Aspect, Tense and Action in the Arabic Dialect of Beirut


Book Description

The linguistic categories of aspect, tense and action are closely interrelated. In the first part of Aspect, Tense and Action in the Arabic dialect of Beirut, Stefan Bruweleit defines the three categories and describes the interplay between them at a metagrammatical level. In the next parts he applies the theoretical findings of the first part to the Arabic dialect of Beirut, investigates the ways temporal, aspectual and actional categories are expressed and shows how to decide whether the verb system of the dialect has to be regarded as aspectual or as temporal. One of the main results of the work is the fact that a thorough understanding of a verb system is only possible through an understanding of the categorial interplay of aspect, tense and action.




Translating Tenses in Arabic-English and English-Arabic Contexts


Book Description

This volume is devoted to the translation of Arabic tenses into English, and English tenses into Arabic. Using a corpus of 1,605 examples, it is remarkably exhaustive in its treatment of the categories and forms of both Standard Arabic and English tenses. As such, it represents a useful reference for translators and linguistics researchers. With 260 example sentences and their translations, the book will be very beneficial to teachers and students of Arabic-English and English-Arabic translation. The book is divided into eight chapters. The first presents the variety of Arabic that will be studied and explains why translation should be a text-oriented process. Chapter Two deals with the differences between tense and aspect in Arabic and English, respectively. Chapter Three proposes a model for translating Standard Arabic perfect verbs into English based on their contextual references. The fourth chapter shows the contextual clues that can assist a translator in selecting the proper English equivalents of Arabic imperfect verbs. Chapter Five deals with the translation of Arabic active participles into English. Translating Arabic passive participles into English is handled in Chapter Six. The seventh chapter tackles the translation of English simple and progressive tenses into Arabic. Chapter Eight provides an approach to the translation of English perfect and perfect progressive tenses into Standard Arabic.




Arabic Verbs in Time


Book Description




A Reference Grammar of Modern Standard Arabic


Book Description

A Reference Grammar of Modern Standard Arabic is a comprehensive handbook on the structure of Arabic. Keeping technical terminology to a minimum, it provides a detailed yet accessible overview of Modern Standard Arabic in which the essential aspects of its phonology, morphology and syntax can be readily looked up and understood. Accompanied by extensive carefully-chosen examples, it will prove invaluable as a practical guide for supporting students' textbooks, classroom work or self-study, and will also be a useful resource for scholars and professionals wishing to develop an understanding of the key features of the language. Grammar notes are numbered for ease of reference, and a section is included on how to use an Arabic dictionary, as well as helpful glossaries of Arabic and English linguistic terms and a useful bibliography. Clearly structured and systematically organised, this book is set to become the standard guide to the grammar of contemporary Arabic.




Cognitive Approaches to Tense, Aspect, and Epistemic Modality


Book Description

This volume addresses problems of semantics regarding the analysis of tense and aspect (TA) markers in a variety of languages, including Arabic, Croatian, English, French, German, Russian, Thai, and Turkish. Its main interest goes out to epistemic uses of such markers, whereby epistemic modality is understood as indicating “a degree of compatibility between the modal world and the factual world” (Declerck). All contributions, moreover, tackle these problems from a more or less cognitive point of view, with some of them insisting on the need to provide a unifying explanation for all usage types, temporal and non-temporal, and all of them accepting the premise that the semantics of TA categories essentially refers to subjective, rather than objective, concerns. The volume also represents one of the first attempts to gather accounts of TA marking (in various languages) that are explicitly set within the framework of Cognitive Grammar. Ultimately, this volume aims to contribute to establishing an awareness that modal meaning elements are directly relevant to the analysis of the grammar of time.




The Oxford Handbook of Tense and Aspect


Book Description

This Handbook is a comprehensive, authoritative, and accessible guide to the topics and theories that current form the front line of research into tense, aspect, and related areas.




The Syntax of Spoken Arabic


Book Description

The first comparative study of the syntax of Arabic dialects, chosen for their distinction. Based upon natural language data recorded in Morocco, Egypt, Syria and Kuwait, this study takes an analytical approach, combining insights from discourse analysis, language typology and pragmatics.




Key Features and Parameters in Arabic Grammar


Book Description

In light of recent generative minimalism, and comparative parametric theory of language variation, the book investigates key features and parameters of Arabic grammar. Part I addresses morpho-syntactic and semantic interfaces in temporality, aspectuality, and actionality, including the Past/Perfect/Perfective ambiguity akin to the very synthetic temporal morphology, collocating time adverb construal, and interpretability of verbal Number as pluractional. Part II is dedicated to nominal architecture, the behaviour of bare nouns as true indefinites, the count/mass dichotomy (re-examined in light of general, collective, and singulative DP properties), the mirror image ordering of serialized adjectives, and N-to-D Move in synthetic possession, proper names, and individuated vocatives. Part III examines the role of CP in time and space anchoring, double access reading (in a DAR language such as Arabic), sequence of tense (SOT), silent pronominal categories in consistent null subject languages (including referential and generic pro), and the interpretability of inflection. Semantic and formal parameters are set out, within a mixed macro/micro-parametric model of language variation. The book is of particular interest to students, researchers, and teachers of Arabic, Semitic, comparative, typological, or general linguistics.




The Syntax of Time


Book Description

A collection of recent studies by leading scholars that examines the syntactic analysis of time from varying perspectives.




A Grammar of Arabic


Book Description

A Grammar of Arabic models a new framework for studying varieties of Arabic comparatively, highlighting the patterns of variation and consistency, and showing how different styles, from primarily spoken and casual to primarily written and formal, are linguistically interrelated. This non-traditional reference grammar is structured around patterns of usage rather than prescriptive rules, aligning function with form and taking advantage of general principles of language. Using data from Classical Arabic, Arabic, Modern Standard Arabic, and dialects spoken in Morocco, Egypt, Sudan, the Levant, Iraq, and the Arabian Gulf, this grammar examines the actual usage of these language varieties, broadening understanding of Arabic dialects from a linguistics perspective while also giving readers the ability to engage language diversity. Designed for instructors, researchers, and advanced students of Arabic, A Grammar of Arabic explores Arabic from an internally comparative perspective that will also be valuable to theoretical linguists.