between causatives and verbs that ascribe qualities to an object. This erudite and thought-provoking volume will be of interest not only to Arabists but to linguistic anthropologists in general.
Author: David Justice
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9027230218
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 437
Get Book Here
Book Description
Justice's first aim in this volume is to demystify the Arabic language, which is widely perceived as difficult to learn, and has been characterised as ambiguous and confusingly polysemous. The central concern of this three-dimensional portrait of Classical Arabic is a version of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis that language is a determinant of other aspects of culture. But rather than focusing on the possible influences of language on thought, Justice is intersted in connections between language and language use or langue and parole. Among the topics treated are: the difficulty of Arabic; morphosyntax and Whorfian semantics; the role of duality in Arabic; iconicity; a population profile of vocabulary; the syntactic cut' of Arabic; and the relation between causatives and verbs that ascribe qualities to an object. This erudite and thought-provoking volume will be of interest not only to Arabists but to linguistic anthropologists in general.
Author: Mustapha Aabi
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 303024850X
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 272
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Book Description
This book posits a universal syntactic constraint (FPC) for code switching, using as its basis a study of different types of code-switching between French, Moroccan Arabic and Standard Arabic in a language contact situation. After presenting the theoretical background and linguistic context under study, the author closely examines examples of syntactic constraints in the language of functional bilinguals switching between French and forms of Arabic, proposing that this hypothesis can also be applied in other comparable language contact and translanguaging contexts worldwide. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of French, Arabic, theoretical linguistics, syntax and bilingualism.
Author: Hussein Abdul-Raof
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136107460
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 269
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Book Description
Investigates the universal categories 'subject', 'theme', and 'agent' with special reference to their functional status in Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) and how these three distinct functions may or may not coincide in Arabic sentences. These functions are inexplicitly characterised by classical and modern Arab linguists and Arabists alike. It has been found that the pre- (viz. sentence - initial) or post-verbal noun phrase (NP) in Arabic can be assigned the syntactic function 'subject' but may not necessarily assume the semantic function 'agent', that the pre-verbal NP, which may not necessarily be the 'subject', has the pragmatic function 'theme', and that these distinct functions sometimes cluster around a single NP in certain sentences, depending on genre. It has also been found that in MSA the order of sentence constituents is relatively free, subject to a verb-initial preference, especially when needed to prevent ambiguity. The present study reveals the fact that although coding features such as word order, case marking, and cross-referencing (viz. agreement) may provide a clear indication of which NPs are 'subjects' in MSA, they do not provide a clear-cut indication of semantic relations such as 'agent'; the 'subject' position in MSA is not necessarily the canonical 'agent' position.
Author: Thomas Stolz
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9027290369
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 562
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Book Description
This book is a functional-typological study of possession splits in European languages. It shows that genetically and structurally diverse languages such as Icelandic, Welsh, and Maltese display possessive systems which are sensitive to semantically based distinctions reminiscent of the alienability correlation. These distinctions are grammatically relevant in many European languages because they require dedicated constructions. What makes these split possessive systems interesting for the linguist is the interaction of semantic criteria with pragmatics and syntax. Neutralisation of distinctions occurs under focus. The same happens if one of the constituents of a possessive construction is syntactically heavy. These effects can be observed in the majority of the 50 sample languages. Possessive splits are strong in those languages which are outside the Standard Average European group. The bulk of the European languages do not behave much differently from those non-European languages for which possession splits are reported. The book reveals interesting new facts about European languages and possession to typologists, universals researchers, and areal linguists.
Author: Kassem Wahba
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136781625
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 658
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Book Description
This landmark volume offers an introduction to the field of teaching Arabic as a foreign or second language. Recent growth in student numbers and the demand for new and more diverse Arabic language programs of instruction have created a need that has outpaced the ability of teacher preparation programs to provide sufficient numbers of well-qualified professional teachers at the level of skill required. Arabic language program administrators anticipate that the increases in enrollment will continue into the next decades. More resources and more varied materials are seriously needed in Arabic teacher education and training. The goal of this Handbook is to address that need. The most significant feature of this volume is its pioneer role in approaching the field of Arabic language teaching from many different perspectives. It offers readers the opportunity to consider the role, status, and content of Arabic language teaching in the world today. The Handbook is intended as a resource to be used in building Arabic language and teacher education programs and in guiding future academic research. Thirty-four chapters authored by leaders in the field are organized around nine themes: *Background of Arabic Language Teaching; *Contexts of Arabic Language Teaching; *Communicative Competence in Arabic; *The Learners; *Assessment; *Technology Applications; *Curriculum Development, Design, and Models; *Arabic Language Program Administration and Management; and *Planning for the Future of Arabic Language Learning and Teaching. The Handbook for Arabic Language Teaching Professionals in the 21st Century will benefit and be welcomed by Arabic language teacher educators and trainers, administrators, graduate students, and scholars around the world. It is intended to create dialogue among scholars and professionals in the field and in related fields--dialogue that will contribute to creating new models for curriculum and course design, materials and assessment tools, and ultimately, better instructional effectiveness for all Arabic learners everywhere, in both Arabic-speaking and non-Arabic speaking countries.
Author: Jonathan Owens
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9027278091
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 312
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Book Description
The Arabic grammatical tradition is remarkable for having organized a large amount of descriptive material within a sophisticated formal framework. The present study seeks to elucidate the early development of this system from a theory-internal perspective; it is mainly concerned with the development of the syntactic theory as a formal object, as system of rules. This endeavor is constituted of four sub-goals: a description of early developments, their periodization, their relation to the traditional account in terms of the Basran and Kufan schools, and their relation to modern linguistic theory.
Author: Anna Wierzbicka
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9027230196
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 632
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Book Description
"The semantics of grammar" presents a radically semantic approach to syntax and morphology. It offers a methodology which makes it possible to demonstrate, on an empirical basis, that syntax is neither "autonomous" nor "arbitrary," but that it follows from "semantics." It is shown that every grammatical construction encodes a certain semantic structure, which can be revealed and rigorously stated, so that the meanings encoded in grammar can be compared in a precise and illuminating way, within one language and across language boundaries. The author develops a semantic metalanguage based on lexical universals or near-universals (and, ultimately, on a system of universal semantic primitives), and shows that the same semantic metalanguage can be used for explicating lexical, grammatical and pragmatic aspects of language and thus offers a method for an integrated linguistic description based on semantic foundations. Analyzing data from a number of different languages (including English, Russian and Japanese) the author explores the notion of ethnosyntax and, via semantics, links syntax and morphology with culture. She attemps to demonstrate that the use of a semantic metalanguage based on lexical universals makes it possible to rephrase the Humboldt-Sapir-Whorf hypothesis in such a way that it can be tested and treated as a program for empirical research.
Author: Robert D. Van Valin
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9027205728
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 512
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Book Description
Investigations of the Syntax-Semantics-Pragmatics Interface presents on-going research in Role and Reference Grammar in a number of critical areas of linguistic theory: verb semantics and argument structure, the nature of syntactic categories and syntactic representation, prosody and syntax, information structure and syntax, and the syntax and semantics of complex sentences. In each of these areas there are important results which not only advance the development of the theory, but also contribute to the broader theoretical discussion. In particular, there are analyses of grammatical phenomena such as transitivity in Kabardian, the verb-less numeral quantifier construction in Japanese, and an unusual kind of complex sentence in Wari' (Chapakuran, Brazil) which not only illustrate the descriptive and explanatory power of the theory, but also present interesting challenges to other approaches. In addition, there are papers looking at the implications and applications of Role and Reference Grammar for neurolinguistic research, parsing and automated text analysis.
Author: Martine Vanhove
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9027290326
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 424
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Book Description
This book is the result of a joint project on lexical and semantic typology which gathered together field linguists, semanticists, cognitivists, typologists, and an NLP specialist. These cross-linguistic studies concern semantic shifts at large, both synchronic and diachronic: the outcome of polysemy, heterosemy, or semantic change at the lexical level. The first part presents a comprehensive state of the art of a domain typologists have long been reluctant to deal with. Part two focuses on theoretical and methodological approaches: cognition, construction grammar, graph theory, semantic maps, and data bases. These studies deal with universals and variation across languages, illustrated with numerous examples from different semantic domains and different languages. Part three is dedicated to detailed empirical studies of a large sample of languages in a limited set of semantic fields. It reveals possible universals of semantic association, as well as areal and cultural tendencies.
