From the Treasures of Arabic Morphology

This paper investigates Arabic and English inflectional morphology with a view to identifying the similarities and differences between them. The differences between the two languages might be the main reason for making errors by Arab EFL learners. Predicting the sources of such errors might help both teachers and learners to overcome these problems. By identifying the morphological differences between the two languages, teachers will determine how and what to teach, on the one hand, and students will know how and what to focus on when learning the target language, on the other.

International Journal of English Linguistics, 2017

The study has contributed to compare the characteristics of the inflectional system of nouns in Arabic and English Language for pedagogical orientation. The main objective was to develop an overview of the two languages system for evaluating the pedagogical significance in Arabic and English. A qualitative research design has been implemented to introduce the nature of two languages and the anticipated difficulties that have been encountered by the learners of the Arabic and English languages. The classification of the nouns and the inflectional system of the two languages have been contrasted through the analysis. It has been observed that the Arab learners of English delete some letters while writing but have proper pronunciation because they have the habit of pronouncing two elements represented in one grapheme.

Modern Issues in Comparative Arabic Linguistics, 2023

Following the root and pattern morphology approach (McCarthy 1981, 1993), this paper proposes to bring some highlight on the distribution of morphosyntactic properties in verb formation processes in Modern Standard Arabic (MSA). The identification of some phonological constraints related to syllable structure, vowel spreading, segment internal structure, and other morphological constraints related to restrictive morphology, allomorphy, morphological discontinuity, in MSA, had led to the assumption that both morphosyntactic properties (tense, mood, voice) and 'Agreement features' (person, number, gender) are realized simultaneously and undergo fusion. This approach contrasts with previous works that have never combined 'Agreement features' with the other grammatical properties, provides a considerable simplification of Arabic verbal inflection and enables to a better understanding of MSA verbal system organization.

2010

The present paper addresses the way inflectional paradigms of Moroccan Arabic triliteral verbs solve the problem that occurs when two phonologically similar members are driven to be phonetically identical. In this case, a Paradigmatic Contrast constraint prevents one item from being totally identical with the base in order to avoid fusion with another member of the paradigm. This is accomplished through ranking the Paradigmatic Contrast constraint above the crucial identity constraint O-O ANCHOR (σ, σ, Initial), which demands that a syllable-initial segment belonging to S2 must correspond to a syllable-initial segment belonging to S1. The main purpose of the study is to show the determinant role of contrast in the articulation of the inflectional system of Moroccan Arabic within the framework of Optimality Theory and to consider the dynamic nature of inflectional paradigms that abide by some of the most stimulating properties of language, among which the ability to keep similar phon...

Usage-Based Studies in Modern Hebrew , 2020

Inflection in Modern Hebrew is described as involving the following categories: Tense (Past, Future), Mood (Imperative), Person, Number, and Gender in verbs; Number, Gender, and Construct-State in nouns; Number and Gender in adjectives. Most inflection is manifested by suffixes, except for Person inflection on Future tense verbs. Inflection is obligatory for Tense in verbs, except for nominalized forms and Prepositions, Adjectives, and Participles. Noun inflection varies, depending on the features of Count for Number and Animacy for Gender. Accusative-case marking on verbs and Genitive-case marking on nouns are increasingly replaced by analytic alternatives in Modern Hebrew. The chapter first details the pronominal system, and then proceeds to description of the major lexical classes of Verbs, Nouns, and Adjectives, concluding with a brief discussion of conservative features as against variability and changes in MH inflection.

Language, 2003

Language typology and syntactic description (revised Second Edition). 169-240. ISBN 978-0-511-61843-7, 2007

are quite distinct from the conceptual and syntactic segmentation, in which for instance Tsew Má³ niÖ is a single, indivisible unit.

Language, 2003

Language Sciences 40 (2013) 221-250, 2013

We present a substantially implemented model of description of the inflectional morphology of Arabic nouns, with special attention to the management of dictionaries and other language resources by Arabic-speaking linguists. Our model includes broken plurals (BPs), i.e. plurals formed by modifying the stem. It is based on the traditional notions of root and pattern of Semitic morphology. However, as compared to traditional Arabic morphology, it keeps the formal description of inflection separate from that of derivation and semantics. As traditional Arabic dictionaries, the updatable dictionary is structured in lexical entries for lemmas, and the reference spelling is fully diacritized. In our model, morphological analysis of Arabic text is performed directly with a dictionary of words and without morphophonological rules. Our taxonomy for noun inflection is simple, orderly and detailed. We simplify the taxonomy of singular patterns by specifying vowel quantity as v or vv, and ignoring vowel quality. Root alternations and orthographical variations are encoded independently from patterns and in a factual way, without deep roots or morphophonological or orthographical rules. Nouns with a triliteral BP are classified according to 22 patterns subdivided into 90 classes, and nouns with a quadriliteral BP according to 3 patterns subdivided into 70 classes. These 160 classes become 300 inflectional classes when we take into account inflectional variations that affect only the singular. We provide a straightforward encoding scheme that we applied to 3 200 entries of BP nouns.

International Journal of Language and Literary Studies, 2021

The issue of the interface between linguistic components has got much interest in contemporary linguistics especially after the advancements that took place in the discipline of Conceptual Semantics. In essence, linguistics components have all been considered to be equal in terms of deriving meaning. In this article, the researcher scrutinized how the component of morpho-phonology interfaces with semantics. This aim was achieved through the analysis of intransitive verbs in Modern Standard Arabic (MSA, henceforth). It was found that intransitive verbs serve well in terms of demonstrating the interface between morpho-phonology and semantics. The morphological and phonological alternations of intransitive verbs result in changes in meaning. Cognition has a central role in generating causative verbs from intransitive ones.